Dovette?

Here's the view from my living room on a cloudy day from a crappy photographer (I can never get the depth right -- or even close -- when I take photos of this pasture).

As you can see, there's quite a bit of stuff for them to munch down in here.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes them.  There's six of them, actually.  Pepe (my ram), a ewe that's about 4 years old, a yearling, and three of this year's lambs.  Right now, it's hard to find them amongst all the brush in here.  Once they chew it down, it will reveal all the crap in this pasture, i.e. rocks, large sticks, cinder blocks, trash, etc.  The other pasture was worse.

Here are my new residents, some more "temporary" than others:

I bought 15 of them yesterday, and came home today five short.  So we'll see how long they last.  I've had mixed reviews -- some say yes this works great, others that say they've never been able to get them to survive.  I wonder if it would have helped if I would have started out with bigger fish.

Evidence of great news!

Green = water flowing through here!  Woo hoo!  The hard work is paying off.

Remember the bush in the pasture I was chopping on the other day when I found a nest with at least one egg in it?  Well, I went to check on it today, and this is what I saw. 

I stepped a little closer, and she took off.  Don't ask me what I had to do to get this shot.

What do you call a baby dove?  (If you're going to tell me that this photo is out of focus, you'd better say it as you're running away from me.)

And in focus or not, have I told you lately how much I love this face?

There are people ... in Minnesota ... that would tape these ears up for months on end with all kinds of glue and tape and tampons and foam and insoles and all kinds of crap.  Isn't that horrible????  I think her ears are perfect just the way they are ... one on each side of her head and they both seem to work.

And these girls are getting very pretty also.  (I don't want to speak too soon, but I think these are all girls ... I don't see any curly tails yet, although, I don't know how old they have to be before it's a for-sure thing.)

They need to get busy layin' me some eggs, though.  I'm down to two nasty chicken eggs.  Looks like I'll have to buy more of those, though, before this cackling bunch gets around to helpin' me out.

Here's the backyard (where the ducks are).  You can see the green -- evidence of the irrigation -- and the sheep are no longer back here, so it will start to really sprout now.

There are always branches laying around this place, it seems.  I guess that just means I have plenty of mature trees, which is great for keeping the house cool.  I didn't really notice when taking the photos, but the trees are looking much better this year now that they have some water being fed to them periodically.  I'll have to take some more photos of the trees and do a comparison from last year ... and then see how much they improve next year. 

Here's the pig pen ... just waiting for its new resident.  First weekend in September, we'll be picking up Bacon II.  Or ... Wilbur, as I've been calling him.  Note to self:  Stop at the Halloween store and pick up Charlotte and some webbing.

I made a lame attempt (too lazy to even pull the hose out of the way) at getting a mother/daughter photo ... first ever.  Echo was not being nearly as cooperative as Reese, so I pulled the old kitty trick on her.  "psss pss pss ... here kitty kitty" ... gets her attention every time.  Reese, however, knew I was teasing and found it quite entertaining.

It's about as close as I came to getting a "worth it" shot.  Here's a couple of individual shots.

Mr. Photogenic Zip.

And Echo ... with duck bokeh.

That's all for now!
Jodi