windthread

and now for ~Just Going~

i never quit

this morning, before going to the farmer's market, and then to finalize Alzheimer's Betty's house for the new Renter,   I sat myself down with the intention of making a list of what i needed to do with this day.   I knew i needed to begin at the Farmer's Market, then finish cleaning Betty's house and then.....

duct (duck) tape.  for sure from the hardware.  ok.  and i wrote that down.  but then, i drifted off and  thought about the Raven that has been cruising the airways above.  and i looked down and this is what was  my List

and i got home and the final people came for the last of the little wethers.  it was not easy.  Los Dados were both not too bad.  i am loaning the people the travel crates.  in they went.  Darth Vader and Inky were another story.  took a very Good chunk of time and effort to capture them.  the lasoo was involved.

but it's quiet now.   All who remain here are who will remain here for an undetermined time.

We Are:

Snowbunny, Barbara, Grace who i am milking because their babies were taken abruptly.  then          Lucky Star, mother of Los Dados who went tonight.  and her doeling Just Going.           Ona,  mother of Darth Vader and Inky who went tonight, but i think she had weaned them on her own, we'll see.                                                                                                                                                                         Onday and her doeling Mercy                                                                                                                                               Caroline and her doeling  Magic                                                                                                                                       Arctica, the virgin                                                                                                                                                                   Caroline and her daughter Cinderella.

then there are the bucks.  Gideon, TenZen, Buckwheat and Caroline's son, Sunny Ray.

so.........how many goats are there?????????????????  eeeeeeeeeeee.  i need to count.  but i'll do that in the morning.  today, it has been enough.  today i did what i was so afraid i wouldn't be able to do.   but it kind of happened of it's own accord.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reprieve

Yesterday, the Sky looked like this

but i didn't stay quiet long enough.   I didn't look     long enough.  i just forged ahead with so many thoughts that i told my self were

Feelings.

and then somewhere in Time from then and mid morning today,  i remembered reading a Buddhist publication talking about how we are constantly saying we are   Feeling  this way or that and if we STOP and look,  most often we can see that really,  what we call Feelings are

Thoughts.  Mental constructs.  quite different than   ....   what i would say a Real feeling might be.

So, all the feelings about the little buck goats.   and now, there is a Waiting List.  4 left.   ALL homes good. 

So i am looking at this as a reprieve.  that may or may not repeat ever again.  and i am Thinking, instead of Feeling,   about how to go forward with this Goat Keeping Thing.  Today i milked the three does who now have no babies.  This must be done so they don't develop mastitis.  i hadn't thought about that.  so many things to factor in.  I have spent a lot of the day out in the Goat pen.  Watching them.  Just being there...doing nothing,  seeing what They do when i do nothing inside their world. 

and i have inherited a really good good chair
it's story is too long to tell here.  but it's cushions, very good cushions are a rose color, to put it nicely.  Pinkish.  RosePinkish.  a color i can't live with.   So this morning i Tea dyed two pieces of cloth...one a sturdy muslin and the other some kind of good heavy cotton.  I will stitch these to the existing covers.  They will be Right.  the back cushion can then receive any kind of odd thing i choose to baste on.  I don't want anything permanent.  i see many different things. 

 

 

boro~ing while wearing

and here we are this morning...that "secret" inside placket of the Goat Shirt.   this will be our second year together

the Refuge

so i went.   This is the 25th anniversary of the Festival of the Cranes  and today was the annual meeting of the Friends of the Bosque,  the human beings who volunteer time, sweat, money for the love of this Place.  and this is the thing i have been stricken by everytime i have attended a Festival, the sheer almost ecstatic energy that is created by so many who travel so far for this Celebration of Birds.  There is a HUGE aura surrounding the entire refuge during that time in November.  and i mean that literally.  Whether or not you are "into" auras,  it simply is there.  hovering, vibrating, reflecting.

Most of the time i go to the refuge when nothing at all is going on.  it's pretty much empty except for those that work there.  i go to just sit.  and stare.  i take a little lunch and eat it in the weeds somewhere.  somehow this connects me to the birds.  today, being Volunteer Day it was BIZZY.  There was the annual meeting which i'd never attended and which was so full of interesting info about what has been accomplished in the last year and what is hoped to be accomplished in the next year or two...a LOT about management,  research projects (like the one for the cougars that just "showed up" to set up housekeeping, not just pass through.), and i was touched by how much Everyone there, the Fish and Wildlife people, the Federal Wildlife Management people, EVERYONE really and actually LOVES this Place and what it represents to the Planet.  So after the meeting, a really great lunch prepared by people who just love to feed people.  (so New Mexico) and then the various projects.  planting, clearing,  weaving the river willow stick fence (me) and more.  a LOT of people.  a lot of boyscout, girlscout troups, 4Hgroups...kids.   Too many people, after a while, and also it was getting to be Goat Time, so i wandered away.  i said i'd take pics.  and as usual, i didn't.  but i stopped at the edge of the Refuge, at the beginning of the 9 mile trail to Chupadera Peak and climbed up

facing North.  and i picked up some flaked pieces of old iron from Railroad doings to wrap in cloth.

and i DID connect with the very great YOUNG woman who is doing the program with the kids from the local, San Antonio, elementary.  i didn't realize this is a very new program.  after her presentation i  went up and told her i was interested in working in this program.  we talked and i have her email to set it up.  as i was walking away, i said..."and are you innundated with volunteers?" to which she cheerily replied, "you're it!".  so.  ok.  how great is this.  she works with the combined 3rd and 4th grade class, so she gets the kids TWO years.  They do a variety of projects.  their teacher works with them on one Thursday in class and then on every other Thursday they spend the day at the Refuge following through.  This year, the Refuge has given them their OWN piece of land.  They will research it thoroughly.  they will record all manner of things through out their 2 years in..........DEB G.!!!!....their own personal notebooks that they are given.  FIELD NOTES.  where they record Data and make maps/diagrams/drawings.  i mentioned that this was what i would really look forward to and that i was good at drawings.  She was happy. said it was her weakness.  one of the things they draw is all the artifacts of prey they find in Owl scat.  oh, tra la.  This is GOOD.  This is very very GOOD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

like an ~Oracle~

talking without sound

yesterday i was sewing and thinking and reading Jude's Post and Dee's forum post in Jude's Spirit Diaries and suddenly there was a little box, top middle of screen with my son's name and i think it said hey ma

and as i have learned to do, i clicked it and yes.  it was him.  like the old Instant Message thing i used to call the Blue Guy,  but this was new somehow and i have no idea how it got there, top middle of my screen, but anyway, the conversation went along, line by line as he linked me to i think 4 Utubes of his heros.  they are called Jazz and FlyFishing.  Scandanavian jazz band who mostly love fly fishing.   my son loves fly fishing.  so we watched, seperately, he in Colorado and me here with a sentence or two inbetween.  he just got snowshoes so he can go into the mountains to fish this winter.  and i asked if he had a cool little sport coat like these guys wear.  he didn't answer me.  but i'm thinking i'll find him one at the Thrift Shop.  a Good wool one and customize it for him.  like boro it.  make him some kind of special fly holder inside breast pocket.  something like that.  he  might or might not wear it, but it's the thought that counts, no?  and once again we vowed to go together someday. fly fishing.

Back to sewing,  looking at Spirit Diaries.

and the day ended with an email exchange that left me hanging and i  guess i felt more crabby than usual and said that.  something like  "you went away..."      And i woke off and on all night and felt really bad about it.  saying that.  you never know why someone leaves their screen.  could be a million things. 

And i woke this morning thinking about Talking without Sound.  Talking with Never a Voice.  how strange.  almost all "talking" i do is voiceless.  none of those interruptions mid sentence to add or clarify, no face with eyebrows going up and squnching up,  no breaths or sighs.  and how if you say things this way,  they just sit there forever, As Is.  understood or mis~understood or i think mostly half understood.  It has been bothering me lately.

and thinking of those guys making the flyfishing Utubes, i'm wondering what it would take to make little movies instead of little black words on a screen?

anyway,  i've been sewing in the Morning Chair lately using the ironing board for a table.  and  thinking about all the above, i'd begun playing with the scraps.  some are my own dye but most are pieces of DebLacativa that i was going through yesterday to make changes in the Things in the Hair cloth.  and as the morning sun traveled across the room, across them,  i became totally mesmerized and studied them this way and that and then saw how moving the little white fragment around could change everything.  and how the two very very small red dots on the teal could so easily be missed entirely

then, here are the changes...i don't know if you can see them,  they're not huge, but they ARE important.   but i'm not sure about any of them yet

 

 

 

 

it's happening

~goats~ first autumn

i am splitting wood,  they are growing heavier coats.  No Use to try for artsy pics.  they see a camera, they crowd around.  even if they are "out".  this is what it looks like:

this, through the reinforced lifestock fencing.  now the addition of cattle panel.  there are 26.  Still.  it seems that they might have become my responsibility.   Daughter has gone back to school while still working.   If it goes as it looks like it might, she feels she is stuck in New Mexico for at least 2 years.  and back in school, she can finish a Masters in that time.  And so.  hmmmm.  i am glad but right now that translates to my finding someplaces for those 10 little buck goats born in the summer.  half are already neutered, half to go.  One looks like he will escape the Loss, maybe 2.  but the rest....where can they go?  a little while ago i got the "bible" of goat keeping written by a man in the UK...everyone agrees on this.  and i looked for the chapter, or at least part on neutering goats...here we call them wethers...and couldn't find it.  looked and looked.  finally somewhere in the chapter on breeding...a couple sentences referred to as "culling".  the born bucks are "culled" at birth or eaten.  since these are dairy goats, it would be the first.  so...i have some soul searching to do.  Ordinarily, there would not be so many.  but still,  "any" is some.  How to think?  i have missed this milking.  i will need to rebreed soon to have milking does in the spring which i would like to do.  but this emphasizes that i need to come to some kind of terms with it all.  Not easy.  What i am doing is asking pretty much Every One i see if they know anyone who might want a couple goats for "companions" or weed eating????  i ask strangers in the grocery store, people at the gas station, and Post Office.  Today i posted flyers at both feed stores.  Tomorrow will put an ad in the local paper.  Hope that daughter will post on Craig's List.  we'll see. 

And i made this diagram:

all that is highlighted in blue is Goat Territory now.  it is still divided by the house and the now very reduced house yard that will be used almost exclusively for growing food.  the rest has been reconfigured for the goats.  And so it goes.  I spend time with them.  Learn more every day about how they experience things.  i Love them.  Many of them love me in their goatly way.  I can't imagine what it would be like to live without goats, now.  and it has only been 5 months.  i am thinking it will only become more. 

 

 

 

 

more forgetting

poking through a basket this morning i found this.

so looking back through posts i see that i put it here August 26th.   what is unsettling is that though i have to acknowledge it as a cloth that i worked on,  i honestly had completely forgotten it.  it was in the days just prior to the child coming.  and then the child came.  and a whole huge Space in my life opened  for those weeks creating this forgetting.   i like this cloth very much and i like how pinned atop the Flap cloth, how the RED leaks down upon it.