who's feeding those cows?

Several times a week there is a load of food dumped just over the barbed wire into the meadow where the cows are wandering. Once I found a pineapple that had rolled under the wire. I kicked it back and it was gone within the day. I've been told that in Hawaii the milk has sometimes tasted of pineapple because the dairies feed includes the mash from the fruit packing plants. Other loads of food have included bread and apples.

The deer, or at least the does and fawns, are now grazing around every oak tree looking for acorns. One morning this week I encountered a doe with her two yearling fawns who was consorting with a buck with far too few points to have earned the privilege in battle.

This week the lawn mowers attacked the parts of the meadow not being grazed. This left the gophers and ground squirrels sorely exposed in those regions. A great blue heron was stalking one gopher who was peering way out. When they're engaged in the hunt they don't pay much attention to a lone human, but at that moment a bunch of pedestrians interrupted.

I suspect all the grazers will be pleased with the new growth from this rain.

open gym

I'm at the gym again with both girls out on the apparatus. During open gym they can rearrange things and do whatever is fun rather than the usual activity directed toward specific performances. They can both scale the ropes to the ceiling; that's a major re-balancing of strength for the elder after she has grown a lot, and it's a first time for the younger.

This morning my second grader did most of the preparation of the batter for waffles and pancakes. That provided a good breakfast before their regular morning coached session, but the pancakes were sad because the teflon in our pan had become more troublesome than poorly seasoned cast iron. After gym we proceeded to send a birthday card to my uncle in Massachussetts, and also to get a nice new nonstick pan.

Not to be outdone, the elder decided that she had to make more of the same as a component of lunch, and that means there's more leftovers in the fridge to serve as components of breakfasts when I rouse them for school during the week. But the second grader performed most of supper except for the steps with large masses of hot metal or water.