Bounty

The shopping, cleaning, and cooking that go along with our national holiday might, perhaps, take the shine off the genuine feelings of gratitude that we cranky girls harbor in our flinty little hearts. But this artifact from a cousin makes me feel serious-as-a-heart attack thankful for all those post-war miracles: antibiotics, fluoridated water, free school lunches, GI Bill, the U.S. highway system, and the like. These are the O'Hern children at their mother Jane's funeral in 1933. My grandmother Nora is the fourth from the left in the back row.

Jane O'Hern was married at 16 and died before she was 60. She had 13 children; Jeez, the hamster in Grace's bedtime book only had 11.

Jane's obituary described her as quiet and unassuming. If you live with someone as tightfisted as her husband, Pat O'Hern, and produce 13 children, you probably LOOK like you're unassuming. But I think she must have been tough as a boot. Her 13 children all lived to adulthood; the only one missing from the funeral picture died at 18 in a farming accident. In other branches of my family, unattended children died from drinking kerosene or stepping on rusty nails. But not Jane's. She didn't leave any at the gas station, or let any drown in a creek. She must have been paying attention and not just phoning it in.

If Jane O'Hern, with no education, running water, or even a whiff of useful medical care can do all that, I think I can manage to unload the dishwasher one more time.

--mcg

Domestic Science

A note to those of you who have graciously inquired whether we are back in our kitchen. The short answer is yes. Don't ask me to find the spoons, lightbulbs, or can openers that I used back in May. But we have made reasonable substitutions. Homework has been done on the counter. The mixer has been unpacked, and it still produces cookies. The only difference is that the mixing bowl now goes in the dishwasher after being comprehensively licked.

Much of the old is still there, and old. This is the same fixture that has hung above the dining table since I first saw it in the mid-1980s. My suspicion is that it is original to the house.

OK, well now it's red, instead of dirty beige. The globes came from the farm. I've seen them in a cabinet above the sink since about 1974. Recycle, reuse, etc.

When workers tore out the rotted kitchen cabinet, the name of the original owner was still clearly displayed. Mr. K. had the huevos to build a house in the last Depression. When our house gets turned into condos, or a University of Texas parking lot, or an expansion of Seton Hospital in the twenty-second century, maybe the subcontractors will smile at the Corvette-red light fixture that was installed in the Great Recession of Ought Nine.

--MCG

Tomstock

Cousin Tom didn't plan a fish fry just to observe our last night at the farm, but it worked out that way. His fish fries, held in his welding shop, are the stuff of local legend. You get the parking gridlock of Woodstock, but the food is much better. And instead of Jimi Hendrix, you get our Uncle Charlie. The guy in the red hat is about to turn 101.

Tomstock features an all-you-can-eat buffet, where the main draw is the fish. Tom and Cousin Jack are noodlers, which means they think it's fun to catch fish with their hands. It works for them, and we get to eat it. Whatever. The buffet is filled out with the neighbors' pot-luck offerings, which means lots of sinful desserts. Grace ate the icing off the red velvet cake, so I had to eat the rest. Darn. Also, UM pointed out a roaster filled with meat that looked like chicken, except that it wasn't. I have a suspicion that I knew the guys in the roaster back when they could croak.

In addition to all its other fine qualities, Tomstock is a kid's paradise. Tom has tricked out his place with all the usual grandkid-friendly gizmos. In addition, though, you get the playground equipment from the country school that was near his childhood home. So you get a terrific slide and jungle gym that no school would dare put in its playground for fear of litigation. The merry-go-round is particularly terrific. 

Poor Cranky Girl #2 got grief from Meta Cranky Girl for leaving her shoes at home. Attending Tomstock is a bit like exotic overseas travel in that you really want your tetanus shot up to date. Upon reflection, I find that the glory of Tomstock is that it requires you to improve your game, or else. Do you want to jump on that trampoline with five other kids and not break your cervical vertebrae when you're bounced off? Great, then let's see some agility and problem-solving skills. Do you really want to crawl to the top of Tom's archway to see what's there? That's fine, but just don't whine when it's time to come down.

And you really do want to crawl to the top, because then you get to see the summer's last sunset. 

--MCG

Dirt Work

The Cranky Girls have returned to their Not Farm space to prepare for Kindergarten and Middle School. Meta Cranky is preparing to have someone else take her trash away each Friday. But on our way out of town, CGs managed to collect several adventures and a photo backlog that we will process urban tranquility. 

Here's what we saw on our last day at the farm:

What we didn't see was the road, our mailbox, and our house. Our vision was obstructed by our neighbor's farm, which was vigorously blowing north. Here's what it looked like from our house, moving in from the south:

Turns out that what you really want on a hot windy day is a luscious alfalfa field. Not just because your legumes are fixing nitrogen in your soil. No, it's because those 15-foot roots are holding your dirt down. 

This has been a sorry summer for farmers. After the harvest, we got a drought and weeks of merciless heat. Last summer, we could plant field peas after harvest, a fine way to get a summer crop while scoring more of those nitrogen-fixing legumes. But without a rain, field peas were pretty much out of the picture. So we waited, and waited, to prep the field for a fall crop. Our field has been plowed once, with great trouble and expense, and more broken plow shears than we care to count.  

Look closely and you'll see the light brown wheat stubble in our lumpy field. Turns out that lumpy and stubbly is terrific on a day like this.  The dust you see wafting above our field isn't ours: our lumpy field stayed put while south wind picked up the smooth, twice-cultivated field nearby.

Make all the Dust Bowl comparisons you like, but a perfect storm of high wind and dry conditions can make any farmer look like an idiot. On our farm, we clearly remember when our sandy hill began to blow in the '60s. The Cranky Family unrolled bale after bale of hay on the sandy spots to keep the dirt where it belonged. Now we've planted the hill (which is classified as "Highly Erodible Land" by Feds That Give Us Money) into permanent grasses, so we won't have to go there again. 

Erosion on a this scale is tragic, of course. But can we take a moment to say that it's also a big pain in the tush? The Crankies' front porch has drifts that would be at home in Lawrence of Arabia. We left open a south basement window: the beds downstairs were covered with a layer of sand that brought to mind the snow drifts of Dr. Zhivago. Those aren't the film references that we're going for. Babe or Chicken Run  we can handle. But you can keep Ralph Fiennes, his swishy khakis, the Libyan desert, and The English Patient. 

--MCG

A Real Operator

*photo credit to Lydia

Today, MGC became a real operator by signing paperwork at the U.S. Department of Agriculture office at the county seat. I signed on the line that clearly said Operator, so it must be true. You may be interested in knowing that your tax $$ will be going to make sure that MCG's '09 wheat crop is more lucrative than an uninsured, drought-stricken, and frost-bitten 20 bushel/acre crop otherwise would be.

Some federal offices are comforting and sustaining. Post offices, for example, smell familiar and have employees who seem genuinely interested in helping me process my mail. The Ag Department, however, makes me feel like I've walked into the wrong seminar room. Like my poor professor who walked in ready to talk about Middlemarch when the rest of us were primed for Mill on the Floss. 

Things I have learned from the Department of Agriculture: 

1)If you want $$ from a government program, buying local is counterproductive. Our lovegrass project was complicated by buying seed from a neighbor rather than from a dealer who would have all the handy paperwork. For the USDA, locavores kind of suck.

2)It's really just easier to do it the way the the feds do it. Case in point: Our soil test indicated that our lovegrass needed 32 pounds of nitrogen/acre to meet the standards for a program that establishes grasses in erodible land. So, like a wierdo urban cranky girl who doesn't put Sevin dust in my tomatoes, I asked about alternatives to commercial, petroleum-based fertilizer. The answer: it costs more to apply feedlot manure, and the feds are not going to cover it. Oh, and we used to have a program to fertilize with chicken poop from eastern Oklahoma. We know that all the crap from factory chicken farms is screwing up the watershed over there. But the program expired, so never mind.

MCG was doing her own translation from the original government-speak, so the nuances may have been lost on her. Also, she is distracted by the voice of her deceased step-mother-in-law, the opinionated organic gardener. From Organic Gardener Heaven, she is communicating that commercial fertilizer is a great deal for Monsanto, but not so good for her grandchildren's health. Clearly, MCG is out of her league and should go back to picking tomato worms off her Jersey Girls.

--MCG

Bespoke Birthday Cake

Grace ate cake at an early-summer birthday and declared, "She can make this cake for my birthday." "She" was Wanda, and when Grace's birthday rolled around, she did. It's a glorious angel food confection, delivered on Aunt Minnie's Fosteria cake plate. Talk about eye candy. Perhaps my favorite part was the Alma Cronin icing, a seven-minute creation that pre-dates marshmallow stuff from a jar. I like this icing on lots of levels, and not just because of the way it sticks to my fingers. In my apprentice cranky days, I spent a lot of time watching elderly women (crones over 40) making funeral dinners in the church basement, and Alma had an engaging prickliness that spoke to the cockles of my cranky little heart. 

The Alma icing makes me mentally review the recipes I refer to by a proper name. My mother's recipe box is lousy with them: Berta's Fan Fan rolls. Ruth Ann's White Mountain Ice Cream. My system is less colorful, but mentally, I insert the name of the person who introduced me to something fabulous: (Mark's) Hummus with Pomegranate Seeds on Top. (Laura's) Carrot Soup. (Liz's) Soup with Spinach that Small Children Eat. Recipes come with baggage, not to mention responsibility. Let's just hope that I'm not remembered by posterity with (Toxic Mom's) Scorched Broccoli.

--MCG

Evoking Closure

At the farm, crankiness is a form of self expression, and this has not been a subdued summer. MCG has loudly uttered Mother-of-the-Year-type statements, such as If you two want to turn me into a drooling idiot, just keep it up. Some of us have proclaimed that the world will end if others of us touch particular CG property. MCG has declared she will not listen to any sentences beginning Sister said. Then came the day that cranky words were said over two boxes of mac and cheese. One exuberantly cranky outburst followed another, a door was slammed, and a window was sacrificed on the altar of crankiness.

At this point, MCG entered the category that Uncle Michael calls "Toxic Mom." Crankies 1 and 2 have made reparations in the form of extra acts of housework. And after two tries, we finally received a tempered-glass window of the correct size. Lydia held the glass while UM nailed in the trim.

Apparently there's a special tool called a nail set to help install finish nails with small heads. Do we have this tool? Take a big guess. But we do have a metal file. You put it over the nail and then whack. Extra points for adapting available tools to do the job.

We spent a month with this empty space between the laundry room and the kitchen, and it afforded us opportunities to perform clever tricks and Marx Brothers-type pantomimes. But now the window is replaced and the cranky incident that broke it has become Amusing Family Lore. MCG could get all literary and talk about literal and metaphorical closure, but she's sure you appreciate her walking away from that temptation.

--MCG

Dog Update

I was going to post a picture of this goofy bird dog and report that she was settling in nicely. Still chewing a bit, not so much jumping, putting on a few pounds. Everything on track to take her to Texas, where a new family is waiting to see whether she's a good fit. 

And then, the dogs had a news flash this morning:

Apparently, there's a porcupine in these parts. Both dogs ended up with lips full of quills.  Coco didn't look so great, either.

A morning's visit to the vet and all's well again. Both dogs appear slightly chastened, but I'm sure that will pass. The vet assures me that if the porcupine is still there, the dogs will do it again.

--MCG

The Choir Invisible

My mother used to have a pile of cards and programs collected from the funerals she attended. They were almost all conducted by the same undertaker, with the same illustration on the front and the same Victorian-sounding poem on the back. Only the names and dates were different. I'd find these tucked into her top dresser drawer when I looked for a handkerchief and wonder how a person would collect so many. Now I find these cards in the pocket of the black dress I leave at CGF to wear to funerals. Every summer, there's at least one funeral. 

You would expect the actuarial charts to catch up with farmers, who are an aging demographic, despite what the Times says about those hip, young organic farmers with Political Science degrees. But the black dress and I are going to other services, too, each with its own set of grieving family members and, often, awkward family psycho-dynamics. The service for a heartbreakingly young man that had the Lynyrd Skynyrd soundtrack. The banker's funeral that I watched on TV in the overflow room. Mass for the mother of a high-school boyfriend. Cancer victims, suicides, traffic fatalities. 

It would seem be a grim litany, this forced march to the services of friends and neighbors. And yet the generosity of spirit I see at each of these events is invariably heartening. It's not just about the predictable Protestant casserole; I think it's about time. 

Ponder this: I went to a beautiful funeral at a historic Episcopalian church in Austin with the burial following at the lovely state cemetery. Afterward, most friends and associates expressed their sincere and heartfelt condolences before time constraints required them to return to their law firms.  This urban tribe is no less thoughtful or considerate than my rural one, but home visitation and church dinner are not part of its folkways. In contrast, about 40 friends and family members stayed at my grandparents house for three days after my uncle's funeral in 1957--it took that long for the floodwaters to recede. My mother was one of the first to leave, and she flew out in a crop-duster's airplane. I still hear stories about that post-funeral camp-out from the people who were there, and none of them indicate that those three days in a house full of damp, grieving people was a waste of their time.

Tomorrow, Michael and Jamie will sing Amazing Grace at the service of a a long-time civic leader. The black dress and I will, once again, watch and learn.

--MCG

*key to obscure literary reference: I know this George Eliot poem because it's from the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch:

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence

Axis of Evil

The Cranky Girls have been merrily visiting with their Urban Company for the past few days. Lots of fun with visitors, their lovely daughter, and their alarmingly intelligent dog. After our very happy visit, we return to the garden to find that CGF is under attack.

The edible plants that began their career in March have prevailed against the heat, the wind, and the drought. However, they have met their Waterloo, their Dunkirk, and their Dien Bien Phu in the form of bugs. Here's what a squash bug can do to a zucchini. Avert your eyes if you're squeamish.

And there are the tomato worms, which I think of as the al-Qaeda of the bug world. If I were the size of a tomato, I'd be really scared.  When the business end of the worm points my way, it's kind of scary despite my size advantage.

I fondly remember when my granny had a generous container of Sevin dust in the garage that would take these suckers out. My granny didn't spend much time worrying about what toxins were collecting in her tissues. After reading too many books about the dangers of ingesting scary chemicals, we choose to just remove the worms by hand. It's an art, not a science.

Lucky for us there's not so much that wants to eat the eggplant. 

--MCG

Windmill Pumps

The other day, Michael decided that I needed to learn about windmills. So here I am blogging about them. Here's what I learned about them.

Parts of a windmill pump, from the top:

Name to                                                  Use                                                                   What I Call It

1. cylinder=                                                case                                                                           red thing

2. plunger=                                            water puller                                                      metal stick

3. bottom check=                                 holding water still                                                       valve

4. top and bottom check=                  holding water still                                              bigger valve

5. leather=                                                sealing water                                                      brown circle

The assembled pump in action:

We tried out the pump in a bucket of water. Ta da! It worked!

--cg

The Model Farm

*photo credit goes to Grace on this one

If you ever need a good laugh, it's quite the panic to read those old publications put out by the county extension services that tell you how to have a model farm. They helpfully tell you when to plant your cow peas,  how many jars of pickles you should be canning, what to do when your chickens have chest colds, etc. Let's just be clear about this: the cranky girls are not running the model farm.

This building is a case in point. It used to be a brooder house.  We figured we could do plenty of brooding without devoting an entire building to it, so we made it a playhouse. We gave it some flourishes like windows and a working door. And what do we get for our efforts? Termites.

*this photo from Michael--see his truck reflected in the window!

It's not that we three crankies aspire to be Lisa Douglas from Green Acres. OK, truthfully, Grace could really get into watching someone else "farm" while wearing pearls and kitten- heeled mules with a poof of maribou feathers. The rest of us crankies, however, are stuck being Marthas to her Mary.

Running water, for example, is one of those things that can be a non-event or a big pain in the tush. Sunday, I trekked to the well at 6 a.m. to whack the points on the motor; apparently there was enough moisture to foul up the connection. So you jiggle the housing and voila! (or Viola!, as Uncle Sid says) you have running water again. It's so easy. You can figure out how to make your points work, or you can listen to your children complain that the toilet won't flush. It's completely up to you.

CGF has the whole yin with the yang thing going. You get the stuff that looks like  it's interviewing for Field and Stream:

*look, it's a ring-tailed pheasant!

The stuff that says, yes, Michael Pollan, I have embraced the locavore movement and can grow my own vegetables:

*pumpkin from last fall

And just when you're about to get all high-minded and Wendell Berry about it, reality comes calling in the way of tomato worms, withering heat, and infrastructural challenges:

* These photos from Michael.  Can't remember if this is the hole from his barn or from CGs' barn. Sieger Construction can vouch for the holes in CGs' barn.

Maybe CGF really is in Hooterville, and my part is Ralph, the lady carpenter. 

--MCG

That Evening Sun

My youngest older brother came to visit me once in New Jersey. He and his friend slept in the back of their pickup in our driveway in Highland Park. On the way, he visited friends in D.C., probably sleeping in the back of his pickup there, too. A friend of his friend confirmed all the regional prejudices of my youngest older brother when he observed, "You're from Oklahoma? I went there once. There's not anything there." "That's why we like it," retorted YOB. The "asshole" part  was understood.

Because there's not anything here to get in the way, we get to study the sun when it goes down. It's impressive enough to make you put down your garden hose, or your fork, or whatever conversational thread you're working on. Grace wanted to take these pictures, and it's always easier when, as she says, we do teamwork.

Here, she helpfully points out That Evening Sun so you won't miss it when it goes down.

--MCG

Frog Prince

A trip to Cousin Tom and Cousin Jack's (Tom is below) always involves a lot of wildlife.

This trip featured a big Tiffany-blue frog.

Ask Jack the Game Ranger about the genus and species. Ask Tom, the welder and Renaissance man, how to cook it.

A few moments ago, this frog was a princess. However, stuff happens:

Here's a shop dog. We don't know its name, but it has a brother named Tank. This dog has adapted well to life in Tom's welding shop.

Characteristics: friendly, elderly, itchy, puts up with small children.

Batch o' kittens. Third batch of the summer. Five survivors from and original batch of 7, born during a heat wave. Mother lives at Tom's. Father lives . . . oh, never mind. In this picture, they are two days old; eyes not yet open.

*Photo credits go to Lydia, who can take pictures of things that are squirmy.

Not pictured are Tom's goats, chickens, and several more dogs. All with loads of personality, just like Cousin Tom.

It's worthwhile to note that there are lots more animals at Tom and Jack's that no longer have a pulse. He and Jack are expert hunters, fishers, and fish-fryers, and you're never sure what you might find in the freezer (hmm, crane? bobcat maybe? is that an owl in there?). They are past masters at noodling (catching catfish with your hands); our cousin could have been featured in the documentary Okie Noodling, but he wasn't about to have his best fishing holes revealed to the wider world.

Tom and Jack hold fish fries that bring friends and relatives from around the county. Jack's dad used to say that he might eat the chili at Tom's, but only if he saw what went in it first. Who knew squirrel (or turtle) could taste so good? 

sorry for the loss of appetite--mcg&cg

Farmers' Market

Saturday morning I woke up (quite crankily) at 6. In the AM! Why? (It's summer for cryin' out loud!) Because of the Farmers' Market. The market is in Enid, about 1/2 an hour away from the farm. So, with Gardening Friend, I set out at 6:30 to sell squash. Lots of squash. TOO EARLY!!!

Here's what I can report about the wonderful, early, early morning Farmer's Market:

Amazing Fact: All the farmers were cheerful, even though they had gotten up earlier than I had.

Another Amazing Fact: All the farmers were helpful. Really helpful lady selling yummy handmade pecan crunch swapped an $8 bag of candy for 3 pounds of squash. (the squash was worth $4.50, but it's really good squash)

Let's Hear It for Locavores!: Lots of shoppers came out early, early in the morning to support these farmers. Sure they could have gone to the grocery store at a decent hour, but instead they came out in the hot and wind (some days in the rain) to buy things not "Made in China." So, is it surprising that not all of them can think clearly at 8 a.m.? Which leads us to:

THE CUSTOMERS

Annoying Customer (AC) Habit: Asking for produce clearly not available or in season. The sign says "squash." We've got "squash." Gardener Friend waters faithfully, but the tomatoes, eggplant, and corn just aren't ready yet! The Most Annoying of Customers for this habit asked for apricots. Apricots! (We're pretty sure it's too late, although somewhere in the world I'm sure it is March.)

Winner of the AC Prize: The guy who, when offered squash, said "Na, squash is what you serve with roadkill."
I take great personal offense to that comment. Roadkill! Roadkill is the dead armadillo by the side of the road. Roadkill is buzzard food. Squash is not eaten with buzzard food. Although our Cousin Tom (more on him later) might disagree; he's been known to eat fried squirrel. Hey! It's local!

Here ends my report of the fabulous Farmers' Market and its ACs.

enjoy--cg

Code of the West

There are rules about watching your back in the country. If you, for example, happen to leave your, um, Puplin unattended, things can happen.

Beloved Puplin, purchased at Garden's Edge many years ago, has a history of straying. He has, for example, been left in a hotel in Springfield, MO. Most recently, Puplin was left in Austin, where Dad kindly mailed him back. But if someone opens the mail while you're not home, liberties can be taken.

Here's Puplin at Truman Capote's Black and White Ball:
Very nice. Looks better than Katherine Graham did, don't you think?

Now here's Puplin being eaten by a unicorn. Ouch!

Here's Puplin, getting ready to go to therapy before Lydia comes home.
The Code of the West requires that people occasionally will tease and be teased back. If you are teased too intensively, the correct response is, "You're an Eskimo Pie-head, Uncle Michael."
There you go, partner.
--MCG

Trashy Addendum

Previously, MCG noted Uncle Michael's agitation upon finding a refrigerator at CGF that, he surmised, did not belong to us. Clever Uncle Michael apparently photographed this discovery. So here's his visual record of refrigerator discovery and removal. First, keen eyes spot the appliance in the ditch at the end of our driveway. "Thunder!" says UM:



But not to worry. It's a simple matter to load the fridge onto your bale stabber, secure it with chains, and pay $3 to offload at the dump. Ta-da! Bagged it!

A misplaced refrigerator is no match for UM's mighty bale stabber. Only wish we could deliver it to the person who lost it.
--MCG

Another One Such

This happens every summer. It's as regular as the 4th of July fireworks or the running of the bulls in Pamplona. A castoff pet finds us and presents us with an ethical dilemma. This year's installment is a bird dog.

Sometimes these castoffs make us feel like matchmakers. Our hound friend Muzzy was delivered into the arms of a friend who remains smitten by the leggy pooch's charms. You can find out much more about Muzzy at her person's blog. We also learned that a fluffy 10-pound puppy will bowl over all the customers at the lumber yard, who will pore over their address books to find it a home. The puppy grew into a 100 pound bruiser named Samson, so we really dodged a bullet on that one.

And our cat, previously profiled with her rat, was another tourist at CGF who never checked out of the kitty hostel.

Animals gravitate to CGF, perhaps because we're on a creek, or perhaps because our phone number is written on some bathroom wall. My parents were, if possible, even easier marks than we cranky girls are. Dogs with names like Queenie and Ladybird became recipients of hot oatmeal on cold days and table scraps on balmy days; one notably followed Dad to town and waited in his truck while he ate breakfast at the cafe. The only dog ever ejected from CGF was a purebred boxer. When he pulled the laundry off the line one too many times, my mother took him into the vet clinic and asked that he be euthanized. The vet intern was horrified that she would want to destroy such a valuable animal. Kap told him: "He's yours, buddy." Maybe his new owner used a drier.

This female dog looks like a German shorthaired pointer. She walks with a limp and has the patience of a saint. She has been intensively yammered at, pulled on, and shampooed with dish soap, all without protest. She still chooses to sleep in the yard. If you have any birdhunting needs, please let us know and she's yours, buddy. Otherwise, we'll get back to you on how we resolve this summer's ethical dilemma.

--MCG

Trashiness

The wind let up Saturday morning for the first time in days. So I burned the trash. We've got a terrific burn-barrel that Jamie graciously shared and Michael kindly delivered. Grace held a match to help.

I'm guessing that the local burn-ban has been lifted, because farmers have been torching their wheat stubble for days. If not, then paint me a scoff-law. There are both trash-burners and haul-to-the dumpers in my family. We do this because, unlike pampered urbanites, we don't have solid waste disposal services.

Here's the thing: My collection represented a week's trash for three cranky girls, the leavings of a dinner party for 10, and some trim pieces from a construction project. Any organic matter was composted, and we're not strict constructionists about meat and dairy. What do we care if the skunks pull an uneaten piece of cheese from the heap? Any recyclables have been removed to be meditated over, because I dare anyone to make sense of the recycling system around here. Paper and aluminum? Great, drop it off in town 24/7. Cardboard, plastic, steel cans? You can drop those off in Air Force Base Town between 10 and 2. Batteries and glass? You're hosed, unless you want to schlep them to Oklahoma City during business hours. Many is the time that we've thrown up our hands and just sent them back to Austin in a southward-bound vehicle. And how nuts is that?

So is it any wonder that only a few stalwart souls try to work with this system? And is it any wonder that the bridge by our house is the defacto staging area for the county dump? We can take any manner of trash (except tires) to the dump between 9 and 5 on days that aren't Wednesday and Sunday. Unless it's now Monday and Sunday. The dump is a bargain when it's open--only $3 for all the trashiness you can fit into the bed of a pickup. But alas, many rural people generate trash after closing time. We know this because we find their above-ground-pool installation debris, their outgrown baby layettes, and their dead goats by our bridge. Our cousin Paul and pal Jeremy once pulled an exceptional number of lawn mowers out from under the bridge (I think it was 4). Brother Michael has called in a fit of righteous indignation to report that a full-sized refrigerator blossomed at the end of our driveway.

The county workers and the church's youth group have been pressed into service to haul away other people's stuff (Thanks guys! There are more kolaches where those came from!). But mostly it's Uncle Sid and Uncle Michael, who have the pickups and trailers that you really want in the trash-removal biz. Jamie's pickup was just the thing for that elliptical exercise machine that didn't quite make it into the ditch. These people's time, gas, and equipment wear-and-tear are the effective Other People's Crap Tax that we pay for living in the country.

So urbanites: Celebrate Big Trash Day! Lift a glass to Single Stream Recycling! And be content in the knowledge that any day you wake up without someone else's pool skirting on your property is probably going to be a good day.

--mcg

Lawn Culture

Weeks of 100-plus temperatures mean that the bermuda grass around the house and outbuildings has long since gone brown and dormant. The weeds, however, are loving it. These guys must have made some deal with the evolutionary gods, because they are thriving in the face of climate conditions that are more like Dubai than the USDA Hardiness Zone 7. Yesterday's high was 114 degrees; the top leaves of my well-watered corn plants went from green to crinkly brown in one afternoon. But do you see any stress in this vegetation? It's the epitome of verdant:

Here is a particularly exuberant example of pig weed. I swear it wasn't there two days ago:

Which brings us to the subject of lawn care in this part of the world. I won't indulge in King of the Hill comparisons because they're just too easy. More revealing might be the inventory of the garage where our lawn care tools are stored: three riding lawnmowers and a push mower. Two of the riding mowers are well-loved tractor mowers that are used only in a pinch. The other is a twirly, zero-turn mower that came to us when a cousin upgraded. Here's the thing: In this lawn care tribe, owning four lawn mowers is considered completely normal. Our cousin who upgraded has an immaculate garage bay that looks like the lawnmower lot outside Lowe's. Weird, in this lawn culture, would be my Austin yard, where all the Saint Augustine has been replaced with gravel, vegetable garden, and xeriscaping. 

I once asked our friend Jamie, a native Texan, to shed some light on a diagonal mowing pattern we saw in Brother Sid's beautiful yard. She only shrugged and observed that "mowing is a religion in Oklahoma. That's just another sect."  I have been pushing my tribe's boundaries of lawn etiquette; I'm not elderly or incapacitated, so I don't qualify for a mowing waiver.  Excuses like, "but jeez, it's 114 outside!" just don't cut it with this crowd.  If I waited much longer, I could expect concerned looks and an Intervention Mowing. Therefore, the Cranky and Reluctant Mower sect held services Saturday at 8 a.m. And it was good.

--mcg

Ancient History

There's a lot of old stuff at CGsF. Like the Romans, we have some really old infrastructure that you might find in a museum. Until recently, we boasted of knob-and-tube wiring, a 40-year-old AC, and a fabulously rusty cast iron pipe that took (most) of the water from the washing machine. Some old stuff is hip and groovy, for example a stove that has a griddle and a Thermo-well. Other old stuff is just old. Like Meta Cranky Girl.

Then there's the category of Educational Old Stuff. Cranky Girls 1 and 2 are seated on a thingy that allows you to actually SIT behind your plow, rather than have to walk behind it. I'm sure it was the IPod Touch or the IPhone 3G of its day. This implement lives at the Chisholm Trail Museum in Kingfisher with very many of its farm implement friends.

One of the very cool things about this museum, besides its three dozen flavors of candy sticks, is that it not only has Educational Old Stuff. It also has a whole block of Educational Old Buildings. A school. A bank. A jail. A church (more on this later). A blacksmith shop. And two log cabins. The log cabin pictured below is of particular interest to Cranky Girls because it was owned by the Cole family. Meta Cranky is sure she will be corrected if she gets this wrong, but she thinks that it was the home of her mother's great-grandmother. That would be the 3rd-great grandmother of Crankies 1 and 2. That's a lot of history, and quite a bit of crankiness.

Lydia sat on an iron bed in this small cabin and thought about being in a place where her long-ago grandmother had lived. 

Harmony Church was our family's church for many years, until it closed in the 1970s. If you get us going, we can tell you stories about Uncle Michael singing Silent Night there as a wee tot, or about Dora, a notable minister who served the church during WW2. 

It looks like an Educational Old Building, but we still know lots of people who think of it as part of their family, too.

--MCG

Thorny Bastards

Attention readers: This post is being written by the mother of all Cranky Girls. The previous writer emphasized to me that I needed to make this distinction. Perhaps I'm the Meta Cranky Girl. I'll consider how to classify myself when I'm not so cranky.

Today's post is about cirsium undalatum.  I was ready to call this a musk thistle, but our friend Chuck, who knows more Latin names than Charles Darwin, thinks it's a wavy-leaf thistle. Wavy-leaf thistle is apparently a native plant, as opposed to a myriad of other invasive thistles with purple tops. Whether its a native or an uninvited guest, it's prickly, and I will always think of it (affectionately) as The Thorny Bastard. 

It's got an attractive purple bloom. I'm quite certain that our friends at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center cultivate them and celebrate their place in the circle of life.

We don't celebrate them quite so much; they only pop up when fields are stressed or overgrazed, or when the seeds are imported in hay bales. So with the encouragement of Uncle Michael (profiled previously), we have spent two mornings digging them up and carrying them off to burn. Check out the payload of these seed pods, and it's apparent how quickly these thistles can spread.

These thistles were removed from a farm my uncles own. I'm sure they'll be glad to know that there's an Oklahoma law on the books requiring property owners to remove invasive species. We're apparently saving these guys from a fine of $1000/day. Wow, are we generous or what? Here's Lydia, making her contribution to range management:

The Thorny Bastards and I go way back; I've seen these lovely purple blossoms pulled, mowed, and burned since my days as a wee cranky girl, often at the instigation of my granny. If she could see these from the window of her Impala as she drove around her ranch, someone would be instructed to remove them. Upon reflection, perhaps my granny is the Meta Cranky Girl, and the rest of us are just pale imitations.

--mcg