the week in review and the Ag Life Youth Fair

It's been a full week though I haven't accomplished much. Monday, of course, was all about the new heart monitor.

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Tuesday was movie day and we went to see Avenger's End Game because we are big Marvel Cinematic Universe fans and because the end of the previous movie Infinity Wars left the audience going...wait, what!!!? At the end of this last one two of our heroes died and one might as well have because as rumor has it those actors are totally over playing their characters. This was the end of the story arc that started 11 years ago and included 3 phases and 22 movies.

Wednesday I manicured the tomato plants pinching off the little sprouts that grow from the junction of leaf to stem and taking out some of the leaves that grow so thick so that the flowers can be more easily fertilized and I dug up a bunch of the little purple ground orchids and potted them up for the garden club plant sale that was yesterday.

Thursday I wrote out the tags for all the plant sale items I had and priced them and then in the afternoon I tagged along with my sister and our friend Bobby to the Youth Fair at the Wharton County Fairgrounds. 

The Youth Fair is a livestock show where the school kids in Ag show off their animals they have raised and hopefully come away with the grand champion or runner up. We watched the Senior group (age 14 – 18, 7 0f the 10 participants were girls) lead their cows around the arena while the judge selected the winners. Each participant had three cows to show and let me tell you those are some BIG cows and groomed within an inch of their lives, some really gorgeous animals. 

There were also sheep, goats, pigs, and rabbits but we didn't see any of the judging for those, just wandered around the pens. 

The pigs were a little scary. While we were walking down the aisle a kid came with a bucket of food for one of the pigs and he very quickly undid the chain on the pen, opened the gate just enough for him to slip through and then quickly refastened the chain. The pigs in the pens 2 deep on either side were instantly on their feet riveted on that bucket and would have crashed through the wire had they been able. This pig knew exactly what the purpose of the chain on the gate to it's pen was for and was doing it's best to get it off.

There was also a petting zoo with the usual donkey, calves, deer, goats, and sheep but also exotics...alpacas, a zebra colt,  a kangaroo,  a huge land turtle, a porcupine , and a couple of other things I didn't know the names of.

an art, craft, flower/plant arrangement, and home making skills (baking, canning, sewing) exhibition in all age groups and everyone got a blue ribbon! Just some of the many entries:

I thought this one was particularly clever, if you can't tell what it is, click to bigify

pineapple lamp made out of plastic spoons

There was an Ag Life exhibit, 

              

and of course a carnival!

Friday was my birthday outing with my sister (Pam, her name is Pam) and we went to Galveston to the historic downtown area, the Strand, and had lunch and went in all the shops (I'll do that one in detail in my next post) and we were gone all day.

And yesterday, Saturday, was the plant sale. As members, we aren't allowed to buy anything until 30 minutes before it's over which is at noon but some of us manage to be sneaky enough to get what we want. This year one of the members who has connections donated about 40 or so camellias and I definitely wanted one so a non-member who was there early purchased mine for me. There was only one other thing, a small succulent, that I spirited away before we were allowed to pick what we wanted so I ended up with two succulents, a red yucca, a pot of bulbine (I had this before but it was washed away by the flood), and the camellia because just because I have stuff I still haven't managed to get planted from last weekend's visit to the nursery doesn't mean that I don't want need more. I left a little before noon and I think everything I brought except one small confederate rose had been bought and it might have too.

It was too wet to get anything in the ground Saturday afternoon as we had a thunderstorm with 2 1/2” of rain in the wee hours of Friday night so hopefully it's dried out enough to get some of this stuff in the ground today.