August 16, 2004
What a beautiful week! The temperatures have been reaching highs of 90 during the day, and dropping down to record lows of 60 at night. We have had the windows open, enjoying uncharacteristic Autumn weather in the middle of August. We don't expect it to last more than a few more days, before we are back to "Welcome to Texas" weather. If I let on that we actually have this sort of gorgeous weather for several months in Spring and Autumn, everybody would want to be a Texan - so I'll just keep on telling stories of 100+ degrees and 90% humidity.
The milo has been harvested, and we are all looking forward to undertaking the task of bringing in the cotton crop. Since JW is so busy with fence work, I have been recruited by Jim to operate the module builder this year. Roughly translated, that means spending my days from August until October pulling hydraulic levers to pack the cotton inside of the huge iron container. If I am lucky, most of the cotton will be dumped from the pickers into the builder, and not onto my head!
JW spent Saturday afternoon servicing the equipment, with some assistance from Chief. He has been on grass duty at Jim's for a couple of months, and is always ready to help out with mechanical details. He is so nosy, in fact, that Jim has to keep a rope stretched across the doors of the shop to keep the horse out!
The rest of the four-legged brood are all doing well. The kittens are now brave enough to follow me out to the chicken coop. The first time they made it that far, they rounded the corner and came face to face with four hens. With eyes as big as dinner plates, they slowly backed up and then turned to run for the house. Apparently, those huge birds were not quite what they had expected! After a couple more trips, Nicholas has decided that he would much rather play on the old equipment rusting in the field, while Baby Girl sticks close by me and gets braver each time. She was even so bold as to stalk the cows the other day. I'm not sure if she has thought it through far enough to have determined what she will do if she catches one - or even how to catch one, for that matter.
