sockses

Nekkid dog has some paw pad irritation, so to distract her from licking at it loudly all night while gnawing it raw... socks! On both feet! Keeps her symmetry intact. Symmetry is important when it's all you have left. Dignity? Might be back in another week or so.

Big puppy is sad that he's not getting as much attention. So we cleaned his ears and that made him sad that he was getting the attention. Poor puppies. Nauga HATES the antiseptic spray.

sights of progress

Our guest Chihuahua for a few weeks: The Little. 

She's not too sure about the big puppy or the middle puppy, but she does like the back of the couch and the foot of the bed. Also, walks. Lots of walks. She gets carried for the rocky stretches though.

Left, button bush. Right, New Mexican olive.

Two mystery shrubs and a huisache, a barely visible New Mexican olive and even less visible flame acanthus.

Salvia greggii, rosemary, Salvia greggii, more rosemary.

Token bathroom shot for brainstorming. I really need to post 'before' photos of the house.
'After' shots may take a while!

Aaaand the problem bathroom. Surround is pretty much already dismantled. Not pretty.

House number, take one.
(Ingredients: found board - aged roadkill of a plank, several nails removed. Also, found and gifted horse and mule shoes. Gifted red spray paint. New white spray paint. Several new nails. Upturned pots via gifted plants, now in ground.)

House number, take two. (Chairs and table are dumpster rescues and a freecycle find.)

Not sure which I like better. Second version leaves nothing to the imagination!

Many, many more photos of plants yet to come - the only ones still in pots are the pomegranate (no idea where it should go), soapberry (ditto, but it has some time in the pot yet), mystery acanthus, one Salvia greggii, one Arizona ash, and one chokecherry that needs to be relocated.

Things already in the ground:

flame acanthus (2)

Arizona ash (1)

New Mexico olive (2)

Salvia pentstemmenoides (1)

Salvia greggii (1)

canyon senna (1)

scarlet bouvardia (1)

button bush (1)

Salvia regala (2)

Also need to get photos of various modifications around the house - some of our curtains (spider hiders) have been freed from their mop handles and are on REAL curtain rods, most of our wall art is actually properly hung, and so far most* of our plants are still alive. Triumphs, they are many.

Most triumphant moment? Realizing that 'ant traps' on hummingbird feeders can easily translate to an 'ant trap' around a trash can. Not sure how to minimize the space impact of a trash can sitting in a pan of water though... oh well. Redneck engineering at its finest!

Non-Brewster summer adventures

This is by no means a comprehensive overview of some of the madness, but...

Hey, check it - when you go to replace a tub faucet and the whole PIPE twists... that's a bad thing.

And a photo of Nauga that *almost* renders here semi-photogenic:

My life mink, at the Lake Waco Wetlands:

End-of-life dragonfly experiencing the kiss-of-death (hug-of-death?) from a robber fly, also at the Lake Waco Wetlands (not sure of ID on the ode, leaning female Eastern Pondhawk though).

I was not able to get a photo of the looong-legged robber fly that was a bright yellowish orange that was clearly a wasp mimic; at least two were slowly flying around, taunting me. One robber fly that did cooperate (but not for me) in College Station was a house fly mimic. Sneaky!

Speaking of College Station: the two folks in the center, Dr. Sharman Hoppes and Dr. Ian Tizard, are most wonderful people. I'm sure the rest of them are as well, else they'd not be doing the ground breaking for the new avian building at Texas A&M! It was an excellent crowd, with folks from AFA, NPRPF, and the Wildlife Rehab & Education Center - giant family reunion for me!

Oh, and home: the grape vine is huge, but the avocado tree (hulking beast on the left) is but a mere shell of what it used to be. A glorious, gorgeous, strong, vibrant shell of what it used to be. It once topped the roof line, but Hurricane Ike did a number on it - what you see there is too big for me to wrap my hands around (2-3 years of growth?!) but was a new shoot after it was cut back to the roots.

Excellent progress in 20 short years of work, my delicious little avocado friend. 

Mom and Sib. Aww.

Mom and Self. Aww. Think she was talking, whoops.

Base of avocado (2 of 3 pictured).

Semi-annual Update

The 2012 review is up at Big Bend Nature.com and that means we're off the hook for more bird/bug updates for this post... right? Guess that leaves the pithy, lifey stuff...

Jan - hey, rare birds ARE life to us; Nutting's Flycatcher was some Herculean feat of masochism in spite of being a life bird for both of us. The bird called twice in something like two hours of our first observation and the call is what we HAD to record for confirmation. No pressure. Awesome bird. Great folks who chased it, as well. Kind of a who's who of birders, or an awkward family reunion.

Feb-May were somewhat nondescript, except when May rolled around we were both laid off from our part time jobs (same place - so there went our 20 hr/week gig, roughly 1/2 of our income, on 5 minutes notice... at the same time I lost my tutoring position due to graduation), but I guess at least we don't have to work at the checkpoint anymore! That was at the beginning of the week of finals and graduation. Not cool. I could have been studying!

Layoffs aside, May was wonderful; Matt's folks came out for my graduation and in the time-honored tradition of shirking rituals, I ate at CowDog instead of walking for graduation. Not quite a trip to the RGV (high school graduation), but CowDog with the best in-laws ever? Remarkably wonderful. We even introduced them to a black-tailed rattlesnake in the Chisos Basin! They stayed at Eve's Garden... not that we blogged their breakfast or anything. Ok, we did.

June saw a bit of travel; Matt held down the fort while I went to California for a wedding - not just any wedding, but that of a former solar car competitor turned bff/dear friend. While out there, I also managed to meet that 'new' nephew of mine who was already a year old! Whoops. I'm a bad aunt. Other than seeing a few birds during the wedding ceremony, no birding was done - but plenty of friends seen/met/stayed with in the process. Also, June was crafty... because I made a skirt into a dress for the wedding.

July was an exhausting/exhilarating mix of anticipation and phone-tag during the crunch time of pre-festival madness; Matt scouted and I wrangled field trip leaders and the most awesome celebrities ever, but between the two of us and some seriously awesome trip leaders, I'd say ~22 people at a first year birding festival with Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman is pretty much a success.

Following the festival, we took a week of down time and took the small dog to Santa Fe to meet her cousin. It was great to see the long-lost relatives (we see them maybe every 2-3 years or so). The fall turned into a busy mix of shipping Matt off to the AZ/CA border for some field work and I settled into my new job at Pitaya Verde.

The shift to winter was a mix of job shuffling again; Matt focused on guiding and contract work, I put my name in the hat for a librarian position. After Thanksgiving - early December for anyone keeping track - a neighbor told us about a house with a "for sale by owner" sign out front... and we've been throwing ourselves into it, full force, since then. We do enjoy the little house of termites, but the Double Bacon, as much as we love it, is sometimes just a bit too much. There's no closing date yet, but we're up to our ears in surveys, inspections, roof quotes and generic madness. Add the new job to the existing job and the move across town seems like quite a challenge. It's a pretty hefty move: all the way from the NE side to the SW side. A whopping 17 blocks... that's clear across town, as the maximum would have been 22 blocks if we'd lived any further on the NE side!

So please bear with us through blog silence as we tackle the latest batch of challenges: we're still here and our PO box won't change (434), but we're swamped with "productive" things!

Anakin, Matt, Nauga and Heidi - Jan 2013, photo by Tom Lehr

Snow in Marathon!

Also, we're at 33233 page views for this blog, says Google. But more importantly, a real family photo! Anakin is wearing his fancy harness and new collar (not that you can see it under all that fur!) and Matt is wearing a camo scarf (that's why you can't see it) knit by Kindli. Nauga is wearing her thrift-store onesie under her windbreaker and harness, and I'm sporting the bright orange Kindli-knit scarf. Wonder what Anakin found so interesting...

Thanks for being an awsome neighbor, Tom, sorry to have hauled you into the cold from your cozy afternoon of rest and warmth!

...and I just realized that we're posed the exact same way. Hrmph. At least we're not accidentally wearing the same thing!

Adventures with Nauga

Back story: Nauga was adopted in March of 2011. At the time, she had a litter of four pups and the shelter, Grand Companions, had asked if we wanted a puppy. We do not do puppies. But having a soft spot for nekkid dogs, we came home with the mother of the batch. Ming is now Nauga. Lo, I think, was the father (he looked like Naug, but black with a white mohawk). Pups were Han, Leia, Chewy and Yoda. Three fuzzy, one nekkid.

Fast forward to about a month ago. Grand Companions called to ask if we knew anyone who would want Leia. Leia? Leia. The pup, now somewhere around two years old, ended up coming back to the shelter.

Here's the photo they circulated:

 So after a friend in Kingsville (Katherine) expressed interest and a bit of "meet the granddog" ensued (our dog's offspring is our granddog, no?) ... and eventually a meeting was coordinated. On Monday afternoon, Leia was delivered to Alpine from Fort Davis. Tuesday morning - original RoadTrip day - Leia was brought from Alpine to Marathon by a friend (Lauren!). Due to technical difficulties (dead car battery), the date was pushed back one day.

Anakin is a house pup, all 90+ lbs of him. He has three beds, a few gallons of drinkable water, a window a/c unit and bright or dark rooms in the house that are free for the napping. Nauga, when unsupervised, has a kennel. It's cushy, sure, and the a/c is there... but it's just not comfy or well watered for an all-day affair. 

Kennel in the back seat, harness in the front seat - Leia rested comfortably while Nauga kept an eye on the passing scenery.  Below, stretching their legs at the park in Uvalde - wish I had a better angle; Leia has loooong legs!

The video below is shortly after Nauga saw (and ignored) her 'life' Great Kiskadee in Del Rio after Leia was safely transferred. Also, since Leia doesn't really work as a name, Katherine is taking suggestions!

More photos may eventually follow - chaos on the porch and such, but for now, we're recovering from a long day yesterday!

Annual Family Update

Dear Family and Friends,

We find ourselves in the midst of the holiday madness yet again, unprepared for the seasonal festivities and up to our ears in life. This year has been another one of transition, though we're still in Marathon and we're still juggling employment - that much remains the same. Thankfully our town was spared the wildfires that so much of our region was scorched with, but we're all in this drought together. If you feel the urge, y'all can even hear our local NPR segment on how the drought impacted birds (or our own blog entry about it).

Here's a boquet of Scarlet Musk Flower (Nyctaginia capitata, also called Devil's Boquet!) in the yard:















New in our life this year is a nearly hairless mammal who has brought an immense amount of joy to our lives... Anakin isn't always so sure about her, but he's the Original Puppy and she steals his toys. Nauga (naw-gah) was matched to us via Grand Companions shelter in Fort Davis* - she's half Chinese hairless, half Mexican hairless, and looks entirely Chupacabra (mythological goat-sucker vampire dog-lizard beast thing).

See?



* Quick note about Grand Companions:
They are AMAZING. They don't have
rows of kennels so much as rows of offices
and each office houses a person and some
pups so the critters (and people) are well
socialized, people and house friendly, and
generally quite pleasant to be around!




In honor of Kindli's candid family photos, we bring you a few of the attempts made in the last few weeks to get the pups looking cooperative:















Anakin generally likes the camera, but Nauga's photogenic side is sneaky.



















Also new to this year's update - our porch is now a *real* porch!



















While we're at it, we should mention our fantastic pup-watchers, without whom we'd never have made it down to south Texas for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival or up to Missouri for Thanksgiving. Dione and Gerald and their flock of 2 kids, 2 cats, 1 dog and 1 turtle are to thank for keeping Anakin well entertained in our absence - he LOVES staying with them! As for Nauga, she gets pampered by our friend Kathy and her daughter (our blacklighting companion!) and their flock of poodle and people and much fun is had by all. Below is Anakin playing with Star, photo by Miracle Tedrick (sorry, no pictures of Nauga's escapades!)
















Finally, as this year winds down, there's a bit of schooling to report: 32 hours at Sul Ross Sate University means that in 12 more hours there will be a BA of "General Studies" on the wall. (Three schools and 170 hours later...) Highlights thus far have been two summer sessions at slight overload - Entomology being the Most Amazing Experience Ever, in spite of a drought year, and a fall schedule that included tutoring English, reading and writing. Work gems included a 7 hr shift in which over 30 papers were edited. Students still don't understand deadlines!

The Sul Ross longhorn, all dressed up for homecoming:















Also included in 2011 adventures: learning to crochet, turning t-shirts into dresses, trying our hand at raising Hubbard's Small Silkmoth caterpillars (conclusion: don't) and a lot of really, really good local birding. For that, we've been maintaining a second blog: Big Bend Birds & Nature.

Happy Halloween!

From our pack to yours...




























The onesie was too big to fit Anakin, so hopefully these uh, lovely, pictures of Nauga will suffice!

general update

Matt has been wrangled into a super-awesome opportunity to represent the Gage Hotel/Gage Gardens at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival! We'll both be attending and are very much looking forward to being back in the RGV - plenty of friends we've not seen in years, plenty of birders who haven't been to the Big Bend region and definitely a good opportunity to get caught up on all of the above. Long time, no travel! And this will be right before Thanksgiving, which is always in Missouri.

Other than surviving midterms, there's not too much to report on the academic front; GPA is better than anticipated and classes for the winter mini-mester have been determined. Spring might actually be less hectic (hah!)

And in other news: Nauga is a happy puppy.

t-shirt dress

I'm not sure if the tye-dye t-shirt skirt(s) ever made the blog, but just for amusement's sake, here's the latest project: Matt's old t-shirt = Heidi's new dress
(*All photos were taken after the dress made it to a wearable state!)

Sage green shirt, size XL, inside out. Sleeves cut off.

Closeup of random sewing to trim the sides a bit - yes, there's a gap at the bottom because pleats are challenging and a pocket may be added eventually. Hand-cranked lines, there. On both sides. All sides, really. Because it's either that, or needle and thread without the machine! Another disclaimer: it's darn hard to talk on the phone and sew straight lines anyway, much less intentionally curved ones!

The neck line! One super-long crocheted strand of pale cream colored yarn was double-threaded as a drawstring neckline (only slightly adjustable, really) and the shoulder seams were cut as well. This is when the front of the shirt turns into the back of the shirt and the back of the shirt makes for a much better neckline!

So here's the front of the shirt, which is now the back of the dress:

And here's the back of the shirt, which is now the front of the dress:

And the results?

...not bad for only one shirt and two revisions!

Post is also tagged 'pets' because their supervision and cooperative posing made the project all the more amusing. Neither critter was harmed in the process! No caterpillars, either - but that's for another post.

"furniture"

Owning very little furniture is handy for being mobile, but at times there are situations in which furniture ceases to be versatile. A bed, for example, is a bit cumbersome to move out to the porch to sit and watch the world go by. Last summer's field work did have two folding chairs that, unfortunately, were not made to last. In spite of the seat falling through on one and the arm/seat support breaking on the other (duct-taped and masterfully zip-tied), we nursed them both through a full year of use. So instead of routinely hauling the heavy, suitable-for-an-office rolling chair outside, it was time to say farewell to the less-intact of the folding chairs and welcome a dumpster-diving treasure to the porch. A seatless, aluminum folding chair. Scrap canvas was originally slated for the seat, but somehow procrastination kicked in and that never happened. Scrap 2x4s were on hand, however.

Aluminum frame + scrap wood = chair

...and then there's the whole issue of having only one functioning porch chair. The dog bed had been sitting on a pallet (to avoid gathering dirt, dust and fur on the concrete), but only the small dog used it. Another pallet was added for height with hopes that, small dog aside, some day it might turn into a couch. Finally, 6 cuts with a borrowed saw later... there were 4 pieces of pallet. Stack 3 and add some scrap 2x4s to prop up the 4th?

...just add a blanket to sit on, and voila! Big pup has his bed back (albeit on the ground), and small dog has one piece of furniture she's allowed to be on.

Busy, busy summer

As the title implies, we're up to our ears in... life. Between wrangling pups, pup-sitting for others, work, school, work and more work, we've managed to get a few photos worth sharing:

Family portrait: Matt, Nauga, Heidi and Anakin. Awww.

A Black Witch moth on the back wall while blacklighting.

The Chihuahua named Little.

Pepsis wasp. Oh yes, there's an Entomology class afoot this summer!

Recent bug life: Lyside Sulphur, Eyed Elater and an Opuntia Beetle (the 'longhorn')

The reason you don't go the speed limit out here. Ever. This was taken at 6:40 - long before dusk!

...and, FINALLY, our first dung beetles of the season. It only took until mid July to see them at Post Park. Still no sign of them in town. Maybe after a few real rains?