The Farm UpdateHighButtonShoePrimitive Gatherings mid August issueTHE SNAKE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!.....how it becomes Sunday when it was only Tuesday a few hours ago...is beyond me. The days of summer speed by. Today is a beautiful summer day. However since almost the first days of August, the days have the look and often feel of fall. The shadows are different, the air while still warm in the daytime is different. And the nights are very cool. Into the high 40's and low 50's, so sleeping is pleasant. I always dread the evenings of fall getting shorter in light, as I so love this time of the day. And early mornings, as well. This morning was spent, as it is most weekend mornings over on Beulah's front porch with steaming coffee cups and this morning a peach pie. At first it is just Beu and me. Then Mattie, Grandpa Ron, and eventually son Steve from down the road. Earlier yet, I had been thru the flower/herb garden watering and also the new grass we planted, as we haven't gotten the rain storms that have gone both north and south of us, but afforded us no rain. So it must come from me and my hose. And of course, early morning chores for both Beu and me is the feeding of the wild turkeys. Wild yes, but they expect their seed to be in their feeding places, so it is often a challenge to get it there before they do.This is a most calming event to start each day.Maxine just sent me a list of things we should do each day, which I will share in another email. One of the things on the list is to sit silently for 10 minutes each day and gaze upon something. While relating this to Beu this morning, we decided we had perhaps 'gazed' for about 4 people, timewise, already. From her front porch you look upon the new grass, and the full view of my flower garden. This morning, we watched the full arch of the water going back and forth, while drinking a pot of coffee. Ah, summer. Beats the heck out of winters ice and cold anytime!Ronnie continues with the building of the shed that will house the winters wood supply for our new outside furnace. All too soon, we will be splitting the wood stacked in the barn yard and putting it in that shed. Fall often comes to northern Michigan early and catches one unprepared. I am never prepared for fall. It's like if I deny its coming, it won't. Ronnie stacks wood like an artist. Each piece is put in place just so. My methods, of course, greatly differ from his. But through the years, I have come to appreciate HIS method, and while I am not as particular about it as he is, I am doing better. The one year, when he had hurt his back and I had to do all the fall farm chores myself, he must have cringed at the thoughts of me stacking all the wood myself. But as I was the ONLY one who could do it, he said little. And I tried hard to do it his way. So this year, the farmhouse will be once again heated with wood, not fuel oil, as it was for many years, but hasn't been for almost 20 years. My old wood floors shouldn't be so cold and perhaps I won't have to wear long underwear all winter. I do admit however that wasn't so bad. The underwear that is. The cold floors I could have done without. A small price to pay, I guess, for having these wonderful old wood floors that I love so much.Friday, www.theprimitivegathering.com mid August issue was released. We are showing fall drieds and a great engraved picture of James A Garfield in antique original frame. Our link is listed below, but check out all the talented artists on this wonderful host site. Miss Elspeth (Pineberry Lane) has patterns listed on the 1st of the month. And without going to check, I believe Bittersweet Susan has offerings there too. Both are most talented artists and worth your time to check out.We have fall items listed on LemonPoppySeeds. Check the link below for those. I don't know how much I will be making this fall. My folks continue to need my time. Dad will not be having surgery however.Our sale went good, inspite of heavy rain on Saturday. We opted not to have a tent and had things outside, so you could have expected that. Murphy's Law. I will keep things in the polebarn for a few more weeks and perhaps have another sale in September. Or not. May just move things back to the other barn. They will NOT come back into the basement! And I especially want to thank those of you who came to the sale. It was so good to see you, and especially to meet first time, Lizza, who drove all the way from Indiana.Thursday of this past week, I spent some time digging the cement droppings out of the lawn where the cement truck 'dripped' the entire lawn as he made his way out to the road with that faulty hydraulic hose. I wondered at the time how some persnickety home owner would have dealt with cement droppings 5 inches wide over their yard. But it wasn't too difficult to get it all picked up. Then I had to rake the smallest bits up and used a shovel to get the rest of it into a big pail. Putting the shovel back into the barn, I continued to the house with the rake, in my barefeet and shorts (NOT my arctic packs that are put away...), across the pavers that come straight into the front porch, intending to move the piece of white picket fence that has leaned against the porch all spring and summer and never got the leaves and debris cleaned from behind it. I am now off the pavers only inches from the fence to pick up, still carrying my rake, when I notice right next to the fence, and more accurately ME, the snake. NOT Fritz the Anaconda, but the Fritz-ling, I am thinking. Actually thinking was not exactly what I was doing. He is there, with his head up about 4-5 inches looking right at me. I am thinking YEGADS, there is that (beep-beep) snake, I am barefoot, I have no ax, hatchet, hoe, my preferred method of murder of snake..the riding lawn mower, and he is only inches away from me. He doesn't move but continues to keep his head up watching me. I don't scream (yet), but feel my blood pressure jump about 60 degrees, and quickly and I do mean quickly, devise my plan of attack. I am NOT going to let this snake get away. He will die! Remember me telling you countless times of my plan A quickly going to plan Q. Un-huh. Same Plan. As Ron isn't too keen on my use of the ax to murder off Fritz or Fritz-ling ( I believe Fritz-ling to be sired by Fritz, as they look the same except Fritz the Second is smaller...as far as Anacondas go) because Ron fears I will probably chop my foot off. Which is probably a safe guess. So I run into the house and grab the .22. Shooting snakes requires some degree of difficulty, as they aren't too wide (even anacondas!) and in my state of almost diarrhea, I quickly grabbed the old chair on the porch to steady my aim. He is too close for the scope to pick up clearly. But I focus in as best I can, and pull the trigger. He starts away from the porch into the lawn, I shoot 4 more times, this time at a moving target. I think at least one shell got him as he arches up, and I almost throw up. Then he turns and heads INTO my flower garden right next to the porch. I have no time to reload. So I run to the barn and get a shovel (which I later learn is Ron's best shovel... and one not to be used for snake removal..) and of course I cannot find Fritz-ling who has moved into the flowers. I tunk all my stones in there with Ron's good shovel, bang on the porch and stand there still barefooted, in ONE big goose bump, barely breathing. I run back in, grab the phone, and come back out to watch and call Ron. Breathlessly telling him what I am doing, he listens, gives me his snakes are good spiel, and I remind him that IF he comes home and finds me dead on the ground of heart attack OR snake bitten body, it is HIS fault. Normally the sound of 5 shots going off would bring son Steve up from his house. Not. I scream, MATTIE, (turncoat grandson who used to be my ally in the snake removal quest, until his grandfather converted him to 'the other side'). Does he come running over to the screams of his grandmother? Not. I calm down some, as calm as I can be with a snake somewhere in the forget me nots leaves that may or may not be there. I pace back and forth with my shovel trying to see him. Finally I do. He is up against the house foundation and all I see is the long body and tail portion of him. THEN, I see his head and his eye under a green leaf. He is looking at me. So to disrupt his view of me, I move over some. We stay in this position, both of us for a time. Then I decide to come in the house and get the pellet gun. Again the scope won't bring him in clearly because he is too close. YEGADS! But I shoot several times into what I think is the thickest part of his body. This seems to irritate him and he turns and staying close to the foundation starts coming toward me and IF he gets to the front porch, there are holes where he can get UNDER my porch and live there forever, which I know will give me chronic diarrhea. So to avert that thought, I plunge Ron's GOOD shovel, into the foundation and the snake. THIS he doesn't like at all and after several lunges at him, he balls himself up, but was out far enough in my flowers to whack him good with the shovel, which I proceeded to do countless times. Then I turned the shovel on edge like my ax would be and pulmetted him several more time. He is now slowing down good. Decimating my flowers, and now barely breathing myself, I drag him out with the shovel and whack him a few more times. But to be sure, I shot him in the head. I called Ron. His first words, not hello?, but 'you got him, didn't you', and reminds me now that I will have to kill all the bugs the snake would have eaten myself.I run over to Beu's to tell the kids. They scurry over, with me recounting the events in babbled sentences and much arm motions, and we come up upon the mangled snake. Matt, turncoat grandson, touches him while Sarah and me are in one big revulsion, and the tail continues to move. He can NOT possibly still be alive! I race in to get my tape measure. Matt straightens Fritz II out, which is somewhat difficult as he has some kinks now from his injuries, and I measure him at 31 inches. Ron continues to tell me he is just a 10 inch garder snake. Probably a garder snake, I suppose. His belly is sage green. He is black, with yellow stripes running down both sides.After watching him for a while, and my goose bumps dissipating, my breathing becoming more regular, I come into the house. But checked him a while later to make sure he is still there. (How far do you think he might go, in that condition? one might wonder.He is, BUT he is no longer straight. The last about 10 inches of his tail is now all curled up.SO, I still have Fritz the Anaconda to murder off, and when he gets word of my snake caper as Ron's calls it, he probably will be waiting for me. As for me, I will have to start traveling the farm with a shovel in tow. It is a serious hindrance to have to walk around with a leather tool belt full of snake removal tools! But NOT Ron's good shovel. I have been forbidden to use that.One last thing about porches. I read the other day, a house without a front porch is like a man with only one eyebrow. Or something like that... I will have to go back and reread that... Anyway, I took it to mean that his two eyebrows were combined into one. Hum..somehow it was more meaningful when I read it.Thanks for asking to be a part of our farm and life.Should you not, merely reply with remove.in fond regard, Tilda..one snake to go.rosemary grower and now rue,planning a trip to Kentuckysavouring the last of summer