Another sick day for me today, so not much accomplished!  My husband put out the food and water for the animals outside this morning.  Now that the snow is pretty much gone and the risk of falling is reduced, he wants to do that more often, as the pain allows.  He informed me that we were now out of deer feed and almost out of cat kibble, which meant another trip into town – our own hamlet for the deer feed, then the next town over for the cat kibble.  We can get the kibble locally, but the brand they carry is something even the outside cats don’t like.  I don’t mind going farther afield.  It gives my younger daughter and I a chance to play Pokemon Go for at least long enough to get some achievements in the game.  Still, I look forward to when I’m not the only one with a valid driver’s license!

When we got home, I pulled up near the house to make it easier to unload the bags, then we took advantage of the situation to clean up the garbage and recycling (yes, I keep recycling bags for sorting in our van, too! :-D ), refill the cooler we use to keep water bottles (that came in REALLY handy when we had to keep adding coolant the day the hose broke) and reorganize things a bit.  So the back of the van is now all open and ready for when we do our monthly bulk shopping.

It didn’t take much to clean up the van, yet it was enough to wipe me out.  I may be feeling a bit better, but wow, am I running out of energy fast.  By the time we were done, I had broken into a sweat and my chest was on fire.  Ugh.

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate that the girls are with us to keep things going when I’m out of commission?  Well, even if I have, it’s worth saying again.  I so appreciate that they chose to stay with us.  They didn’t have to move out here.  They could have stayed behind and done their own thing.  Instead, they chose to stay and help us.

I am so blessed to have such amazing daughters.

Who also happen to be good cooks.  Supper is smelling so good!

On the wildlife front, once again, we had very few deer visits.  My husband had to get up insanely early, when it got too painful to be lying down, so he was there to see a couple in the wee hours.  We didn’t see more again until about 7pm.  I had hoped all our regulars would keep coming back; I really wanted to see how the antlers on the young males are coming in.  Hopefully, we’ll still get visits from them.

The squirrels are chasing each other all over the place, but only one seemed at all interested in the seeds.

I love those little paws!

We also got a new type of bird today!

There was only one of this greyer one.  The rest were much darker.

I’ve gone looking through my bird book, and there’s nothing quite like them in there.

There were quite a few of the darker ones.  They are slightly larger than the redpolls.  Their behavior is also more… sedate, shall we say.  They seem downright chill, compared to the non-stop motion of the redpolls, chickadees and grosbeaks.

If anyone knows what they might be, please let me know in the comments!  I’d love to know what they are.

Then Hungry Girl and Barbecue showed up.

At first, it was just Barbecue on her own, then Hungry Girl came trotting in from behind the house.  She was much more antsy, though.

It didn’t take long before she took off into the garden area and stayed away, though I did see her grazing on the far side of the garden for a while.

Barbecue ran off, too, then came back for a bit, before finally taking off for good.

I noticed something interesting as they were leaving.

As the more shaded areas of snow slowly melt, we now have a kind of long, narrow “river” of melt water running across the opening to the garden, and then a bit past the spruce grove.  After that, it’s still ice and snow, where it only gets sunlight for a short time in the mornings.

Both Hungry Girl and Barbecue carefully skirted around the water, to where it was still ice and snow, then cut across to the row of apple trees and into the garden.  Going through the water would have been much shorter and faster, but I guess even deer feet don’t like getting cold and wet, if they can avoid it! :-D

I look forward to seeing who shows up outside our window, tomorrow. :-)

The Re-Farmer