October has been a wonderful month with conventions, and several visitors associated with conventions. John Culver came home from Mountain Peak with us to become our latest resident at PG (so the Current Residents page has been updated). Here’s a picture of John with Jack, Elton and Raymond taken today. Also today, Patty Dale and Josh Maki visited with Samuel’s niece from Mexico, Marisol. Dale is recovering from chemo. Sure glad he felt up to a visit. The final picture taken today… we have a new family working with us – Marcos and Lety Valdez, and their daughter Hannah. Marcos works at the barn with David and Travis Bolt, and Lety works part-time at the senior residence.
Teresa and Naomi had birthdays in October. Naomi’s nephew Ed Lloyd came for her birthday.
Elton had his 98th birthday. Karen was able to join us by Skype from Columbia. Margaret Gunderson came from Connecticut. We went for a boat ride on Lake Conroe. Elton is holding our granddaughter Katelyn Kelleher. 
Other visitors included Barry, shown with Elton and Roger and then with Loren, George with Esther, LeRoy and his niece Virgie, David with his dad Elton, and Shari with her niece Michelle. 
My cousin Gailen and her husband Roy Miles visited from Virginia. Gailen taught us something… we were aware of a “pride” of lions or a “gaggle” of geese or a “flock” of sheep, but we hadn’t heard of a “murder” of crows. This month we found out where that comes from! We lost our entire pecan crop. To be fair, much of it was lost earlier in the summer due to scab from the very wet spring. But in September we still had some crop left. Then the crows and squirrels moved in, in large numbers. The propane device shown is a crow cannon. They fire loudly about once every 30 seconds, sounding like a shot gun. We use 4 of these to try to chase off the crows, so the pecan orchard sounds like a war zone. Even with the cannons and our hunting efforts, they got the rest of the pecans. The pecan husks shown were emptied by crows. There are a lot of deer this year also, but they don’t bother the pecans too much.
Ken
