’m at the time of year where most of what I do is yard work. What else has been going on? I’ll talk about the heat, but so far this year, as my neighbor and I discussed earlier this week, this year has been comparatively temperate.

San Antonio House

• The grass is still holding up against the heat. We’re still watering as allowed to do our best to keep it strong for the rest of this month and August.
• Mr. L has been working on some wood repair/replacement over the last week.

The Ranch

• The meeting with the Parks and Wildlife guy was interesting and informative. We have a little native prairie grass near the pond that we want to encourage. He also said we had a LOT of poison ivy (my skin could have told him that).
• One thing he mentioned was the value of a feeder for bringing all types of wildlife to my game camera which I recently purchased. I have purchased a feeder (but it was missing the legs, so I need to exchange it for a complete kit).
• He also suggested sinking a 20 gallon container into the ground and training the camera on that. Apparently that will bring birds. Mr. L mentioned we’ll need to put a cage over it to keep the hogs out. We haven’t done that yet, but I’m considering it.
• Did you know you can attract bobcats with a perfumed rag? He says to stake the rag so the cat doesn’t carry it off, but apparently any kind of perfume will attract them.
• So I have several ideas on ways I can attract animals to the game camera, which will help me determine what types of animals we have out there and maybe how many. And the recommended number of cameras is one for every 113 acres, so I only need one camera.

The Store

Nothing remarkable here. I’ve been mowing every two weeks.

The Shop

Mr. L continues to work on the lighting and space making.

Central Texas House

• Did you see the photo a little bit about about the house paint scheme? Mr. L has been doing a phenomenal job. If you don’t understand how much work he’s done, you don’t understand what goes into a return to bare wood paint job on a 114 year old house.
• On the picture, the area between the bottom half of two windows is painted. Mr. L stripped that to bare wood (see the area to the right of the windows for what bare wood looks like), then he repaired damaged shingles before puttying gaps, primering, and painting.