Sunday, May 5, 2019

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.




20 comments:

  1. Wow! I love the Ag Fair- those types of exhibits are my favorite things at the County Fair. And the animals are always so interesting. I'm so glad you got to go. The plant sale sounds wonderful too but I can't buy any more plants until I figure out what to do about some of the many invasives in this yard. Ellen, I am in despair! I am actually thinking about hiring someone to help.

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    1. I know what you mean. I'm at that point for the shop yard with all the hackberry trees, pecan trees, wild grape vines, and poison ivy growing and taking over the fence around it. It's just more than I can do.

      I have no idea where I'm going to put most of these new plants.

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  2. We will have to wait until the end of September for the county fair here. It's always set up at the end of our street because the stables and the field area is perfect for it. Thank the Goddess that we live in the county seat. Then about a week after that the pumpkin festival and street fair happens. It gets very busy in the fall. Wish we had a Spring fair. That would be great.

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  3. That certainly makes you appreciate honey and realize how valuable it is!! I love county fairs and am so glad these have not been replaced by some weird technology. Keep the faith on that monitor.

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    1. anything medical - especially tubes and stickers and stuff makes me weak in the knees, You are a champion, Ellen! The fair, the animals the flowers but mostly the pencil shaving skirt are all pretty wonderful. Sun is shining and everything looks great over yonder! Amazing about the bees and honey, also that little zebra is so pretty!

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  5. a belated happy birthday! Fair looks like it was great! and yes, I'm back to blogging, but at my old blogger site: https://agentlebreeeze.blogspot.com/

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  6. Those are some heavy duty sensors for that heart monitor. I felt like I was peeling the leftovers off my front and back for a week after I got home from my last hospital stay, and even though I struggled to get them off, they were penny ante hook ups compared to yours.
    Learning how valuable honey is, ya'all should be happy I'm allergic to bees and can't eat honey. More for you. Don't mess with my maple syrup, though!

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  7. The AG fair looks like it was a lot of fun. You had a very busy week and i hope that kept your mind off of having to wear the monitor.

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  8. I love AG fairs - ours don't pop up until late summer. It's interesting that so many girls and young women are picking up the reins (pun intended) of AG business. We are not afraid of hard work. Wowza on those monitors! And you have to stick 5 of them on? Hope they do the job. I've never considered that porcupines could be part of a petting zoo. I am inordinately fond of them (and hedgehogs).

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    1. this was the youth fair, kids who are in the Ag programs in school so with school ending that's probably why it's held in May.

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  9. I hope that monitor is not too much of a bother - maybe you are already done with it?
    I have my appointment in late June and from the looks of it, will have a long term thingy as well (june usually is a hot month and I cannot take holidays).

    Great reporting and pictures from the fair. My dad used to go to these for work and we often were brought along but as he stayed from dawn to dusk and had little time for us we would get bores and fall asleep somewhere.

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    1. one week down, two more to go on the monitor though I called today to have them send my the anti-allergic electrodes since I've developed red welts and a couple of spots that look like developing sores. hopefully they will give you the one that just has two electrode patches and no wires, just a battery pack and a phone that transmits the data. that's what I thought I was going to get but I guess my insurance cheaped out so I got the one with 5 electrodes and wires.

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  10. Certainly a full week! On weeks when you don't accomplish much, you still accomplish much more than I can even dream of accomplishing. Especially liked seeing the skirt made of colored pencil shavings in the midst of all the fair splendor. The animals and the quilts are my favorite part of a fair.

    Your skin looks just like mine. When I had cataract surgery, I developed red welts on my face from the supposedly anti-allergic tape that held the eye protector to my skin. Same when I had skin cancers removed and had to use tape to hold the sterile gauze in place for a few days.

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  11. Wait, do we have the same birthday??? May 3? Happy birthday to you! What a full week!

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    1. close but no. mine is April 30. Friday was the first day we both had clear.

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  12. I don't blame that pig for trying to get out of there. I'd be doing the same! And a porcupine?! Poor thing, cooped up in a cage.

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    1. there were several different animals in cages in the enclosure, not quite tame enough I guess.

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  13. Everyone gets a blue ribbon? I can't help it -- that just seems odd and a little wrong to me. I always enjoyed competing for a blue, and even when I didn't win (all of the time, actually) it was fine.

    The Houston livestock show and rodeo's just too much for me. I much prefer the county fairs, and there are some good ones. I laughed at the zebra. I went to the hill country last weekend, and somewhere along Alt90 I passed a place that had zebras in the field, along with some other exotics. I can't remember exactly where it was, but it would have been close to your area. Maybe it was the same zebra!

    I just read that with yesterday's rains Big Creek in Needville exceeded the level it reached during Harvey. I hope all that mess stayed east of you. It looks like the rest of this week isn't going to be so good for yard work.

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    1. they had bigger fancier white and lavender ribbons for the actual winners, but yeah, like the participation trophies in kid's sports. Americans are so coddled and protected it's amazing that they ever learn how to handle anything negative. I've passed that exotic animal ranch many times up and down alt90. I don't know it the petting zoo was connected to the carnival or just a separate attraction. no charge to go in but you could buy feed for them if you wanted to.

      we escaped the pounding though it did rain off and on all day yesterday and quite hard for a few brief periods. I heard that a neighbor's daughter's house in Richmond got some water in it and Houston had flooding being surrounded by new subdivisions that are built up. a friend of mine had a hard time getting home because of flooded streets but her neighborhood wasn't flooded which did during Harvey though not her house.

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