Outdoor Odyssey

Last weekend, my friend, Warren Blesh, owner of RRR Ranch, took his 2-1/2 year old Grandson, Tripp, fishing, in the good size, stock tank behind his main ranch house.

Earlier in the day, he and Tripp had visited the Mills County General Store and purchased a “Snoopy” rod and reel combo. The young fella’ was ready to go fishing and after they acquired some really, stinky, catfish bait, they baited up and soon were rewarded with the nice, 4# catfish pictured.

Warren told me that Tripp hooked and fought the “monster” perfectly and the “Snoopy” rod and reel combo performed as advertised.

If you start ‘em young they’ll be “hooked” on fishing all their lives!


PS If you're ever in Goldthwaite, stop by the Mills county General Store and you'll be taken back in years to a really neat shopping experience!

Sun up this morning found me in some thick stuff near a freshly plowed food plot, with my decoy out, trying to entice a strutting tom to take interest. Calling for almost an hour with no results. I was walking out to pick up the decoy when I noticed some deer tracks.

We had light rain on this past Monday and Tuesday, and this track of a nice, big deer, shows that the track was made yesterday afternoon (probably).  The track is about 5" long! You can see where the crust of the ground was broken by the front of the hoof and I believe we can call this one a doe since the toes of the hoof are spread out.

Our turkey season ends this coming Sunday, but anyway, the highlight of this turkey hunt was a nice deer track! If you love the outdoors like I do, it doesn’t take much to make you happy!

Today, before the sun came up, I got ready to walk my 2 miles, and noticed the Hummingbirds buzzing around the feeder. Ms. Zoe Ann Hinds had kindly sent me a recipe for food for the birds that I promptly mixed up for them, filling the feeder yesterday afternoon and you can see how much they have eaten! Zoe Ann didn’t send me a usable link to her site so I can’t reference her, other than her name.

Getting my camera, I went outside and started taking pictures. Of course, when I neared the feeder, the little birds vanished, but soon, “The Boss” showed up, to check me out.

Everything was OK, so he fed, but another, not dominant, male, came in and before “The Boss” could run him off, snuck a bite too.

Since the “men” had eaten, everyone flocked in.

Today there must have been at least 15 of them buzzing around me.

They really like Zoe Ann’s recipe!

May 5, 2005, five days after I had retired I was welcomed to our part of Texas by a terrific, hail storm. The weather forecasters had predicted a heavy, spring storm but I wasn’t prepared for its ferocity. Having endured several hurricanes, large electrical storms, three tornados, a sandstorm and “blinding” fog, I still wasn’t prepared for baseball, size hail!

Spending the first month of my retirement planting a garden, Layla and I were enjoying watching it grow into succulent vegetables and fruit. The new plants had been “up” for 4 weeks and we had already harvested the first mustard greens and spinach and we were looking forward to the green, fist size, tomatoes ripening.

Watching the 10:00 PM news, the forecaster said for all of us in Mills County to prepare for a severe, thunder storm before 11:00 PM. Outside, the wind was blowing and it was raining, but this was nothing compared to the storm on the way.

As the storm was building and lightning was continually flashing, a sure sign of tornadic activity, we stood on our front porch watching the spectacle. This storm was what we call a “line storm”, dark clouds hovering not far from the ground, forming a straight line, with a strip of light below it. They really stand out in the daylight, but the continuous lightning, flash, flash, flash and thunder rolling, made it brighter than a full moon!

Pea size hail began falling and pinging on to the metal roof of our new ranch house and we were both looking northeast toward the town of Goldthwaite, when we saw a “tail” come out of the line of clouds and dip almost to the ground, not a mile from us, then pull back up into the maelstrom.

Bam, bam, bam, we both jumped as the big hail smashed into our new metal roof. Closing the door we ran inside and settled into one of the inside corners of the hall and sat out the pounding. It sounded like thousands of baseballs were being propelled into our roof. Then, I thought, our trucks were not under cover and what about my garden?

The hail stopped, lightning, heavy wind and torrential rain continuing, then shortly, the crashing of the hail began again! Eventually, the storm rolled on through, south toward San Saba and Llano, and we could only wait until the morning to assess our damage.

Damage, we had, and plenty of it! Our huge oak trees had over 50% of the leaves stripped. The roofs and northwest facing side of both trucks, looked as if some giant had pounded them with a bat, but USAA took care of them. The north facing windows of our old ranch house were destroyed and we replaced them. The garden was a mess, greens shredded, onions broken, tomatoes stripped of the fruit, but it came back and produced until Thanksgiving. Our bird population, including, turkeys, was severely thinned out, and we had 5-1/2 inches of rain!

Welcome to west central Texas!

May 2, was the “ultimo” day to plant okra in our area of our fine state. Everything else; broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, jalapenos, dill, 1015 onions, garlic, cucumbers, black eye and purple hull peas has been planted and are growing well! My "green thumb" is showing! This year, for a change, our spring rains have been well timed and abundant!

On May 1, Layla and I sampled a spinach leaf and they will be ready to eat and “put up”, this week. The broccoli is almost ready to harvest and when both are harvested, I’ll replace them with yellow squash and green beans.

Our peach trees are loaded with fruit and will be ready to “pick” around June 1. The picture is of peaches on our Flordaking tree, Prunus persica ‘Flordaking’. It bloomed early, we didn’t have a freeze or damaging frost and, barring something else, we’ll have a good harvest of peaches.

May 2 was a planting day and it also turned out to be a blooming day! Two of our tomato plants bloomed and the picture shows one of them.

Our 1015 onions, Acacia sp., are doing well. These onions were developed by Texas A&M and are closely related to the Vidalia and Bermuda varieties. You can wash them off and eat ‘em like an apple! Yum!

In our area we have a real problem with Deer eating and destroying our gardens! Deer won’t eat garlic or onions, so they are unprotected, but my jalapenos and tomatoes have wire cages around them and the rest of my above ground vegetables are protected by wire trellises. By running drip hoses along the bottom of the trellises and using snap in connections, watering the garden is almost “automated”.

The garden is a lot of fun and a lot of work, and with the food prices rising, it becomes more important!

On April 25 and 26, despite heavy rains in Baytown, Texas, Stumpy and his Senior Softball team, “The Texans” won their fourth straight tournament and ran their record to 21 wins and 5 losses. In the six games, they outscored their opponents 104-18 and turned an amazing, 14 double plays!

The Texans are all smiles after their tournament win in Baytown.

Including a grand slam homer, Stumpy had 11 RBI’s! He commented on the tournament, saying, “It was wet and muddy early on, but turned into beautiful weather with excellent playing conditions. It was nice to finally play in some warm weather!”

The Texans next tournament is in Pensacola, Florida on May 16 and 17. In this one they’ll be playing teams from the east coast and will get a real test of their national championship aspirations.

These little guys, fun that they are to watch, are eating me out of house and home! I’m already ordering the food in giant bottles, direct from the manufacturer! I filled up both feeders, 32 ounces each, on Wednesday morning and by Thursday morning one was empty and the other was half full.

“The Boss” was guarding the feeder that still had food in it and got him a bite before he took off and he didn’t come back while I was taking the pictures. Notice the reflection on his chest.

I had just filled the second feeder, the bird’s favorite, and the females came flocking in!

"Taking Aim"

The ladies kept coming in in singles and finally they doubled up.

“Let’s do lunch!”

The competition (and the food bill) will be awful when their little ones hatch and we have 40 instead of 12 feeding here!

Each afternoon, when we are at home on our ranch, Layla and I sit out on our back porch, feed Spike and Bo and watch our Hummingbirds, correctly, Black Chinned Hummingbirds, Archilochus Alexandri, swarm around our feeders. Last year we had, at the most, 4 birds, but this year we have at least a dozen!

This morning the little bird’s main feeder was out, so when I went out to get it and fill it up, the local, dominant male, “The Boss”, zipped past me several times and each pass was highlighted by his distinctive buzzing, signifying his displeasure at my removal of the “feed trough”.

With the feeder now full, as I snapped this picture of him with my new camera, “The Boss” came by and checked it out with me standing 3 feet away!

He was still guarding the feeder, when, I imagine, his mate, came in for a “bite”

After she fed, up came “The Boss”, then they both took off for wherever they hurry off to.

With the feeder open, here came more. They paid no attention to me standing by the feeder, taking pictures.

Four, both males and females, were feeding, each bird feeds at approximately 15 minute intervals, and 4 more were buzzing around me waiting their turn. Since “The Boss” was away, things were orderly with no fighting. Once he returns, the picture changes quickly.

My new camera and software worked like a charm!  And, whoever said that hunters were bloodthirsty guys just looking for something to shoot!