It’s called the primordial pouch, and all cats have it, to some extent. Our mama cat doesn’t really have it, because she’s all big belly on stick legs, so if she has one, it’s either full, or hidden by that belly or hers. Anything Fenrir has is hidden by long, long fur.
What a big boy he is. Fenrir is so small, she can actually sit on the window ledge, walk around and even turn around on it. DahBoy has to prop himself on the plant pot.
In case you are wondering about the yellow flags in the plant pot, I had put them around our avocado tree, with yarn going from one to the other. For some reason, the cats were absolutely insistent on getting into the pot. When one of the branches got broken off, I rigged this up. It sort of worked.
Unfortunately, the avocado did not survive the winter. This was the longest I’ve ever managed to keep one alive; it was about 3-4 years old. *sigh*
I’ve got two more pits in water to start new ones. Hopefully, we’ll manage to grow a tree!
I am really looking forward to our cookout this afternoon, and have been doing some preparations for things beyond hot dogs and corn dogs. :-)
I’ve got 4 foil packets now sitting, ready and waiting, allowing several hours for the seasonings to work their magic. Here is the first one I made up.
The base of this one is a packet of mixed baby potatoes. I stabbed them all over with a fork to allow the flavours in. The rest is mix and match of what I had available. A couple of carrots, a leek, and some asparagus (there was a good sale on those recently. ;-) ). They were tossed with Rosemary Lemon Salt, pepper, garlic powder and olive oil.
This amount ended up being split between two foil packets. I used a double thickness of heavy duty aluminum foil to wrap them in.
This is something I’ve done before, using whatever vegetables and seasonings I had, and cooking it in an oven. Today will be the first time I’m doing this over a fire. I can hardly wait!
I am also trying out two versions of cabbage.
I’d found a recipe and instructions online, modified slightly for what I had on hand. This is one cabbage, outer leaves removed and cut into 8 wedges. The cut sides are spread with softened butter. In with is is half a medium onion, Scarborough Fair Garlic Salt, pepper, and extra garlic powder.
Because you can’t have enough garlic.
These were also wrapped with a double layer of heavy duty aluminum foil.
With this version, the only thing I changed was to toss everything in olive oil, instead of buttering the wedges.
As you can see, some of the leaves of cabbage came loose. Before wrapping it up, I took one out to give it a taste.
Wow.
I am totally still craving it right now. I think this is going to be a future salad; raw cabbage chunks tossed, with the same seasonings, tossed in olive oil. It was so, so good!
You know. When I was a kid, I hated cabbage. We used to grow lots of it, and my mother used it to make sauerkraut, or to wrap cabbage rolls. I don’t recall us ever eating it raw. My mother’s sauerkraut was incredibly strong – at least to me – and I didn’t like it. As for cabbage rolls, I loved the filling. Hated the cabbage. I still am not a fan of cabbage rolls (for a Polish person, that’s heresy! :-D ), and it’s because of the cabbage leaves. I’ve since eaten and enjoyed sauerkraut, cooked in bigos – something my mother never made – but that’s about the only time I’ll eat it.
Anyhow…
These cabbage wedges were also wrapped in double thickness, heavy duty aluminum foil.
Along with these, I have cut a pineapple into slices (with the core still in; otherwise it falls apart) to cook up on the grill for desert.
It should warm up to -4C by the time we’re going to start cooking over the fire. It’s going to be a beautiful day! I am so looking forward to it!
First off, many thanks to Elfidd for mentioning using a snow rake in the comments of my last post. How did I not know about such a tool? After doing some searches and discovering not only what it was, but how affordable it was, I left early to pick up my daughter, so I could stop at the hardware store.
I got their last one. A telescoping version.
I’m extra glad I left so early, though. Road conditions had deteriorated quite a bit since this morning. All the areas that had blowing snow this morning, now had blowing snow over ice and snow – which was trying to melt and freeze at the same time! I was just driving through our little hamlet when I got a warning of what was to come – a car in the ditch! There was no one inside; between a farm house nearby, and our little town in the other direction, this person would be okay. Getting that car out of there is not going to be easy, though. :-(
Driving past it, I could see the car’s tracks. My guess is, as soon as the car hit the ice, it got blown off the road. The wind made driving on the ice more dangerous than the ice itself. (I’ve been eyeballing the trees around the house with trepidation all day!)
We will be leaving early, tomorrow morning.
Anyhow.
The snow rake needed to be assembled, and tools were needed, so I set up in the living room and started working on it.
In seconds after I got my wrench, my tool kit was occupied.
What a silly girl!
I did, however, need to get to the tray of tools under her, so I got her off, moved the foam, took out the tray, moved the other piece of foam, got my pliers and…
That girl is faaaast!
The assembly was much easier than reading the pictographic instructions. Yeesh! But I got it done!
There’s my other helper! Silly boy! :-D
This will be very useful over the next couple of days. :-)
I don’t know if we got any of the predicted snow flurries last night, but there certainly was plenty of blowing snow on the highway this morning!
I did my rounds after driving my daughter to work, and found a few things.
The floor in the sun room was wet. Not just a spot or two, but a large area of damp.
I have a 5 gallon bucket I use to carry the deer/bird feed, and an ice cream bucket I use to scoop the feed into it. I store one inside the other, next to the bin I use to hold the feed. When I picked up the ice cream bucket, I found some water in it, and the bottom was all damp. Looking into the 5 gallon bucket, I found a couple of inches of water. These are all on a plastic couch. Looking up, I could not see where the water was coming from. The lid on the bin was dry and dusty, and the couch seat itself was dry, so that narrowed down where the drip had to be coming from, but I could see nothing.
My daughters informed me that the drip at the corner of one window upstairs is back. This drip was discovered last winter and, from the damage to the wall beneath it, has been dripping for some time. Those windows were installed the summer before we moved out here. They are well installed and sealed, which confirms that the source is from somewhere else – if it had been from the old windows, the drip would have stopped after the new were installed. We already figured that, but it’s good to have a confirmation.
By the time I got back from dropping my younger daughter off at work, my older daughter had already climbed out onto the roof of the living room – in this wind! – and cleared snow on the upper roof (which cannot be safely climbed not) as much as she could, as well as clearing the eaves-trough. There is an ice dam that forms on the roof edge. There is a visible discoloration in the snow in an area that might be where the melt is getting through the shingles, but it’s not possible to see exactly where it’s coming in right now. Once things are clear enough, the girls plan to look around to find the source of the leak and seal it.
During my rounds, I checked out a couple other areas we need to keep an eye on.
The second story roof on this side is much steeper than the other, but it’s also North and West facing, so it doesn’t melt away as quickly as the South and East facing sections. Here, you can see where the branches are brushing the roof. This is one of the trees that the arborist will take down for us in the spring.
This is where the log part of the house and the Old Kitchen roofs meet. Every year, this ice dam forms. So far, there is no sign of any leaking because of it.
I made sure to look at the roof over the sun room, and above it, and those are mostly clear of snow. No ice dams, but also no way to see if any shingles have lifted or anything like that. Last year, we had water dripping in through the bathroom ceiling, and never found where it was coming from.
It was while I was in the bathroom that I saw a drip through the window, in the sun room. I was able to see a water drop on the ceiling, this time. From where it is, it would be why the floor is wet. There was still nothing visible on the area above where the feed bucket sits.
This has been another confirmation for me. I had been wondering about sections of peeling paint on the ceiling of the sun room. It is, indeed, water damage. Once again, this shows that there have been leaks since long before we moved here. In fact, I half remember seeing the peeling paint in the sun room when we were last here and stayed with my late father, in 2015. Since the upstairs was closed off completely, in the winter, to conserve heat, no one would have seen the drip up there at all. My father would not have been able to see the dripping in the sun room, either, and there was no one else around who would have caught either. That would have been just as true while my mother was still living here, from what I have been able to tell.
Well, all we can do is patch it up for now. My mom has been talking about a new roof for the house, and selling off some of the scrap metal around the farm to help fund it. The place is definitely due for one!
We have one more colder day, then in 2 days it’s supposed to go – and stay – above freezing.
Which means, for the next week or so, we’ll be keeping a close eye out for drips and shingle damage.
The other of our shy calico/tortie siblings, posing nicely for the camera.
Of the Guildenstern or Rosencrantz pair, I think I’ll settle on calling this one Rosencrantz. They can be hard to tell apart, but this one has quite a bit more orange on her body.
It’s always interesting, looking out our bathroom window into the sun room.
You never know who might be looking back.
Nicky the Nose kept starting at me, unmoving from that position, for quite some time!
What a face. :-D
The cat pile in the cuddle corner consists of Butterscotch and three of her babies; Bob, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Butterscotch is doing very well, with only the occasional cough/sneeze. Her eye was still leaking a bit, yesterday, and looked clear today.
Doom Guy, on the other hand, sounds terrible. His nose is plugged, and every now and then he starts making these weird coughing/sneezing/raspy noises when he breathes. I do think he’s actually getting better, but it’s hard to tell. Unfortunately, he wants lots of cuddles, at the least opportune times. The backs of my legs must be covered with scratches from him! His way of letting us know he wants up is by standing on his back legs and grabbing a leg. Which is rather painful! He also has not figured out that we can’t pick him up at all, if he’s attached himself to the back of our legs.
At least his energy levels are better. :-/
The Outsider, meanwhile, is quite enjoying being an inside cat.
Her inside cat name is now Fenrir, and she has been expanding her explorations zones.
This is a problem.
She can fit behind the fish tank, which was quite a surprise. Yes, she’s tiny, but I didn’t think she was THAT tiny!
She has also managed to get up into the storage space above where the tank is, which was discovered by the sound of her landing in the tank lid, on the way down.
That space is jammed full of unknown stuff that we have not been able to get to; not very high on the priority list of things to clear away and pack up. There is at least one lamp up there, though. We can just see the top of it. It’s now tipped over and leaning against something we can’t see.
She is also determined to get up the shelf against the wall, next to my crafting table, as well as trying to get to the window on the wall. The side where the sill is narrower, of course, and too small for her to actually walk on. I have some stacking shelves on my work table, and several times now, I’ve come in to find it partly knocked down because she’s tried to use it to get to the top of the shelf against the wall. That top of that shelf has all sorts of breakable stuff on it, including two oil lamps and and antique electric lamp, among other things. I’ve been trying to position things to block the cats, but that doesn’t seem to stop them. DahBoy is also determined to get up there, but at least he hasn’t tried using my table shelves to do it. He was about 4 times what Fenrir does.
He and Fenrir are getting along better, but every now and then, he decides to chase her. I usually discover this by the sudden pain of being climbed as she runs up me to get away from him.
I am riddled with little cat scratches all over!
Fenrir has also been horrible about getting under our feet, and has been stepped on (though sometimes, just her long fur) a few times, now. Mostly by me. :-( Interestingly, when that happens and she howls and makes like she’s about to bat at the offending foot, our Mama cat goes on the attack and chases Fenrir. After this happened a few times, it seems like she’s defending me from Fenrir!
I’m really hoping to train her out of climbing my work table – and getting under our feet! – soon!
I swung by the lake this morning, after dropping my daughter off at work.
The fishing sheds are still there – from what I know, they were supposed to be off by three days ago! In the distance, I could see some people walking on the ice to a vehicle. There’s been a lot of plowing of snow, done, clearing “roads” to various areas. The open water that was visible the last time I got pictures from here, due to a water main break nearby, is all frozen over.
This morning, I finally started getting the weather alerts for blizzard conditions tonight, in the southeast of our province. The weather system is blowing up from the US, and there is an expected 10-20cm of snow.
Except locally. Our area is supposed to get light snow flurries overnight.
Starting from about a week from now, temperatures are supposed to go above freezing, and stay there. I’ve been reading about the ice breakers already hard at work on the major rivers to the south of us, that drain into this lake. As the ice will be breaking up and snow melting faster in the US and the South of our province than here, ice dams tend to form, leading to flooding. The ice breakers are working to prevent that and will work their way up towards the lake, as quickly as they can.
Here, the ice will soon start to “rot”, and form into candle ice. This can be very dangerous, as the ice still looks thick and solid, but easily breaks apart. On the lake, at least, the tides will break it apart and start pushing the ice onto the shore. I happened to be on this beach one time, many years ago, as the tide was coming in, and it was really quite dramatic!
It’s already warming up nicely this morning; we even had fog, as we drove to town, closer to the lake. We’re supposed to reach +1C this afternoon, but it already feels that warm in the sun. The outside cats are definitely liking the warmer temperatures, and spending less time in the sun room.
I’m looking forward to when I can empty that room and clean it out, though. The warmer it gets, the worse the cat urine smell. :-( Ah, well. All in good time!
The Re-Farmer 