Shock without awe!

My sister and her daughter roam all over our nearly 1,000 acre property looking for wildflowers. Their photos are a treasure to my other sister, Ann, and me, who can no longer do the looking. Yesterday, while thus engaged, they came across this near our private road.

She texted me the above photo, and asked what it was. I told her I had no idea, to just remove it. (I hate trash on my property and always pick it up.) So today she went back and sent me the following photos. Apparently, it's a secret Border Patrol camera spying on all oasis visitors. Very shocking! I googled it and it seems they have the right within 25 miles of the border. Illegals never come our way because it's too rugged a terrain. They stay closer to the highway five miles west of CMO.

Had they asked permission to put it there, or even informed me, I wouldn't mind so much, but they didn't. And if they had asked permission, I would have given it, albeit grudgingly. But mostly, I just feel I should have been informed.

On a brighter note, a pair of Cassin's Finches visited my town bird bath today. Always a treat! 

Spring migration is just barely beginning. Saw my first for this year Barn Swallows in Alpine today.

Only NINE more days of hep C meds! My foot hurts some, but not nearly what it had been. I can't walk without a limp though. Maybe that'll improve. If not, I could have much worse things to live with.

A good day!

You'd never know by looking that this water feature was buried under inches of snow a few days ago. The grapes and other trees lost their new growth, but are quickly putting on more.

And today, while checking out bird activity at my son's home a block away, I was surprised to see a female Cassin's Finch. 

I've seen quite a few this past winter, and here it's spring, and the winter birds are still hanging around. Does that indicate more winter weather to come? Sure do hope not. Gonna check the oasis tomorrow and see how it fared.

Upon the advice of family and friends to wear shoes with arch support, I went to a thrift shop today and bought a pair of Reeboks for 3 or 4 dollars. My only other option was to order something online for about $100 and hope they fit, and hope they helped. Couldn't bring myself to buy shoes without trying them on first. Especially since I was sure they wouldn't help.

No one was more surprised than me that even the little arch support the Reeboks provided, took the pain away.  My latest thinking, based on my research, is that osteoarthritis in the navicular area where I have it, is caused by a stress fracture. I'm thinking that the fracture/arthritis weakened my arch. I have high arches, which makes them more prone to stress fractures. The fracture is probably long healed by now, and only the current OA showed up on the x-ray. An MRI would probably show the fracture, but no reason to get one at this point. I'm just grateful to be walking pain-free.

I'm used to slipping in and out of crocs, never wearing them indoors. But here I am this evening, sitting at my computer in Reeboks. I did take them off earlier when I figured I was going to stay indoors for the night. But my foot started hurting, so I put them back on. Probably won't sleep in them though. So I'm a happy camper. I don't know yet what this means for the future. Will things heal, or will I always have pain when not in shoes with arch support? Likely the latter. But so worth the hassle.

PS. One of the things I don't quite understand is OA. As I understand it, it's an irreversible deterioration of tissue between bones, so that it's like bone on bone, as in worn out discs of the spine. If that's the case, then all one can do is alleviate the pain, either with drugs, or with preventing the bone on bone interaction. And I guess there are fluids that can be injected into the joint to temporarily help cushion it. So not totally sure what I'm dealing with here. Hopefully, I'll get a handle on it with more research. And if there never was a stress fracture, and the tissue deterioration is a result of age and overuse, and is permanent, then having good arch support could very well fix the problem permanently.

X-ray results

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to have the results of the X-ray come back as osteoarthritis. That means I don't have a recovery to look forward to. However, I'm certainly going to do all I can to keep it from getting worse. Watering is the hardest part. That entails walking for hours over rough ground. I hate to take drugs for pain, even though the strongest I ever take is ibuprofen. (I hardly even take more than one ibuprofen per year.)

Every day I shoot bird photos out the window of birds in the new bird bath. I was delighted today, when I downloaded my photos, to see the background is getting lovely. When I first built the water feature, in late November, things were already dormant. Now I can look forward to some better photos. Here's one taken in the middle of winter.

Lincoln's Sparrow

And here's one from today. I like the background much better.

Myrtle's Yellow-rumped Warbler

Snowstorm aftermath

Here are a few photos my son took yesterday while he was at the oasis with his daughter.

By the time I got there at daylight today, much of it had melted. Don't know yet what all froze and what didn't. Many limbs bowed to the ground, but only a few seem to be broken. The good news is that we got well over an inch of moisture from the storm. Here is a photo I took of the oasis today.

I barely made the road coming in today, but the big hill, thanks to the new concrete, was one of the easier spots. Without the concrete, I wouldn't normally have made it up in conditions like today.

Hated to leave, but I have a dental appointment in Odessa tomorrow.

Winter's last gasp!

Photo from sister's patio

While I love getting the moisture, nearly an inch so far, I sure hate having it this cold. Everything had leafed out so lovely. Just hoping the snow will protect it. In 3 days it's supposed to get back into the 80s.

Yesterday (3/17)

Today (3/18)

Before this winter storm, the Tree Tobacco looked like this. Only one plant still survives, But given good weather conditions, it could reseed itself quickly and thrive. Otherwise, I'll let nature decide what's to grow around the tank. I already made my suggestion.

My pickup is sporting its new grill and door handle. Hitting a deer was the cheaper of the two. Cost nearly $200 to get the handle installed, and about $100 for the grill. It didn't come with the Ford emblem. I doubt if I could find mine along the highway anywhere. Maybe I'll come up with something interesting to put in its place. Like, I once had a Lucifer license plate. I could cut the Lucifer out of the plate and put it there.

Yesterday, here in Alpine, I had a bunch of Common Grackles show up. Hadn't seen any since mid December, so I enjoyed that.

Two more weeks of Hep meds, and 2 more days until summer! All good! Got my foot x-rayed, but haven't gotten back the results yet.

Good day, all in all

The Big Bend area is experiencing one of the busiest times of year... spring break. Traffic in Big Bend National Park is bumper to bumper, with long waiting lines. Often it means a vehicle can't go into the Chisos Basin, for example, until another vehicle leaves the basin.

Meanwhile, birders at the oasis can experience great birding along with quiet solitude. Today hosted happy birders all day long, nine being the most there at one time. They all got to witness Lucifer Hummingbirds mating. That makes me happy to know! One comment said, "...the rough road is more than worth it. Lots of lifers for everyone and great looks at many different species." 

I plan to get to the oasis sometime tomorrow afternoon and spend the night. I got my grandson to wire a temporary grill to my pickup, just in case I hit a bird or something. It's a refrigerator shelf that was lying around, waiting for me to find a need for it. Tomorrow morning my new door handle will get installed.

Here in Alpine, I had a good birding day, too. The highlight was a pair of Cassin's Finches. While not a great photo, this is the best one I've gotten of a male Cassin's so far. The main problem with my new bird bath is that I'm facing into the sun when taking photos. Maybe when the grape arbor above it greens up it'll block some of the sun.

I don't see any improvement in my foot. Only 21 more days of hep meds. Yay! I suspect  they're at least contributing to my fatigue, if not the cause of it.

Trying to heal

In 2014, I planted seeds I had obtained of the only cold hardy citrus that might survive our winters, Trifoliate Orange. They have survived, and now one of them is blooming. It's one of the two I planted in the courtyard. I still water it, even though I don't live there anymore. Those I planted at the oasis haven't bloomed yet. Hoping though.

And some of you may remember that in 2017 I made the mistake of cleaning out the big tank. I've regretted it ever since. It had lots of mud in it, which we removed, but along with the mud went all the pondweed (Longleaf Pondweed, I think) that I so love. I had assumed it would come back. Didn't happen. Several times I've taken some from a friend's pond and planted it in my tank. I had some started in 2020, but it didn't survive. Now, fingers crossed again, it looks like this time it'll take. Perhaps there wasn't enough mud in the tank until now. (For more on the oasis pondweed do a search for "pondweed" in the search window.)

Surrounding the pondweed is something else. No idea what it is, maybe some type of  Stuckenia or Zannichellia. 

Occasionally I've had a different pondweed species. I think it's Illinois Pondweed. This photo is from 2019.

Had hoped to spend my few days in town resting my foot. Doing the best I can, which is better than the previous couple of months, but so much needs doing. I couldn't stand the car being so filthy, so washed and vacuumed it. Also rinsed off my pickup. Didn't want to take it to the shop next week so filthy. And couldn't put off servicing the duck nest. I think one duck is already off somewhere laying eggs.

I put fresh hay in it. Last year's hay was gone. Then I covered one end with chicken-wire, hoping to deter racoons and skunks, beside keeping the hay from ending up in the water.

Blogging rests my foot though!

A day to forget

Yesterday seemed to be going so well. Weather was perfect, and I was excited to get to the oasis to water, even though for a couple of months now I've had bad pain in my right foot. I thought with a cane, it'd be fine. But it turned out that I couldn't drag heavy hoses, refill feeders, etc. using a cane. So I just endured, as I have been doing for months.  It keeps getting worse.  Can't use a cane all the time anyway or it makes my shoulder hurt too much. (Long time followers will remember I quit carrying a heavy Canon camera that I loved because of the weight to my shoulder.) So, hoping to get it x-rayed when I can get in to see a doctor. They're so backed up. When I was at my doctor a couple months ago and brought it up, she said probably arthritis, and mostly brushed it off.

But then I got to thinking, and researching. It only hurts if I put weight on the foot. Otherwise, I can bend it fine. I have high arches and the pain seems to originate in the area of the navicular bone (aka nutcracker) above the arch. I've always had a habit of skipping the lowest rung of a ladder, jumping down off  low walls, etc. Age caught up with me. I figure it's a well-earned stress fracture.  Resting it seems to be all that helps. I've tried boots and stuff.

So anyway, I was dealing with that. Then a door handle broke off my pickup. Next, as I was trying to review 200 video clips from my game cam, my oasis computer kept freezing up. It's so slow that rebooting it was taking forever. Time I didn't have. Some of the clips seemed to have parts of interesting birds on them. (Had to adjust the camera again, hoping this time the whole bird will show.)  

Therefore, I decided instead of spending the night, as planned, I'd rush through watering and get to my town computer. Just before I reached Hwy 118, I couldn't remember if I had turned the pump off. No choice but to go back. Nearly dark by then. I'm not comfortable driving at night. My eye focus is slow. Like going from outdoors to indoors, it takes a while before I can see. Turns out I had left the water on, so it's good I went back. 

Driving to town on the highway, my foot hurt so bad I couldn't work the accelerator. I know the road so well that I never use brakes, just adjust my speed accordingly. Unless traffic, or at the border check point. Or deer. No traffic, so I used my left foot on the accelerator, driving slower than normal. Braked at the checkpoint with my right foot, as I normally do, and noticed that my foot pain had subsided quite a bit. So I continued on the last 15 miles in my comfortable normal mode. Still I went slower, so as not to make it start hurting. 

Getting closer to town, I saw an oncoming car. I think the driver dimmed his lights, but his type lights were still blindingly bright. All I could see was black and his glaring lights. As we approached closer, almost to the point of going past one another, I saw two big deer standing in, and blocking, my lane. Couldn't swerve around into the other lane because of the approaching car, and the ditch was steep with a rock cliff beside it. All I could do was slam on the brakes. Not sure how aggressively, because of my foot, but everything in the pickup flew forward, and the ice chest in the back flipped over.

I hit the deer with a sickening thud just as the oncoming car passed by me. The deer went tumbling into the oncoming lane a split second behind the passing car. I don't think either deer hit it. I had never hit a deer before. The car pulled over. I pulled over. I sat there a minute. Car was working fine; lights fine. Decided to limp on home, keeping an eye on the temperature gauge. The other car went on too when they saw I did. Normally I'm not a procrastinator, but I just dreaded having to face the damage.

Couldn't believe my eyes when all that was damaged was my old cracked plastic grill. Cracked from hitting an owl a few years back. My son ordered a new grill online for less than $100 and he'll install it. Boy, did I dodge a bullet!

Then at the house, I didn't have the SD card that I had come to town to review. I had somehow gotten cards mixed up and brought an empty one. I feel like such a dysfunctional mess. Maybe when I finish the hep meds and my foot heals, life can get back to normal, whatever that is. I think the meds give me some fatigue, but it might be age and pain. It's not like I'm going to leave this world in a pristine body. LOL

Still tweaking trail camera

I'm close to getting the position of the camera to suit me. Here are a couple of clips that were on the camera when I got there today. Since then, I've pointed the camera more downward.

Once I get it how I want it, I need to secure it better. Right now a rock is wedged behind it to make it point downward but only a matter of time until an animal undoes that.

Otherwise, I watered today and got my first of the year Lucifer photo, though not a good one. They're so hyper when they first arrive that it's hard for me to get focused before they're gone. Their gorget color is so much more fluorescent early in the season too. Photos can't do it justice.

The weather was great today. Many things are starting to bloom or leaf out. I'm so ready! Just hope mother nature doesn't throw us any curve balls. It freezes about 3 out of every 4 Marches. Gonna be a long month!

Fruit tree challenge!

Our fruit trees in Alpine never learn to wait to bloom until after danger of frost is past. So here we are, March 1st and they're in full and glorious bloom. The challenge will be to keep them from freezing this month.

Apricot tree in background center

Apricot tree closeup

Ein Shimer apple tree

Pictures aren't doing them justice. They're dazzling in person. Lots of native stuff is blooming too. It keeps my sister and niece busy documenting it, which I'm grateful to them for. Here are just a few samples of the dozens of species blooming right now around the oasis.

Golf Ball Cactus (Mammalaria lasiacantha)

Agarito (Berberis trifoliata)

Desert Evening Primrose (Oenothera primavera)

Trans-Pecos Chickweed (Cerastium axillare)

Maybe weeds to some, but treasures to us. To see more of the wildflowers on our properties you can visit my blog about them. 

Flora of the Christmas Mountains

Not many people know about the blog. It's just to keep a record for us and maybe for posterity.

Visitors to the oasis today got their lifer Lucifer Hummingbird. I can't wait to get back down there!