Eye on the Ball

"Keep your eye on the ball" I said.
"I was!" he said.














I apologize for my lack of posting. This blog came out of an excess of time and mental energy. Lately I've had a lack of both time and mental energy. End of the year. New cars. Lots of stuff. Things are bound to slow down eventually and when they do, I'll have things to write about.

Citrus

For Mother's Day my wife asked me for one simple thing. She just wanted a couple of citrus trees. Orange, lemon, whatever, just plant some trees next to the apple trees. She mentioned it all through the spring, and I always waved her off. I think she thought I forgot, but I didn't. The plan was to get them as an actual Mother's Day gift, and not just sometime in the month before hand and call them a gift and then have nothing for her on actual Mother's day. I'm a romantic like that. So after the 5K last weekend we loaded up the truck and bought one orange tree and one lemon tree. They're planted safely in the yard and seem to be doing well. The orange tree even has tiny oranges growing on it. I'm not sure they'll turn into edible fruit, but we're hopeful. Both of us keep saying that the very first thing we should have done when we moved into this house was to plant fruit trees. If we did that we'd have an orchard to pick fruit from instead of tiny trees to just watch grow. Take my  advice, plant some fruit trees this spring. It's never too early and in 20 year's you'll be happy you did it.

Race Day

A lot of stuff happened last week and into the weekend. Some of it I'll try and cover this week, some of it I'll leave.
Saturday morning saw the whole group of us up early to go race. Not a car race this time, but a running race, two of them actually. My middle two kids participated in the kids mile. My son was hoping to top his third place finish of last year, but the field was stacked and it wasn't meant to be. He raced well, and finished well, and set a good time. For my younger daughter, it was her first real race. A mile. Quite a long way. She did great. A little walking but she pushed on through her difficulty and finished solidly mid pack. She was tired, but she was happy to have done so well.
My older daughter stepped up the the 5K this year, and my wife tagged along with her to help keep pace and make sure that she didn't get lost. They both ran well and finished several minutes quicker than they were expecting. My daughter now has a personal record. A number that is out there for her to beat. It's a good thing. My wife commented that it was the most enjoyable 5k that she's ever run, which means a lot coming from someone who has run as fast as she has.
On the way home we stopped and bought doughnuts. It's not something we do very often, but it somehow seemed like the right thing to do after the race. The kids are all planning their next events. My son says he's ready for the 5k. I think he wants to beat his sister. My daughter wants to actually train because she was running 5k last spring without stopping for practice. She knows that with a little more practice she can eliminate those walking breaks and take a couple of minutes off her time. Competition runs strong in my kids and it makes my wife proud. Doing good is one thing. Wanting to do better, and working for it, is something else completely.

Healthy Baby.......Raccoons

We have a compost bin out back. Well, not so much a bin as an old bathtub with a piece of plywood over it. We're classy. Anyway, something has been getting into it for a while. It's not a huge deal really. We put old food out there and something eats it. I don't really care if it's a raccoon or a possum or maggots or bacteria. As long as you don't cause trouble outside of the compost bin, we can all live in peace.
Two weeks ago I had to go out to my truck right at dusk to get something out of it and a quick glance over to the bin revealed a large raccoon holding a piece of watermelon rind. Last week somebody tipped over the garbage can and nibbled on some cupcake wrappers. Things were clearly getting out of hand and I had resolutely decided to trap and relocate our increasingly annoying friend.
Today I got home from the store and the dog was going a bit bonkers in the garage. I went to check it out thinking that she had the raccoon cornered and there was a fight brewing. She was just looking up at the high shelves in the rafters. I put the groceries away and went back to the garage to get her so she could come inside and calm down. That's when I heard it. Noises. Little squeaking chortles. Baby raccoons. At least two of them. Huge problem.
Any of you who have been reading along know what happened last year with the baby heron that fell out of it's nest. If you've been reading back farther you have heard about the raccoons and the crow and all of the other stuff that I helped raise as a kid. If I trapped the mother raccoon and was somehow left with the babies, I'd have to raise them. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
Clearly I cannot trap the mother raccoon now. She has to stay alive and healthy and hanging around for long enough to get the babies big enough so that I can trap them all. I need her to be a successful parent. If she fails as a parent it will be bad for my marriage. I can't let that happen.
On the shelf below the one that holds a stack of squeaking chortling tires, I have put a bowl of food. I'll fill that bowl pretty much every day for the next month. I will do everything I can to keep that mother raccoon healthy and around to care for her babies. If all goes well, I'll trap them all in a month or so and send them to live someplace more appropriate than my garage. Until then, healthy mom, healthy baby.....racoons.