Monthly Archives: April 2011

April 15, 2011 · 6:05 pm

Fire near Possum Kingdom Lake 15 APR 11

Smoke from Possum Kingdom Lake fire, MM 373, I-20, Mingus, Texas

Today is a bad day, a tragic day for our area in west-central Texas.  A firefighter has been killed in fighting a fire near Gorman, Texas, about thirty-five miles west of us.

Our place is not in danger from the uncontrolled fires.  Last Sunday we had nine-tenths of an inch of rain so there has been some moisture about the grass and trees.  Not so north and west of us a few miles.  I have the F-250 at the ready to hitch the horse trailer and take our livestock out of the area.  In DeLeon, Texas, close to Gorman where the fire took the life of the firefighter, they have set up large stock pens for cattle, sheep and horses to be maintained.  Local feed stores, farmers and ranchers have donated hay.

If necessary, I will drive to the Equine Sports Medicine and Surgery area for Star to be stabled.

There are at least four fires in the immediate area north and west of us.  Today we have had the highest sustained wind for the year at about 34 m.p.h. and gusts over 55 m.p.h.  The Texas Highway Patrol has closed State Highway north of Strawn, Texas, a nearby village to us.

State Highway 16 closed by Texas Highway Patrol.

I had to run an errand to Mingus Quick Stop and I took these photographs of the sky and smoke.  The fire is approximately sixty miles away from where I took these pictures.  The smell is pungent and eyes burn.  My wife, Brenda, drove to Abilene this afternoon to attend a conference and fires were also breaking out west of Cisco.  Even within the pickup, she reported burning eyes from the smoke.

Facing northeast, MM 374, I-20, Possum Kingdom Fire, Mingus, Texas

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April 13, 2011 · 1:35 pm

Canada! Watch out for Lonespurs Shining Badger!

 

Lonespurs Shining Badger born April 11, 2011, Calgary, Alberta.

Sweet Hija foaled a colt, Lonespurs Shining Badger, on April 11, 2011.  Kim Elliott, the owner of Sweet Hija, has selected the paper name for the colt:  Lonespurs, the name of their ranch near Calgary where Legends of the Fall and Open Range were filmed; Shining, after the sire Shiners Lena Doc; and Badger, after the King Ranch bloodline of Sweet Hija.

Kim said that Sweet Hija was as big as Mac Truck before she foaled and that she had the foal all by herself, no problem.  That’s one of the reasons we bought Sweet Hija in 2003.  She was strong and bred for ranch work and could take care of things quickly.

I thought that all my tears had been shed about Sweet Hija, but Brenda and I gave a few more tears to the good earth when we learned of Hija and Highway 101, the barn name for the little colt named, Lonespurs Shining Badger.

Kim Elliott and her family — I talked to them on the phone — are so very proud of Hija and Highway 101 that I think (don’t know for sure) they will keep Highway 101 intact and have him sire a whole new bloodline in Canada.  We’ll see if my hunch is correct.

In any case, watch out, Canada, for this little man!

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Notes:

Kim Elliott and her family operate and own Elliott Equine Transport, the premier horse transport for North America.  Highway 101, Kim told me, is the coastal highway they travel between Canada and Mexico and the place in between and a fitting name for the little colt.

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April 11, 2011 · 5:59 pm

Prairie Sagebrush Awards 2011 — preview

I will be giving the second Prairie Sagebrush Award to my blogroll friends in a few weeks.  It is the second year of recognizing fine creations on the blogosphere.

Read last year’s award-winning posts: Prairie Sagebrush Award 2010.

I select a post, photograph or artwork that has been composed in the last year, say, from June 2010 to May 2011.  It’s a celebration of a year of my blogging.

There’s no first, second or third.  I select the post, photograph or artwork that was meaningful to me and the universe and create a ONE POST ANTHOLOGY of all the fine work created.  It’s a long post, but well worth bookmarking.

For every comment made on the ANTHOLOGY POST for Prairie Sagebrush Award 2011, I will donate one buck to a wildlife corridor in Texas or New Mexico (limit is $500).  Last year I donated thirty-five dollars.

I’ll be posting a couple of my favorite posts from my blogroll before the big revelation on June 1, 2011 — if not before.

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April 10, 2011 · 6:32 pm

Wild flowers of a dry Texas Spring day

[Please note that when this post was first published yesterday, April 10, 2010, the Silverleaf nightshade was misidentified as a Dayflower.  The corrections have been made in the caption of the flower and plant and the notes contain a warning about the use of the Silverleaf nightshade.]

At 9:59 a.m. I drove down to the barn and parked the F-150.  Taking my camera and walking carefully, within the next hour I traced a familiar path from the barn thorough the corrals, into the arena pasture and into the grove.  I walked along the edge of Salt Creek and photographed these wild flowers of our dry Texas Spring.  Salt Creek is an intermittent-running creek, but there are pools of water and tracks abound.   The trees are green and lush about the creek and grass, despite the drought, remains verdant.

I picked a blossom of wild verbena in the main pasture and gently pressed it.  The fragrance flew about my face and I inhaled deeply.  Only a partial blossom I pressed, but it nonetheless imparted its scent that remained for minutes, not seconds, as I walked back up to the barn.  Beside the kitchen sink, we have liquid verbena soap, reminding me of the wild as I wash my hands, arms and face.

* * *

My uncle Floyd McRorey used to come in from the field and wash his hands in the kitchen sink with hard Lava soap as Aunt Lennie prepared a meal.  I never saw Aunt Lennie wash the dinner dishes.  She helped dry, but never washed the dinner dishes.  Uncle Floyd always washed the dinner dishes.

* * *

All of the following photographs may be enlarged with a click of your mouse.


Notes:

The scientific nomenclature for each plant may be incorrect as there are a broad range of varieties.  I refer to as many as four books and two databases to identify the plant, but I may be in error, so please verify my identification.

The Silverleaf nightshade is all toxic.  Medicinal: Used for rattlesnake bite – root chewed by medicine man, who then sucks on the wound to remove venom, then more root is chewed and applied to swollen area. (Steiner) Southwestern Native Americans used the crushed berries to curdle milk in making cheese, and the berries have also been used in various preparations for treating sore throat and toothache (Lady Bird Wildflower Center Plant Database).

Please see the link for Silverleaf nightshade:

Lady Bird Johnson Native Plant Database Silverleaf nightshade.

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April 3, 2011 · 8:34 am

Spring with Effie and Gywn

 

Effie Vernon Morris Parks (1900-1966)

I have written about my grandmother, Effie Parks, many times on the blog.  Here is a photograph of her in 1919, near Bend, Texas.  She cooked for chuck wagons on several ranches along with her husband, Jake, who managed cattle on horseback.  During the Great Depression, she sewed for the Works Progress Administration.  In her last years, she worked as a telephone operator in Lometa and Bend, Texas.  She taught me the rudiments of dominoes, playing guitar and hitting a baseball.  She and her husband were married by a parson in an onion field near the Colorado River in central Texas.  In her will, she divided her property among her two children and me.

Gywn Matthews Hollingshead (1920-2003)

This is my mother, Gywn.  This photograph was taken about 1938 when she was living with her mother, Effie, at Bend, Texas.  She married my father, Jack, in 1942, shortly before he volunteered to become a parachutist with the 506th P.I.R.  He was a member of Easy Company, made famous by Stephen Ambrose and Tom Hanks.  Gywn worked for over thirty years for the Southwestern States Telephone Company and General Telephone.  She helped pay for my college education and gave Brenda and me the money for a down payment for a $35,000 house in Mingus, Texas in 2000.  She would come to Mingus and visit us, sitting in the kitchen and looking out on the vineyard I had planted.  She always had a quote of some sort to throw out for the occasion.  One I remember is: Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.  She was Irish mainly, and proud of it.

I have posted these photographs and short commentary of Effie and Gywn because it is April and Spring is upon us and I never can go through this month without thinking of how Effie and Gywn and I traveled the backroads to Bend, Texas, and San Saba to visit relatives at Easter.  The flowers of April and May emitted the most beautiful perfumes imaginable in nature.  They talked quietly about plants and cattle and loved ones that we saw and loved ones that had departed.  I sat in the back seat of the car and listened to their talk and inhaled the scent of bluebonnets and paintbrushes all around.

Today, Brenda and I can travel the same road to Bend, Texas, and flowers spring up again.  We can go down that road and crisscross the same roads I traveled as a boy with Effie and Gywn.

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April 2, 2011 · 6:52 am

Rabies and Star

Star Bars Moore

In the city, look out for the bus.  In the country, what doesn’t sting or bite you will stick you — wasps, mosquitoes, mesquite thorns or worse.  Still, I had rather be out in the country and take my chances.

Rabies in horses is rare, but on the Bryant place, across the fence to the south of us, two horses were put down because one of them had a full-blown case of rabies.  Its companion horse had not displayed rabies symptoms, but Erath County authorities ordered it killed as it had no rabies vaccination documentation.  One was euthanized Thursday, March 24, and the other unfortunate horse this Thursday, March 31.  The first horse exhibited rabies symptoms and the vet took tissue samples that confirmed the disease.  The Bryants are having to take rabies shots since they were in close contact with the horse.

My paint gelding, Star, had been staying in the front pastures away from the Bryant place until last Sunday, March 27.  For two days, Star had infrequent contact with the second horse over the fence that had been killed.  Since rabies can be transmitted via mucous interchange, it is a very serious situation for Star.

Star had been inoculated against rabies in 2009, and last week before the contact with the Bryant horse he had been given his rabies shot for 2011.  Our veterinarian, Dr. Skeet Gibson of Equine Sports Medicine and Surgery, Weatherford, says the 2011 inoculation has not gone into full effect, and the 2009 inoculation begins to diminish in effectiveness after a year-and-a-half.  But since Star had no contact with the rabid horse — only the companion horse that had been killed — the chances were slim that any transmission had taken place.

Nonetheless, the vet said to isolate Star for two weeks and minimize my contact with his muzzle and mucous discharges, look for symptoms (not eating, behavior changes, etc.) and contact my personal physician for advice.

I called our personal physician immediately and neither I nor Brenda will be required to take rabies shots unless Star is rabid.  Star will probably be okay, but isolation and observation is imperative.

And just how did I find out about this whole issue of rabies next door?  My neighbors to the east that have horses called me Thursday, March 31, to inform me of the euthanizing, and they have no land contiguous with the Bryants!  They called to alert me as a fellow horseman.  Neither the Bryants nor the Erath County authorities had contacted me.  Had I been informed last week, I would not have allowed Star to go to the far pasture — Pecan Tree Pasture.  As it is now, we are having to take measures to determine disease contact that may, in the end, be fatal to Star, although I repeat it is doubtful.

Within an hour after the Halls called me and I had visited with the Bryants to find out the facts, I went across the county road to inform a fellow horseman of the situation.  In the country, we must work together.  I choose to do so.

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