What is it with August?

I was in the pasture, putting hoses out to water pecan trees, both young and old.

Something is out there devastating our pecan crop. We're finding all kinds of green pecans on the ground.
Whole ones, ones with just a bite taken out, and some that have been obviously eaten out and are just little pieces.
Hubby is pretty sure they are squirrels, but green pecans?
It's really annoying. We're afraid we won't have a crop this year. :-(
Any ideas for what to do, other thank squirrel stew?

Back to the hoses. I had just set a sprinkler in an area where we have 3 young pecan trees and a couple of older ones.
I was walking back to the mower when I gave a low scream. You know, "Ah!", and jumped over.....
a SNAKE IN THE GRASS!



I think it was about 2 and a half to 3 feet long. Scared the bejeezus out of me, I'll tell you.

I took a look at it. Closer than I should have. It seemed.... dry? Like it was getting ready to molt, maybe. I thought it might be dead. I took this picture with my phone. I stupidly pushed at its tail with my shoe. It didn't move.
Lucky me.
Anyway, I'll tell you the same as I told my hubby. That was the end of my bravery. No, I did not take more pictures, and no, I did not look for the head.
First a stubborn gator, and now a snake.

I had a feeling, and he confirmed, that it was probably a cotton mouth. A poisonous snake.

After I turned on the sprinkler, and checked the other hoses, I went back to check the sprinkler coverage.
I didn't see the snake or where it might have gone.
Needless to say, I decided my time in the pasture was done for the day.

Besides, it was 90 some degrees and I was already sweating like a pig.

You all have a wonderful weekend! If you celebrate, have a safe Labor Day.
We'll be laying close to home. No money until next Tuesday.

I'm glad August is over. Come on fall! Take care! :-)

So. The new kid on the block.

You'd think with digs like these, (s)he'd stay put.



And certainly you wouldn't expect him to cross this road 2 times...



We get a lot of traffic at times. This road connects a major expressway, with another highway. One on each side of us. Big rigs usually go down the highway at a pretty good clip for a rural road.
It's in the process of being repaved, but they are taking their time.

But the new kid wanted to visit I guess, because this is what we saw when we were mowing a couple of days ago.




We chased him across the road into this culvert.



And he came back again.

(Okay, uploaded to YouTube...)


So, to make our point, hubby managed to rope him.



And we dragged him back to where he belonged.

He was not amused.



Don't know what he thought he was going to find in our pasture, but hopefully we made our point and have seen the last of him.


You all have a great day. Take care. ♥

Was going to tell you about the New Kid on the block

But, after mowing the pasture there were other problems to attend to.

Those of you with pantries, may or may not have had this problem before. I know I've read some bloggers post of it, but since this is my first time dealing with it, I have questions.

Hubby had opened a bag of brown rice to fix some for dinner, and found bugs in it. While not happy, I told him I wasn't surprised because I've read of it happening.
Now while we are not really 'preppers' in any way other than we know we should have food and water stored in case of the zombie apocalypse hurricanes or power outages; we do stockpile some things. Dreamfields pasta is one. Hubby is diabetic. Not many stores carry more than one or two varieties if they carry any at all. So we tend to buy it by the case on the internet.
And short grain brown rice. We prefer the nutty flavor or the short grain rice, so we tend to buy several bags when we can find it. We eat a lot of rice. More so than potatoes.
It was one of the bags of rice with the offending bugs in it.
Now I've seen on TV, and read on blogs about storing stuff in five gallon buckets. And while we probably should buy the fancy storage bags, we don't. We do, however, store extra purchases in labeled five gallon buckets with the spin top lids.
My question is this. We had two other packages of rice in the bucket. One is a vacuum sealed bag of Basmati rice. The other is a normal package of short grain brown rice. I am relatively certain the vacuum sealed bag is not contaminated by this infestation, right? But what about the regular package of rice? We looked at it closely and don’t see any creepy crawlies in it, haha. Do you think it still be okay, too?

The offending bucket has been soaked in hot water with bleach; followed by a scrubbing with hot soapy water and a rinse with hot water.

Now for my second question. If any of you have wells that supply your own drinking water, have you ever had your water smell like sulpher? Our well is 300 feet deep. There is an aquifer under this part of central Louisiana that probably supplies our well. The water started smelling a few months ago. We’ve talked with the local Ag Extension office, and we've called a half dozen water offices, trying to find someone that can tell us something. Or test the water. Because it’s a private well, they won’t test it for us. They just said there is probably nothing to worry about.
Now, I don’t subscribe to gloom and doom per say, but there is a natural gas pipeline just more than a stone’s throw from our yard, and Louisiana started fracking last year. :-/
I suppose we’ll have to cough up the money to get our well tested; but I was wondering if there is something less expensive we might look into that someone could suggest?

Oh, and I should let you know there was no heat exhaustion today. I didn’t sweat much – probably because it was windy and humid; but I also felt okay after all the mowing. Tired, but good.
I'll tell you about the new kid in another post.

You all have a good evening and a happy Tuesday!

At my age you would think I'd know better

This is going to be a picture heavy post.
As you know, hubby had shoulder surgery a couple of weeks ago, so I've been trying to keep up with things. We don't have a big place, but it does take a while to get the mowing done. He's doing much better, thank you. It's getting harder to keep him from doing what he thinks he can do.

We do have a lot of trees, and they do provide shade. Here is the shadiest spot in the pasture (no, no animals there right now, but we still call it the pasture).



A shot of the canopy. ;-)



Lovely spot, isn't it? And yes, we need to do some trimming.

This is what you see when you exit. Lots and lots of sun.



We have lots of trees, and sporadic shade from them. And it does feel nice when you get in it.



But there is a lot of sun to mow under, too. ;-)




This is how the shade tree looks from the outside. You can see the Live Oaks are shorter than the pecan trees. :-)





I saw this little fellow(?) while I was mowing. It was in the shade too.



Can you see the little praying mantis? :-)

I should have used the umbrella contraption like I used here; but the tractor has a roll bar and I couldn't figure out how to mount the umbrella. I'll have to figure it out for next time, though, because it's only getting hotter this week; and I think I got a mild case of heat stroke today.
I felt fine while I was sitting on the tractor and mowing (though it was hot -- 100F, (37.8C)). I took short breaks. I had 2 bottles of water with me.
But when I finished and went in the house, I very nearly blacked out. My vision kept getting hazy and I was dizzy and weak. Couldn't move and my legs almost gave out, so I had no choice but to sit down. (A little background here: Until my 60th birthday, I didn't sweat. Finally, a few years after menopause I can sweat!) Anyway, I got the small fan off the counter and turned it on high. Then I called hubby and asked him to come into the kitchen so he could move the other fan so it would blow on me, too. No AC in the kitchen and I couldn't get up to go to the closest air conditioned room.
I asked him to give me some celery, and I really started feeling better while I was sitting there.

Suffice to say, I feel fine after some dinner and more to drink. But I really should have had the sense to come in out of the sun. It took two days to mow the pasture. Next time I'll take three.

You all have a wonderful, safe weekend. ♥