Today is turning out a bit cooler than yesterday.

The outside cats don’t mind at all, and have been widening their horizons. This morning, I only saw 10 of them, even though there was no kibble left in the kibble house at all. The warmer temperatures has them needing fewer calories to keep themselves going.

When I put seed out for the birds and deer, our three usual visitors took off. They seem to have formed an actual little herd together. The piebald has always been a loner until now, but the mother and her yearling seem to have accepted her as part of their group.

Even if they do still bicker over the seeds.

Since digging the path to the sign cam, I now head over to switch the memory card right after putting the seed down. The deer usually come back to the feeding station right away, so my going in that direction seemed to confuse them! They went onto the road, milled around the intersection, then ran off down a different road.

While I was switching out the memory card, I heard noises.

They were running back again! Then they stopped and watched me while I finished with the trail cam. As I walked back to the house, they came running along the road again. There’s one spot along the north fence they have been able to use to use to get into our yard, and that’s what they were heading for.

They’ve been in front of our living room window, on and off, ever since.

While things were still below freezing, I decided to keep working on the path to the fire pit.

This is as far as I got, yesterday. You can see the shape of the BBQ under the remains of the tent – and the piece of tree that fell on it!

The tent, not the BBQ. The tent protected both the picnic table and the BBQ from damage.

To the right, there’s a bar with a handle on it sticking out of the snow. That’s where the fire pit is. That handle is for the cooking grill.

This is why I didn’t want to wait until it was warmer. I’m standing on the cat path to the storage house to take this photo. There’s a low spot that fills with water, and it’s still too chilly for my rubber boots. 😉

Here, I’m standing where the path curves, so the rest of it can be seen. I’d dug out most of the fire pit by this point. Yesterday, I had dug to just past the big maple tree.

We have a fire pit again! Yay!

Now that it’s uncovered, the sun should melt away the remaining snow in it rather quickly. There are two concrete blocks on the sides, and a the support for the cooking grill is in a half-block. Those will warm up quite a bit, once the sun hits them.

I don’t know where my parents got those glazed bricks around the fire pit. They are everywhere, and I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have them. I like them but, my goodness, they are dangerous! So incredibly slippery! I accidentally stepped on them more than a few times while shovelling, and almost lost my footing, every time.

The space around the fire pit still needs to be widened, so there’s room to set up chairs or even just stand around a fire and not be too close to it. From here, I’ll dig to the collapsed tent to access the BBQ and finally put the new over on it. The snow on the fire pit side of the tent isn’t as deep as around the other side.

There are a couple of large, hollowed out spaces under a nearby spruce tree. I think they are where deer had lain down in the snow.

Then a path needs to be dug to the wood pile.

Critters have already made their own path to the pile!

There’s a cover over most of the wood, so if we did want to do a cookout, we have dry wood available.

Here is the entire path, looking back towards the house.

There is something absolutely delightful about walking down these paths, through hip and waist deep snow. They’re like some sort of secret passageway!

I fully expect to see hoof and paw prints down here, soon. 😀

Now we just need an excuse to have a cook out! For the past few years, we’ve hardly been able to use the fire pit at all, due to dry conditions. Winter has been the only safe time to light a fire.

Hhhmmm… Now I’m thinking of what we’ve got that would do well, cooked over a fire… LOL

The Re-Farmer