Monday, December 17, 2012

Weekend Update


Cookie Jar Ginger Snaps

Holiday baking has commenced.  Two Swedish Tea Rings dropped off, and the and second round of Cookie Jar Ginger Snaps are ready to go.  I love the smell of the house during the holidays.



Rolled in sugar
Hot out of the oven
We had about 1/2 an inch of rain the other night - the horses were all proper mudballs in the morning, but the ground and all the vegetation is surely happier for it.  I wouldn't have minded if it had kept up for all of the next day, too.  Unfortunately it didn't.  The horses weren't entirely pleased to be kept penned up in the corral with hay until afternoon to give the orchard pasture a chance to dry some.  Every time the house door swung open Sunny would whinny notifying us that, "Hey, you've forgotten us down here!  We want out!"


It was still damp even yesterday when I went down to snip off some more spindly trees along the orchard fenceline.  I'm making progress - I've done most of the way to the barn now, although there's still work for T to do with the chainsaw.

Cat 1 joined me to supervise, yammering away the whole time.  He's nothing if not vocal.  He's still a youngster, definitely a tom, and was likely someone's pet at some point.  He worked his way closer and closer and finally got up the courage...


Once he'd had his ears rubbed I couldn't keep him out from underfoot - I almost dropped a tree on him a couple times.  Finally the horses came over to check out what I was up to and after Sunny snuffled him over and got slobber on him and Thunder almost flattened him, he retreated under the pear tree to complain at the lot of us.


Cat 2 is still running off whenever he spots us getting closer than 20 feet or so, and there's an even shyer, big fluffy grey cat that showed up briefly over the weekend.  Finding some outside cats is not going to be a problem.... keeping track of them all, however....

I have the majority of the tub surround tiled, along with the sink backsplash.  Hopefully we'll have a working shower before company arrives for the holidays, but it still has to be grouted, so we'll see.

Last night when we went down to bring the horses in, only Amyra and Rufus appeared.  T called, I called... finally a crashing and thudding, and the errant pair trotted up over the edge of the creekbed both with grass still hanging out of their mouths.  So at least a couple of them have figured out there's edible stuff down there. 

This morning all of them but Amyra were standing in the barn when I went down to let them out, so they've figured that out, too. 

T pulled the cover off one of the old well pits yesterday so we could see how deep it is.  Fairly deep, with a bit of water in the bottom from the rain.  And it also had snakes.  T says just corn snakes. 


They eat mice and bugs and aren't poisonous.  But I still wouldn't want to run across one unexpectedly, and I sure won't be picking them up. 


They look a bit too much like rattlers at first glance.  And I'm not sure what the green one is.

And that's the news from here for the last couple of days.

8 comments:

Jesselyn said...

I find snakes to be fascinating, albeit creepy. The green one might be a yellow belly racer. At least, that's what looked closest when i visited this site: http://www.snakesofkansas.com/

Kellie said...

I just started baking last weekend too. Those cookies look great. Might have to add that kind to my list.

YAY for getting some rain. Bet the ground just gulped it in.

What a sweet littl cat and so friends too.

So is grouting hard? I'm toying with the idea of doing my own bathroom.. Can never save up enough $$ to get it professionally done and Im so sick of it the way it is - I've GOT to do something soon.

Scary Snakes!! YIKES!

SunnySD said...

Thanks for the website, CoS! T says they always called the green ones "green racers" so what you found makes sense.

Kellie, the grouting is messy, but depending on how big the area you want to do is, it's not too bad (speaking as very novice tiler). With the bathroom in SD it helped to have someone who could run a tile saw. We did the whole wall surrounding the tub up there, and it was... a lengthy project. With the one down here, we just wanted a foot-high backsplash behind the tub and one behind the sink. I used the 12" sheets of glass tile. They went on really nicely, and nothing had to be cut. On the whole, the floors are easier, though :)

buckpony said...

Man, oh man, those cookies look to die for! I'd love to get that recipe, too, if you don't mind sharing. :)

Love the kitty! So glad to see he finally got some hands-on loving and ear scratches. I love strays and how appreciative they seem to be once they trust you. Maybe the other(s) will eventually come around, too.

Wow! The snakes are beautiful! The markings on the brown one are like artwork. So cool! They are good to have around, so like you said, I'd just leave them be, to do their job. :) We had chicken snakes in our barn growing up because we had plenty of chickens and rats around to keep them fat and happy. I didn't mind the chicken snake in the barn until I would flip over a hay bale and we would both scramble like crazy trying to get away from each other!! We had very few poisonous snakes around because the king and chicken snakes eat them, too.

Kellie said...

Looks like the storm of the century is heading your way! Take care!

Kellie said...

And thanks for the tile tips.. Guess I've just to to jump in and try it.

SunnySD said...

Storm turned out to be a lot of bluster and not too much snow - I think most of it went around us, although the visibility wasn't too good for a while. Hope you guys didn't get too dumped on up there!

Kellie said...

We only got a few inches and a lot of wind in our area, folks to the south east of us got an amazing 20"! Better them than us.