Daisy Dukes

Oh my, in looking for pics of the wild hogs on the SV for the Wild Hogs post, I came across this pic of the cowgirl in her SV ranch garden. Talk about a country bumpkin...

Yep, her grandkids are sooo going  to tease her about those Daisy Dukes.

Bonfire Heart...

Don't need that much...
just a spark...

 

full screen is better

 

Half Baked...

So, the cousin & her hubby are back from six months at their house in Cabo, a sil & bil are back from two weeks in Hawaii,  and so it goes with a bunch of others traveling to far exotic locations.

Me, I would like very much to be here

mostly because it has a hot spring pool, a tepee, and a cabin in a meadow, and a little bit because it comes with a chef. Yes, I said chef (you know like a cooker/baker person). 

I have gone to dinners in homes where they had a chef. (I did know how to dress in a discrete black sheath, with get-it-girl stilettos and minimal flash, I do know what all the plates, utensils, and glassware are for).  I only ever drank out of the finger bowl once, and I was very young at the time, although, never forgiven for that fopaux.

Anyway, back at the home, as I was pulling a loaf of burnt bread out of the oven yesterday morning, with dad scowling at me, the home helper laughing her head off, and a delivery person walking in the door, saying "Wow, your house smells... like really burnt toast!"  I thought a lot about that hot springs, the chef, and the chance for baker person classes...

Hog Wild...

Two of the ranches we lived on had wild hogs.

 Dad hunt'n hogs on the Cowman's home ranch

 One of those, the SV Ranch, had a lot of them, and the hogs were about as mean as they come. 

not my pic, but just like the SV wild hogs

 Years before a neighboring rancher had brought in some Russian boars and they "accidentally" broke out of the pens.  Hogs can go feral pretty darn quick and those boars did a bang up job of over populating the countryside. I'm sure the rancher that brought them thought wild hog hunts would help supplement his bottom line. But those damn hogs did way more dollar damage than was ever made by selling hunts. They tore up pastures, destroyed watering holes, ripped out fences, and killed fawns, lambs, and the occasional calf with abandon.

The Cowman was checking cattle a horseback one day, on a small oak flat up in the hills, when out of a grease wood thicket came an ol tusker. He charged the horse the Cowman was on. In the melee that ensued, the ol tusker slashed open high inside of the right hind leg of the Cowman's horse. The Cowman managed to get his saddle gun out and put a kill shot in the ol tusker.  He then ripped both sleeves off his shirt to bandage and tourniquet his horse.  After getting him bandaged he lead his horse off the mountain to home. It was the only way, if he had left him to go get a trailer, the horse would most likely have bled out before he could get back to him.  
The horse healed up after a long course of home doctoring.  I had to do some deep tissue cleaning and suturing on that cow horse. It never bothered me to stitch up a cow, but I hated having to do it to a horse.  They are so different in hide type, with cowhide you can be a crappy stitcher and get away with it, with horses fine sutures are called for.

The guys took a four wheeler up the mountain and cut the tusks out of the stinky ol boar. The Cowman showed the kids how the tusks worked to slice and dice. Included was a lesson on how you always needed to be packing, don't be caught out alone a foot, and where to aim so you got a fast kill, because your wellbeing  or your horse's could depend on it.

Between the rattlesnakes, (I killed 29 in my yard alone the last summer we lived there) and the wild hogs it was not my favorite ranch. There must have been a few redeeming features to that place, but they have been lost to my memory. 

Rising moon...

Those two weeks of spring we had are now over and we are rapidly approaching the days of  

  as it is supposed to start hitting the century mark on the thermometer this week.  

I should be in the mountains where I belong in summer. Some day I will be again, even if it is only as ashes on a hillside over looking a meadow at the headwaters of the Wood River.

Right now I'm looking forward to another kayaking adventure. This one a "full moon on the lake" trip, with one of the sister-in-laws and her church group.  I know, I know... me, a church group, full moon, what could happen right!  It will be fine, I'll wear my floating rosary beads...