The Yamhill Swinery

11/02/2025

The trick or treating is over, and there are several large gourds sitting on your porch. What now? UPCYCLE THEM! My crack team of vegetable recyclers will make fertilizer of your produce after...

11/02/2025

Feed the piggies!

The trick or treating is over, and there are several large gourds sitting on your porch. What now? UPCYCLE THEM! My crack team of vegetable recyclers will make fertilizer of your produce after...

08/13/2024

I CAN WALK!

In s l o w m o t i o n. For 5-10 minutes. Sometimes. Then I sit down.
I do uncomfortable exercises. Then I sit down and wear an ice pack.

I'm sure a meniscus is a good thing, but it has a dark side.

07/22/2024

Just call me “Hop-along.”

07/08/2024

I am not in Redmond, WA. But I am at the Hillsboro clinic of VEG. It’s like Zoomcare for animals. Mostly one big open space, with exam stations and a sitting area and dog beds EVERYWHERE. There are other patients here: the first one I noticed was a goat. Yep, a full grown, two big curled horns goat. And a Dachshund one space away. Both surrounded by their own people, because Thing 1 here is they don’t separate you from your pet.

I am here with Hunter, who was making almost chirping noises, which I took to be stridor. He stopped almost as soon as he started, but I’ve never heard anything like it. Definitely no out of him. So here we are, 1 a.m. He’s very subdued, but not making any more strange noises. I’m still glad we’re here.

(That’s my sweet-talking-the-dog face.)

03/13/2024

💔
We’ve lost our beloved Chi Chi—Poitin, formally (there’s a “ch” sound in there, you’ll just have to trust me). She was the most lovable and personable little pig, and had so many wonderful traits to pass on to her offspring, if she’d had the chance. I so wanted to see her be a mother.

She abruptly fell ill Friday, and by the next day I was on the phone with the vet. We pulled out all the stops. With the help of a friend, I even got some IV fluids and dextrose into her, trying to stay ahead of the weakening that comes with no intake. Two different antibiotics, vitamins, iron, a steroid and an NSAID…nothing did more than give her a brief lift in a miserable few days. I hated to see her suffer so, but I wanted a light at the end of the tunnel. I guess, for her, there finally is.

Maybe ”when pigs fly” is when they become angels.

03/12/2024

2:22 and the count is now 9. Numbers 6, 7, and 8 made me go looking for them.

03/12/2024

In the middle of a dark and stormy night, it’s Pig o’clock. We have five and counting. Mom Pig—Ivy—refuses to stay in the stall with the heat lamp. Well, who doesn’t like a challenge?

12/23/2023

My first Christmas tree in years. It’s phony as a $3 bill, the lights work, mostly. There’s an earth angel at the top, who came to me from Uganda. She’s unlit, doing her angel thing with no spotlight, as real angels do in this world.

And I know somewhere, someone is looking at their string of pink pig lights and thinking: dunno, look kinda orange to me. That is not happening here and with me. I couldn’t be more pleased!

12/09/2023

I have read a hypothesis that the pig was shunned in early monotheism not solely because of the risks of eating pork in the days before refrigeration, but also—perhaps—because the sow represented earthy fertility far separated from the celestial divine.

Maybe.

The bud

08/23/2023

Here in the Great Northwet!

How easily we forget…

Every bench should have one of these! What do you think?