Impure Thoughts

Mornings spent sweating in a sauna snuggled up to an overheated goat have cleansed my skin of all impurities.  I mean every pore has been flushed!  Getting down to the barn an hour early did nothing to help; the milking room was already an oven.  It's going to be a long summer.

Poppy has had an odd reaction to being shorn.  Normally quiet unless provoked (usually by a meal served late), she has become very vocal.  I think of it in terms of dulcet tones, but in reality she has a gutteral bellow.  Maybe she thinks of it as singing because there is no apparent reason.  She bellows in her stall, while ambling along up to the alfalfa corner or lying in the shade.  She lacks a volume control knob and bellows her one note full blast.  The goats think she's gone bonkers.  I think she's just happy to be rid of forty-plus pounds of overcoat and is perhaps a bit lightheaded.

I've been thinking evil thoughts about the doggone squirrel(s) who still digs in my potted plants on the deck, throwing dirt everywhere just out of pure meanness.  Maybe it is related to Thing who lives in the barn.  Sneaky, it now digs in pots at the end of the deck, out of my line of sight.

Bessie and I took the trash down to the big road this morning.  Glancing up the hill into the south pasture on the way back, I saw the heron standing in silhouette.  A beautiful start to the day.

Yesterday was, if possible, even hotter than the day before.  I only had to ask Bessie Anne once if she wanted to go in her pool and she ran to the door.  Such a funny little dog.  She steps into the pool daintily with her front feet only and waits for me to splash water over her shoulders and back.  Satisfied, she gets out, gives one shake and leaves her coat to drip dry (in the house, of course).  Having tested the waters once, later in the day she stood at the door a couple of times and barked, "Pool!"  Being well trained, I got up each time and took her out for a repeat dip.

The movie for the day seemed quite appropriate.  "Sunday Too Far Away" is a 1975 film about Australian sheep shearers in the 1950s.  "The Sundowners," with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, has long been a favorite of mine; also about sheep shearers in the Outback.  At any rate, it was another do-nothing day.