Just before tax day!

So much has happened since January.

1. Swash disappeared without trace.
2. Rex died in the barn for no good reason
3. A very old goat lay down and could not get up again. I nursed him for two weeks. Allen and Shelly gave him antibiotics, and vitamins with an intravenous drip. I gave him an anti-worming med. Nothing helped. He just could not get up. Finally I took him to Doc Walker in the back of the pick-up, and he administered a lethal injection. I went home for lunch. After lunch I was about to take the goat to Nashville for an autopsy when I heard him bleating from the back of the truck. I think he was saying "I'm not dead yet." Doc Walker told me to bring him back and the second time he died peacefully. The autopsy showed he had caprine arthritic encephalitis, with lesions in his nerve pathways. That's why he couldn't get up. It can get passed to young kids by the mother. Mostly it affects old goats ... Sibnce then we have had four new goarts, one of which disappeared.

 4. I got a new puppy from Bob's, next door. He is one of a litter of six abandoned in Estelle's rental house, with mixed half Great Pyr and half farm-dog. Bob caught him first. Then he escaped. Then Zach caught three of the pups and I brought him back to the barn. I gave him a 20' tie line with access to the barn, and the goats, to get him used to everything. On the eight day he tangled up the line and pulled out of the collar. But he decided to stay, and yesterday he was running with Zip. Training! And genes. He will be huge when he grows up. I have called him Sox, after an old dog of my Grandad's. He had the same smell as Sox I (not just generic doggie).



5. At the weekend I bought a 1985 BlueBird yellow school bus, 90 seater. It will be delivered on Friday. At the moment it is a fantasy space. Play space for Oscar? Another writing space? An American icon.

 6. On Sunday, Jana Harper's Image and Text class came and installed the first phase of Wordscape.
Here are some of the word-signs in the truck.

J.L.Austin: "There will be no books in the running brooks until the advent of hydrosemantics."

But check out Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta.