This morning Mary stated, "I went to pick my spinach leaves and something ate them all off." I think the culprit is the fellow below. A little later, she said, "That devil ate off all the blossoms on my potato plants." And this is in the city limits, but then an animal doesn't pay much attention to lines drawn on a map.
I keep busy doing my thing reading and writing. I finally got moving on a project that's been waiting for me for a long time. In 1867 a wagon train returning empty from hauling freight to Fort Ransom was enroute to Fort Abercrombie when it got caught in a December blizzard for three days just southeast of Lisbon. The project format is written as a historical fiction short story. Here is an excerpt from the story:We had to stop the bull train; the wind drove the snow in brisk gales and enclosed us in a small, white bowl from which we could not see beyond to the next wagon. Our usual task of parking wagons proved next to impossible since we could not see or hear the wagon boss, and by the time he rode back within earshot hollering and screaming, the train sat in muddled disarray. With the oxen needing attention we unhitched but kept them yoked together and tethered to the wagons so they would not drift across the prairie with the wind at their tails.
Hunkering down for the night we tried to light cook fires, but every time a man's shaking hands struck a match or flint to steel the wind snuffed it out. More than anything I wanted to wrap my cold fingers around a cup of hot coffee, but tonight there would be none. Chewing on hardtack I tried to think of other places. By morning we would roll again, so all any of us could do now was to try to get some sleep. But it was no use, the blankets did little to chase the chill, and we had to lay there all night listening to the wind rip and slap the wagon canvas.
