GuardNGuy.blogspot.com

The unusually warm weather we’ve had recently has been a real treat.  Farmers who couldn’t do the field work they wanted to do last fall because of the rain that turned too quickly into snow were able to play catch-up, and a lot of fields are ready to plant ahead of schedule, and some planting has already been done. Because we live in Wisconsin, most of us feel like there is a shoe left to drop, and that shoe will take the form of a blizzard, complete with a few feet of snow and below zero temperatures.  There is no meteorological basis for this expectation, just a feeling that something good is usually followed by something bad when it comes to weather. I think people in the Midwest see the world that way more than other folks.  On a perfect day in June, you’ll hear people say, “we’re gonna pay for this later!”  I’ve never heard people in San Diego make the same prediction. Well, I may pay for it later, but last weekend I got a start planting our garden.  Most ...

  I Sat With the Cat Not to get all Seussy or anything, but this morning I sat on the cement next to the garage with our cat, Barney. We’ve had a number of cats over the years but now Barney is the sole survivor, and he is showing his age. He is named Barney because he lives in our barn. Before he belonged to us, he belonged to someone else, which we know because he had been “fixed” (a poor choice of words) when we found him. Or when he found us. I was up in the barn loft on a winter night when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I asked, “Is there a cat up here?” It turns out there was, and he meowed very conversationally for several minutes. It was a month or more before he’d hang around with us. We started to feed him on some very cold winter nights, even though he’d been fending for himself for who knows how long. Our horse vet at the time gave the cat his shots and verified that he was neutered. Then we named him (the cat, not the vet) Barney. He has unhappily c...