Five Acres with a View

Afternoon skies

After going out to feed a few nights ago, Jack returned to the house to say: “Voracious little monsters.” I asked, “What, the horses?” “No.” he said, “the hummingbirds.”

A skunk is bad enough, but I had a real thrill this afternoon when I took the dogs up to the plateau for an afternoon walk. I was returning by the normal way, walking on a path I had walked along a hundred times, and I saw a glint out of the corner of my eye about the same time as I heard a furious rattling sound. The glint quickly resolved itself to a rattlesnake, coiled to strike, which seemed near enough to touch, but was actually probably at least six feet from me. I quickly grabbed hold of Dudley, while my heart tried to leave my ribcage. I got the lead back on Dudley while I called Lody to me. I wasn’t too concerned about Lody messing with the snake, but I was very concerned about Dudley. We’ve nursed three dogs through suspected snake bites, and I didn’t want to add Dudley to the roster. I think I will keep him on the lead for the next few walks.

Linux in the Library

A story in NewsForge writes about Linux in action: A public library’s success story in Howard Country, Maryland. I enjoyed this article not least because my grandmother was at one time a Howard County librarian. I still remember helping her by shelving books, which seemed to me a great opportunity to find new authors.

Hummingbird

I’ve been hearing, and occasionally seeing, hummingbirds for almost a week, but Jack just put a feeder up this morning. We had to buy a new one, since we couldn’t find all the components for the ones we used last year.

More Fractals

Shield

I’ve used “gThumb”:http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/ to load my fractals into a “small gallery.”:http://www.stardel.com/fractals/

Pikes Peak

Pikes Peak has more snow on it right now than it has all winter. Taken from “a back porch in North Colorado Springs.”:http://www.stardel.com/topaz/

Black and white

This morning, I was gathering up the feed buckets in the barn and saw a bit of movement out of the corner of my eye. A skunk had crawled out from under the pallet of stacked hay, about six feet away. Needless to say, I left the barn quickly. I usually worry about sickness when wildlife is so bold, but in my brief glimpse it looked sleek and healthy.

I hope it doesn’t feel threatened by any of the horses. It is bad enough deskunking a 110 pound dog.

Eye of the Galaxy

I’ve been cleaning house, doing a complete install of Fedora Core 2, Release 3, and playing with “gnofract4d.”:http://gnofract4d.sourceforge.net/ Of the three, playing with gnofrract4d, which produced this graphic, was the most fun, though installing Fedora wasn’t too bad either.

Dungeons and Dragons

BBC asks Whatever happened to Dungeons and Dragons? Jack and I started playing together not long after we started dating. July 4th, 1976, we spent the day with friends playing in Jack’s parents’ family room. During our brief fling with the phenomenon, a Washtington Post reporter wrote up a game for which Jack was gamesmaster. Somewhere in the files is the dungeon that I developed. I also found setting up the scenarios to be more fun than playing them. We started losing interest, since it took so much time, about the time high school kids started discovering it.

Mudlicious

More snow this morning. It had melted by noon. All this precipitation has turned the area around the barn into a bog. I have to step carefully so that my boots don’t get sucked off my feet. Smoke and Rags don’t seem to care, but Hap goes through it with a sort of weary disdain.

These are the wettest conditions I can recall for three or four years: not enough to bring the water table up, but should help push back extreme fire hazard for a month or two.

Spring Storm

Although it snowed for over a day, there wasn’t much accumulation because it melted due to the warm ground almost as quickly as it fell. The horses were inclined to be grumpy, but they will appreciate the grass later on. I did break down and put a blanket on Smoke: the icicles in the mane get me every time.