Today I walk alone

No dog to watch this morning.  

On Sunday morning I started walking up to the east end of the paved road.   For the last 5 years I have had very few days where I walked by myself.   When I know that the dog is OK and safe it is a little less disturbing. Still I find myself looking for him and I feel the grip of loneliness preventing me from being as observant as I would normally be.   The sun was beautiful though and the air was cool and comfortable so I began to loosen up  a little.  I walked up to the private dirt road and stopped at the Chinese Chestnut tree. I was sad to discover that the crop of chestnuts this year are very small and almost unusable.

The Chestnuts are small.

 I only found a few nuts that came close to a size I could use.   I think that the pollination may have been disturbed by the heavy rains we had earlier this year but that is speculation on my part.  I searched through many of the pointy shells lying on the ground and they were either empty or too small to use.  The local pecans have also suffered this year from a fungus that makes the nuts fall early.   Only those who pay to have their trees sprayed with fungicide have any pecans this year.   Well there is always next year.   Thanks for reading my blog today.  I hope you have a great Sunday. Bye.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Maybe

That dot on the road is a dog who is scared of electric fences.  

Oh what a beautiful morning it was.  Very cool.   You had to have been down here in Grand Bay the last couple of months to understand what a relief it is to walk out in the morning and not arrive home covered in sweat.  Those mornings may be gone until we have our mid December heat wave some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The dog and I walked down to the east end of the paved road and I turned the corner to go and look at the goats.  As you can see from the photo the dog begins his homeward journey when I turn the corner because he is afraid of the electric fence as noted in my earlier blog.  I went down the little private dirt road to see what the goats were doing and while I was looking for them in the fence something clicked behind me.  I turned to see two beady goat eyes looking at me through a tall fenced corral normally used for herding cows into a trailer.  I walked over to where the goat was looking at me through the fence and noticed that all of the goats were now here in the corral which was across the road from their previous location.  Apparently the owner wanted the goats to clear the brush growing in the corral which was pretty much obscuring the presence of the goats themselves it was so bad.  The goats had eaten all of the brush from the area where they were before and the only goat left there now was the baby goat who was bleating loudly for it's Mom I suppose.  They have cleared the woods there so effectively that I can now see through to the field behind the wooded area where the goats were before.

Shoes are mandatory here.  

 I took a photo of the chestnuts growing by the road which are almost ready to fall from the tree.  It should be a good crop of nuts. The owner of the goats usually allows me to pick up the chestnuts as he doesn't like to deal with the stickers on the shell.

Looks like Hawaii.  

 I also took a photo of the beautiful Hibiscus that is growing nearby just at the edge of the road by the water trough for Zig Zag the lonely bull.  The Hibiscus is a distant cousin of okra and cotton.  Their flowers are similar but each ones plant is very different.  You don't want to have your Hibiscus near your okra as they can cross pollinate and cause your okra pods to grow strangely if you save seeds.  Once I was back on the paved road I managed to coax the dog back down to the end of the road with a ruse about throwing something into the bushes  He never wants to be left out of any game of fetch.  We then headed on back toward the house.  As we passed by the soy bean field on the left I saw Zig Zag the bull considering his chances at getting through the barbed wire fence into the soy beans.  I suppose cows will eat soy beans when they are green but I don't know if they are good for them.  I will keep and eye on him just in case.  Thanks for reading my blog.  I hope you got a chance to go outside today.  Bye.