Potpourri; a good soaking and new fawns

Into baskets, trays, jars, dishes it all goes. We pick things up by the handfuls, filling our pockets on every walk. It gets so bad sometimes I realize I have been walking with my eyes glued to the ground so long I haven't a clue to what is in front of me. If I don't look down, I'll miss some treasure on the ground, but by constantly checking the ground, I miss the birds in the air and the lay of the land. The first thing to do on getting home is unload pockets; however, some treasures go through the washing machine anyway. One day I found a bright purple glass foot and corner from an old serving piece. Another day it was porcelain foot with gilding, from a long ago shattered bowl. There are many fragments of white ironstone and blue and white china, especially a lot from a white pattern with blue line at the edge. There is some of the old German peasant red, green, and blue floral pattern. I found a tiny doll's hand and foot at the gate to the Ranch house. We see tons of crockery pieces, glass of every color, and sometimes there are interesting metal pieces. Once I found a fancy filigreed metal thing, lost it, and a year later found it again a mile away.

Where is all this, in a trash pile? Some are from old places where old broken things were obviously thrown out here at the Ranch. However, most of the fragments are everywhere, on every trail and road, and around the houses. This is one of the most fascinating delights about living in an old homestead. Over the years many things were broken, tossed out, hidden, lost, and idly dropped. Once I found a gold locket where Mrs. Fromme's burn pile had been. Upset over its loss, she may have looked high and low for it. Or perhaps after her death the locket was in the pocket of an old, tossed out dress. Surviving the bonfire, it lay in the debris for years and years.

There are some things not so pleasant to discover. People before us were careless with their metal. A tire with a slow leak announces a square nail, fence staple, or a loose hand with modern nails. Once, putting on lipstick in a rush to get to a meeting I swerved off the road for a second. The "pow!" of air leaving a tire told me I might as well take my shoes off and get ready to get dirty because I wasn't going any further for quite a while. Some genius threw baling wire up in the oak trees around the corrals. It was a little dangerous to ride horseback in there until it all was found, and even now, I don't feel completely safe.

The Ranch was under an inland sea millions of years ago and there are fossils on the terraced hills. Some are heart shaped, some are early sand dollars, perfectly round, and others are elongated spirals. Large pieces of rock contain thousands of wonderful forms. After six generations of Mavericks we now only pick up fossils we just can't bear to leave where they're found. At the house they cascade over a big rock in the garden, decorate all family cement artwork done before 1920, hold down my papers, operate as bookends, and work pretty well on misbehaving cows. There are fossils on the mantel in the Big Room, fancied and placed there by some family member years ago. We don't move those.Bones seem to flow like the fossils and glass. Who's to say a possum skull isn't even finer than a deer tibia? Bring them all in! Vertebrae from birds to Longhorn steers pile up on the dashboard of my pickup. The skull and arthritic pelvis of Genevieve's mother, venerated doe of 17, are in a basket in the cellar. The skulls and horns of Longhorn cows make a bovine ancestral gallery in the barn. The shapes and forms of bones, some very delicate, some massive, are endlessly fascinating. Once when buying gas on the interstate I was stopped by some inner city teenagers on their way to summer camp. They wanted to know what were all the bones and rocks in the pickup. We made a thorough tour of it all (there was even a feral pig tusk for them). I watched them measure the sizes and compare weights. They asked if it was possible that they might see those kinds of things where they were going to camp. They were headed in the right direction; if they kept their eyes open, I bet they saw plenty.Bebe FenstermakerA very early morning thunderstorm sent the dogs scrambling under the nearest piece of furniture and kept me monitoring the open windows. At a certain point I closed a couple and then settled back to finish out the night to the wonderful sound of rain on the roof. We got a good soaking. When I got up the air smelled so fresh and all the vegetation had a clean, green look to it. Later Bebe, a neighbor, and I spent the morning birdwatching in the North Pasture. In addition to binoculars, each of us carried a pair of heavy-duty clippers to clear passage through the cedar. On more than one occasion a branch would drop its load of rainwater on one of us. We were particularly looking for Black-capped vireos (BCV) and Golden-cheeked warblers (GCW). Since both were nesting, we were pleasantly surprised to hear a BCV calling. As always we paid our respects to the "pink trees," Madronas. They must be close to 100 years old, now. On our way back to the pickup we collected old sotol stalks. Bebe and I will be busy this summer turning them into walking sticks. They will make good raffle items at the Native Plant meetings and as sale items at the Cibilo Nature Center's "Almost Native Plant Sale" next spring.I saw quite a sight looking out the kitchen window a week ago: Genevieve with a fawn maybe a day old. I walked out to give her a handout and that tiny little creature came teetering very earnestly down the incline to my outstretched hand. It smelled my fingertips and briefly let me scratch around on it. I was real excited when I first saw she had only one child. It always takes me a moment to remember she only brings one at a time out in the beginning. So . . . I tucked that excitement away and waited. Sure enough, several days later the cats, dogs, and I saw two. Genevieve wandered off, leaving them to the mercies of us. Russ, the pink cat, cautiously crept up to one of the fawns lying under an old branch out in the sun. He got within striking distance and proceeded to gently pat at it with his paw. Brassy, the other feline, simply stood back all puffed up, watching wide-eyed. The fawn, finally fed up with the pestering, got up and tottered off into the brush. The last time I was able to get one of them to smell my fingers it had obviously gotten the message that that smell was one to avoid at all cost. Now in the late afternoons and early mornings Genevieve will bring one at a time out for a little dashing about on the "lawn," or what's left of it.Sissy Fenstermaker