The rain has continued this spring and early summer, ending the drought here in Iowa. Our flowers and hostas are huge from the rain, bigger than they have ever been. So are the weeds, of course. A mama robin was nesting on the side of our house, on top of an internet box. She raised her chicks, and now we have a new batch of baby robins in our big pine tree by the rock garden.

The crops are the same as when we moved in, in 2018, corn to the south and surrounded by beans to the west, north and east. We don’t mind that because the beans are a lower growing crop and give up a much better view of our surroundings. All other years we have lived here we have been surrounded by corn.

The garden is doing really well, again because of all the rain. This year we planted tomatoes, bell peppers and zucchini. We also planted kohlrabi, but some critter was able slip the fence around them and eat it all.

I have to say this summer is, so far, so good.

Earlier this spring our dog Steve, a 13-year-old Shepherd/Husky mix, became very lethargic and quit eating. After giving him a couple of days to recover he still would not eat anything, and drank very little. We tried his favorite treats, chicken, steak, broth. He would barely even look at food. We took him to the Vet, who examined him and ran some blood work, which showed some extremely high liver enzymes. She gave him a shot and sent us home with some antibiotic pills, with advice on other food to try to feed to him. Nothing worked. He was visibly loosing weight and could barely get up to go outside. We had lost our other dog, Marley, last year, and we were now preparing to put Steve down. After seven days of no eating we called the Vet again and he said after this long of a time I think the dog has won. Shelly tried one more time with some broth, and Steve drank it. Then she fed him some boiled chicken, and he ate a little. For a few days he ate chicken at least once a day, sometimes twice. Then he would eat a small amount of dog food with the chicken, and eventually full portions again. He became more lively, walking around, until after a few weeks he was his old self, eating and drinking and running around the acreage again.

Epilogue: Shortly after his recovery I was in the garage with the overhead door open, mixing up Steve’s food. I called for him, and he came running, but when I turned around with his food bowl he disappeared from view. I called him again, no Steve. I walked out of the garage and spotted him around 30 feet away, with something in his mouth. I hollered at him to drop it and when he did I could see it was a baby bunny on its back with the little legs working around. As I started walking toward Steve he immediately picked back up the bunny and began chewing it, working it lengthwise across his mouth, breaking its bones. As I advanced on him he gave me a furtive look, turned the bunny in his mouth head first and with two or three neck stretches and gulps swallowed it whole. I stopped and just stared at him. I had only seen snakes do that. Over the next few days we kept an eye on him to make sure he was okay, and he was. Not only had he regained his old appetite, he had acquired a new one.

Along with our long, mild much needed rainy spring here in Iowa have come a couple of tornado outbreaks, first in mid-April, then at the end of that month. We didn’t suffer any damage here on the acreage, but we do feel more vulnerable living in the country than we ever did in the city. You just never know out here. The photo above was taken within twenty miles of where we live.

The fields have mostly all been planted, our lawn mowed, the trees are leafing out and the flowers are coming up. Speaking of our trees, this is the year for the power company to trim trees in our part of the county, to keep branches from interfering with or falling on power lines. Their first visit to our acreage was busy, out at the street. The second visit was semi-busy, in our driveway, with around a two hour lunch then not much else until they left around 4:30 in the afternoon. The third was back out at the street, with the safety cones out just in case they decided anything else needed to be done. The fourth visit involved parking a truck in the street in front of our house, safety cones out, with some light cleaning of the truck, a long lunch, then nothing. They might have been napping in the truck cab, or playing on their phones. Whatever they were doing they found a nice quiet place to play hooky for a while.

One night a couple of weeks ago I let our dog Steve outside, and as soon as I opened the screen door he rushed at a opossum that was drinking from Steves water dish on the back porch. They disappeared into the darkness and I couldn’t see or hear anything else. Around ten minutes later he was ready to come back in, and acted like nothing had happened. He had no injuries, and the next day I looked around and there was no sign of the opossum. Just a couple of nights later Shelly went out to call for Steve and there was a opossum standing at the bottom of the porch, eating a bit of old dog food Shelly had tossed out. Steve came trotting up to the porch, right past the opossum, which he completely ignored, and into the house. Shelly and I both stepped out on the porch and looked at the opossum, which regarded us with disinterest, and continued eating. We wondered, did they make some kind of a deal? What is going on? To be continued, I suppose…