Aftermaths and Fire Ants

This flying siding could have literally cut someone in half. This was one of the most beautiful cedar elms in the meadow. Twisting winds took it down. Photo by: Suna

When flooded, fire ants build these necrotic islands and float their colony to a new location. What a difference a day makes!

Anyone knows an ant, can't.

Move a rubber tree plant.

—Sammy Cahn

I didn’t originally intend to post these pictures, but then it hit me. I’m trying to be as honest as I can about our move to the ranch, and that means talking about scary stuff, too. I know I already did that by talking about yesterday’s tornados and floods, but I thought these two pictures would drive my point home.

UnIdentified Flying Objects

First, I mentioned the flying siding yesterday. I’ll be brief. Just look how far that piece of siding buried itself in the ground when it hit. Now imagine if it had hit somebody. It would be like when I worked in Houston, and a gust of wind blew a sheet of plywood off the roof of one of the skyscrapers. It cut a lawyer in half.

Now some of you will say, “Lawyer…no big loss.” But it could have been anybody. This siding, too, could have cut someone in half if it hadn’t landed harmlessly in our woods.

Fire Ants

Living underground, fire ants are particularly susceptible to floods. They have evolved a cutthroat survival strategy. As their mound floods, the ants flee to the surface.

If water continues to rise, they build floating islands on the corpses of their siblings. The islands are attached to the original mound by a thin string of dead ants. If the water rises enough to break that “string,” the island floats away. It has everything it needs to rebuild the colony where it lands. Notice the princess ant is at the very top of the island in the picture.

The big problem comes when the island floats into an animal or maybe a person. The ants swarm all over that refuge, sometimes millions of them. And they’re not happy. Stay as far away from them as you can.

 

Seeking Shelter From the Storm

The new pond crested the dam that doubles as the entrance to the property. Where the water spills into the arroyo, it is at least eight feet deep.

That X sticking up above the water is the top of the fence. The creek bed is a quarter-mile away.

  Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm

  Come in, she said

  I’ll give ya shelter from the storm

—Bob Dylan

We found out why we have a storm room this afternoon—the one I have always joked is our “zombie apocalypse room.”

A severe storm blew up—heavy rains, gusting winds, tornados. It dumped almost three inches of rain in less than an hour. Given that the ground was already saturated and the ponds were already full to capacity, there wasn’t much hope to avoid a serious flood.

The house is on one of the highest points of the ranch. So I wasn’t worried about the flooding. The tornados were another matter. We all—Suna, me, Jaime’s family, Grillo, and Stella—all crowded into the storm room and locked the metal doors. Rose insisted on running upstairs to hide, but she and the house came through without a scratch.

The winds were strong enough to blow Jaime’s wet saw off the front porch. We also found a 4x8 sheet of metal siding buried six inches in the ground just on the other side of the gate. The siding was the wrong color to have come from any of our buildings or any of Ralph’s.

Ralph stood on his back porch taking pictures until he realized pieces of his hay barn were flying over the house. He was uninjured. In fact, the only injury sustained on either property was a small cut on one of the horses.

Our neighbors in Pettibone weren’t so lucky. The tornado touched down in that area several times. It destroyed a huge swath of trees and phone lines. It also took out at least two houses. And, yes, there were fatalities reported there. I don’t have the details.

As bad as the storm was, I’m glad we, our neighbors, and most of the country came out fairly well.

 

The creek hardly ever floods the bridge, but it did this time. Suna is fast enough to be on both ends of the picture.

Storms always make for the best sunsets—when they don’t occult the sunset.

Stella the Supervisor

“No, put it over here, Daddy.”

“Today was a great day. I got to go swimmin’ and cuddle with Mommy.”

Most of the inside hearth is cinder block and cement wrapped in the same German tile as the fireplace wall. The exterior hearth will be the same thing wrapped in the same stone as the house. The top of both hearths is a very fossilly two-inch thick limestone.

Jaime determined that the blocks were too big to be esthetic as they arrived from the quarry. My job today is to pick the parts of the blocks with the most fossils. Stella helped.

Jaime and crew will cut them to my markings and position them on top of the cinder blocks. This is a lot of physical work—for Jaime’s crew, not me—and I don’t begrudge them a dime of what I’m paying them. Their artisanship and sheer talent will make this house much more beautiful than I ever imagined.

 

Desperados Under the Eaves

We had the eaves enclosed in metal. They’re insulated, too.

Stella played a hole in Fribby!

  And if California slides into the ocean

  Like the mystics and statistics say it will

  I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill

—Warren Zevon

After listening to Ralph gripe about “those damned sparrows” building nests in his eaves and crapping on everything, we took his experience to heart. We had Murdock come back out, now that the electrical is run and the siding is up, to enclose the eaves on our porches in metal. Let’s see those bloody sparrows build nests there.

House finches are another matter.

Bird Box

Grillo builds a nest for the house finches. Now that all the bamboo is down, Stella approves.

Construction often requires destruction. Today, Andy, whom everybody calls Grillo (grasshopper) for some reason, was upset that he had to take down a house finch nest. He was so upset that he built the babies a box and hung it back up in place after installing the plastic wrap that helps water seal the house. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the parents will most likely abandon the nest anyway.

 

Good Company

One of the four agaves Mike and Martha brought us from their garden. Finally, a plant I can’t kill Photo by: Suna

We had company at the ranch yesterday! Our friends Martha and Mike from Austin came to visit. A meal and some adult beverages were consumed. [Yes, I know it’s passive voice. Actions are described while actors are concealed.]

Mostly we sat around and talked about things. They walked the property. Mike made us a couple of boomerangs!

Then Mike and I planted the agaves they brought. We planted on at each corner of the gate.

 

It’s Still Raining at the Ranch

Jaime is very creative. He wants to build a mantle out of a mesquite log he brought. I think it will be awesome.

All the rains make for some stupendous sunsets. Here’s another one. Our creek paddock is now a creek.

We’ve had almost six inches of rain since the first of the month. To put that into perspective, we got just over eight inches in 2012, but that was at the height of the drought.

Since I’ve been keeping records here, we’ve averaged around four inches in May, including this year. But the rains do make for some spectacular sunsets.

Construction Update

We got another inch of rain last night, which made getting workers and materials into the house…interesting. The ground is soft and slick, all the tanks are completely full, and the arroyo is flowing briskly again. But we got done what we needed to.

With the tile all up on the fireplace wall, Jaime started working on the mantle. He has a mesquite log he wants to sand down. I said we should leave the exposed edge tree-shaped, even if we do have to flatten the other three sides.

Ruben also got the washer and dryer installed temporarily. We’ll have to uninstall and reinstall them once the cabinets are done. It turned out cheaper, more useful, and better looking to have custom cabinets made to stand them on rather than buying the prefab drawers that match the appliances.

 

Horsing Around

Suna gets Apache to do stuff.

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name

It felt good to be out of the rain

—Dewey Bunnell

Suna spent the weekend at a Parelli horsemanship workshop in Leander. I’m proud of her. Working with and taking care of Apache has really boosted her self-confidence.

 

Animal Lovers

Jaime’s son holds the turtle they “rescued.”

We have hummingbirds!

Hummingbird don’t fly away, fly away.

Don’t fly away.

—Jim Seals, Dash Crofts

Jaime’s whole family works on his crew. They’re all nice people, and they’re all animal lovers.

On the way in this morning, they saw a turtle crossing the road and “rescued it.” They brought it to the ranch and put it in the front pond.

You know who else is an animal lover? My dad, who turns 92 today. Happy birthday, Dad.

 

No Star Wars Pun Here

Rose doesn’t travel well, but she loves being at the ranch, especially when she gets lovin’s from the crew. Stella looks over the arroyo, which is now much steeper and deeper than before the rains. She looks like she wants to jump in, but she’s too smart to do that again. Stella loves her Fribby. You can tell by all the slobbers on it.

The rug is finished except for the glass tile border. Jaime is an artist in more than one way. He painted these piggies on a scrap of plywood while camping out here at the ranch to save on fuel. Tile is going up on the fireplace.

This little piggy went to market

This little piggy stayed home

Jaime has continued making progress on all the tile work. He has basically finished the “rug” in the entry way and has started putting the tile up around the fireplace. All of the tile Suna chose has fossils embedded, so we should always be able to find new interesting things on the walls and floor.

The stone she chose for the exterior walls is also chock full of fossils. Most of them are little snail shells that look like rattlesnake rattles, so, of course, we had to have them. The quarry guys even call the layer of limestone from which the rock comes the rattlesnake layer.

I knew that you were supposed to start in the middle of the floor with tile, but I didn’t know (although I should have) you also start tile walls halfway up. Jaime put a 1x4 on the wall to have a level surface to mount the first course of the fireplace tile. With that course being level, all the rest should be level, too. And the courses of partial tiles will be at the top and bottom where they will be less apparent.

In weather news, it’s been dry enough long enough for the arroyo to drain down to a trickle. The sides have fallen in and washed away, making it a little dangerous to walk too close to the edge. It might cave and carry you with it. Stella probably isn’t heavy enough to cause a problem, but I call her away from the edge anyway.

All of the ponds are still full to capacity, so any further rain will cause more flooding. But the good news is we’re set for summer.