priapos

Ah fall, the time of year when wasps attempt to invade my home. One day, I killed twelve before coffee.

I just got back from a trip to the ancestral lands. My great-grandfather owned a ranch near Fort Worth, and my Mom and I have started taking semi-annual trips to visit it. The guy who leases it amazes me. We went several years ago when we had a different tenant, and the place looked horrible. There was bare dirt everywhere, and stumps from blue juniper and mesquite trees poking up out of it. The stock tanks were all low, and I almost cried to see it.

The first recent trip was six months ago, and North Texas had just finished getting too much rain (for once). Everything looked beautiful, but G. insisted that god, not he, was responsible. This time, the rain couldn't take all the credit. The grass was more yellow in spots, but clearly his management has improved the environment. He gave me a book, Holistic Management, by Allan Savory with Jody Butterfield, which he claims forced him to unlearn everything he learned in college about range management. The chapter headings look intriguing, and I hope to come back and review it somewhere on the site, later.