Time To Grow Up

I was fixing to let out the doggies for our morning coffee time on the back porch.  The temperature was a lovely 74 degrees with sunny skies and a slight breeze.  Usually I just open the door and let everyone out but something caught my eye!

How did all of that doggie hair get into such a big clump?  Wait, no, it's something else!

I am betting this little guy's mama brought him by last night and said she was going to run an errand and would be back soon.  Well, his mama was kicking him out and he was now on his own.  I honked horns, threw a ball, and tossed about ten rocks at him.  Stinky did not want to leave.  In fact he was determined not to leave because mama had told him to "stay put."  The sun hits the whole back porch very directly by 3;00 in the afternoon.  He was gone when I checked in on him a few minutes ago.

Once again tragedy was averted!  No one got sprayed!

Revised Deer Feeder Repair Entry

As often happens with me, I deleted my entry on fixing the deer feeder.  Hopefully you already enjoyed my snappy remarks so there is no need to try to completely try to replace them.

Basically, Peg and I gave up getting any help from anyone and used our own brain power to gut the the deer feeder and fix it ourselves.  It required skills not in abundance and infrequently used!  "At the end of the day," we made the repairs ourselves.

New Doggie Door

For the last couple of months, Peg has been bugging me to get a new doggie door.  At this point in time, I can't remember why this issue had even come up.  Was it because a co-worker had just put in one at his house?  Did the old one need replacing?  Who knows, but she went ahead and ordered one last weekend.  The rascal arrived this week!
Our new double flap doggie door cost $109.00.  The new tools we had to buy to install it cost $230.70.

Do we buy the cheap new electrical tools or the more expensive ones?  Considering that we already had three other drills (none of which could accommodate the large drill bits we needed for this project), we bought a new one and the saw to cut the opening larger.  We went middle of the road on cost...

So here it is our new doggie door.  I had to work with Beulah for some time to get her to use it because she was scared of all the loud and shrill noises made while we were installing it.

8-22-16 Peg just got back to me regarding this post.  She reminded me that the doggie door faces north and when the north wind blows a lot of very cold air was entering the house.  With the double flap of the new door, this should no longer be a problem.

New Doggie Door

For the last couple of months, Peg has been bugging me to get a new doggie door.  At this point in time, I can't remember why this issue had even come up.  Was it because a co-worker had just put in one at his house?  Did the old one need replacing?  Who knows, but she went ahead and ordered one last weekend.  The rascal arrived this week!
Our new double flap doggie door cost $109.00.  The new tools we had to buy to install it cost $230.70.

Do we buy the cheap new electrical tools or the more expensive ones?  Considering that we already had three other drills (none of which could accommodate the large drill bits we needed for this project), we bought a new one and the saw to cut the opening larger.  We went middle of the road on cost...

So here it is our new doggie door.  I had to work with Beulah for some time to get her to use it because she was scared of all the loud and shrill noises made while we were installing it.

8-22-16 Peg just got back to me regarding this post.  She reminded me that the doggie door faces north and when the north wind blows a lot of very cold air was entering the house.  With the double flap of the new door, this should no longer be a problem.

August Rains

We have gotten some unusual August rains.  This time last year we had already gone 2.5 months without a drop of the wet stuff.  In the last week, we have had over 11 inches of rain.  All of it is fantastic because I was spending at least a couple hours everyday watering the baby trees.

 
All of the tanks are full to the brim.  The really nice thing about the rains is they came hard and strong but only delivered about 2.5 to 3.5 inches during any 10-15 hour period.  This allowed for the majority of the  water to be absorbed rather than just run off.  I could almost watch the ground swell as it took in the wetness.

An added benefit has been to see some critters we do not typically see when it miserably hot and dry.

  

Armadillo

Todd Turtle, Timmy Turtle's little brother

Another benefit of the clouds and rains is the temperature.  We have been in the low 80s for over a week.  Weather prognosticators are saying this storm has broken the back of our Texas summer and we will not experience the high 90-105 temperatures again this year.  Time will tell and I'm hoping they are correct!

Two Other Critters

Finally have a couple pictures of the two other critters that frequent the feeder.

Coyote

Raccoon

Much as I hate to say it, we are getting better at fixing the glitches we encounter with the mechanics with the feeder.  Now we need to improve the quality of the pictures we are getting from the cameras.