New Spines of Prickly Pear

Many of the prickly pear on the ranch have new pads this spring.  Spines on the new pads are much softer than the sharp thorns of the older pads. 

Lazy Animals

A herd of deer stayed near our house most of the day, munching on mesquite leaves.  I hiked this afternoon, and the cows were mostly laying around.  It was a good day to be lazy!

 

Happy Mother's Day

Checking Calves Twice a Day

Colter has been checking for new calves twice a day for about three weeks.  He rode twelve hours today.  Papa has been riding twice a day the past few days, helping Colter as best he can.  I caught them late today, about 6 p.m. returning to the corral after their final ride of the day.  Colter and Papa were happy.  Mother cows and calves were happy too.

House Beautiful

Since returning from Portugal, I've been a little under the weather, so I've spent a lot of 

time inside.  I've spent hours this week looking through old issues of House Beautiful.  

Lots of good ideas in my favorite magazine!

Scientific 7 Minute Workout

I came across this article in the NY Times this morning.  At 55, close to 56, I am trying to stay as healthy as possible, eating well, taking my daily 2-3 mile walk/hike.  I admit to not getting adequate full body exercise.  This article provides all I need to stop making excuses! 

The Scientific 7 Minute Workout , from NY Times Health page, May 9, 2013



 
Exercise science is a fine and intellectually fascinating thing. But sometimes you just want someone to lay out guidelines for how to put the newest fitness research into practice.

An article in the May-June issue of the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal does just that. In 12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest mandates for high-intensity effort, which essentially combines a long run and a visit to the weight room into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based on science.
“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article.


Interval training, though, requires intervals; the extremely intense activity must be intermingled with brief periods of recovery. In the program outlined by Mr. Jordan and his colleagues, this recovery is provided in part by a 10-second rest between exercises. But even more, he says, it’s accomplished by alternating an exercise that emphasizes the large muscles in the upper body with those in the lower body. During the intermezzo, the unexercised muscles have a moment to, metaphorically, catch their breath, which makes the order of the exercises important.

The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re done.

Delicate White Flowers

On my hike this morning, I saw lots of these beautiful white flowers.  Their common name is cowboy fried eggs, and they are as delicate as they are prickly. 

Cloudy Day

Cloudy days on the ranch are few and far between.  Today was a beautiful cloudy day!

New Calves on the Ranch

Today was our first full day back on the ranch in almost three weeks, after a trip to Portugal.  Over the past couple of weeks, 50+ new calves have been born on the ranch.  Several were born today.  Colter has been riding horseback every day in the pasture with 54 first time mother cows.  So far this calving season, he has lost two cows and two calves, primarily due to the large size of the calves. This morning he came upon a mother cow that clearly had struggled giving birth and she had just died.  Her calf was alive.  Colter rode home as quickly as he could and came back on his Ranger.  He saw Papa along the road, so Papa rode with him to get the new calf.  Colter milked the dead mother cow and saved the milk in a bottle.  They brought the calf to our house while they had lunch.  Colter took the calf back home to bottle feed for the coming weeks.  Calving season is a busy time.

Day in Chicago

On May 2, Papa and I flew from Lisbon to London, and then from London to Chicago, arriving in Chicago by 8 p.m.  We stayed overnight at Audrey's house.  Lauren was asleep when we arrived, so we were a surprise for her when she got up the next morning.  Over and over, she said "Papa, Papa."  Audrey drove us by the new home she and Dan are buying.  We had lunch in their new neighborhood.  We enjoyed every moment of the day before we went back to the airport to fly to Tucson.