photo of the day

New Lights… mostly

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Some time back, my older brother and his wife generously passed on items to me that used to belong to my brother’s late MIL.  Among them were outdoor LED Christmas lights, and a timer.  Today… er… (glances at the time)… yesterday, I took them out to add to the stings of white lights we already have at the fence line near the gate.

I had two areas I was considering to put the timer.  One was in the garage, where the main power cord is plugged in.  I figured, if I were able to get the timer to sit at the window, I could set it to turn on from dusk until dawn.

Turns out, I can’t do that.

The timer’s plug in area is slightly recessed and rectangular in shape.  The power cord’s plug is round and rather large.  It doesn’t fit into the space.

The other possibility was to put it between the new strings of lights and the set of white lights I was adding them on to. This way, the white lights would be on all the time, while the Christmas ones would only turn on at night.  I even had a clear plastic bag to put over the timer to protect it from the elements, while still allowing the sensor to detect light levels.

Nope.  I could plug a string of lights into the timer, but the timer’s plug has three prongs, and the light strings can only accept two prong plugs.

So I just added them on, as is.

It turned out to be 4 strings of lights in total, already plugged into each other.  Which was just fine by me!  I strung them out and affixed them to the barbed wire with zip ties.  Though they had power running to them, there was too much sunlight for me to see how they looked. I waited until dark to go back and see them, since there’s too much brush in the way for us to see them from the house.

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So… they look just fine…

Except for the gap.

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I did test these in the house a few days ago, when I was deciding what to do with them.  They were all working fine.  I was all set to put them up in the sun room and had even started to unroll the bundle a bit, before I realized I didn’t have a way to affix them the way I had in mind.  Finding an entire string of lights out was a bit of a surprise!  Checking it out with a flashlight, I could see nothing to tell me why it wasn’t lit.

So I’ll be going back tomorrow with something to cut the zip ties, and remove the string that’s not lit up.

I was rather impressed by how much the white ones light up the area around them.  I definitely want to pick up more of those, when I can.

Yeah, I know, it’s not even Halloween yet, so it’s early for Christmas lights.  I figure, better to get them up now, before the snow arrives to stay.  :-)

The Re-Farmer

What’s that up there?

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A few last photos my daughter got of the deer that visited us a couple of days ago.

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I always kinda wonder what it is they are looking at, when they look up at our roof!

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Pretty sure he’s looking at those crazy humans in the window, too.

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Maybe one of the cats are up on the roof again? :-D

What a beauty!

The Re-Farmer

How did that happen?

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Just look at these guys.

20181016.innocent.kitties So cute.

So innocent.

Such sneaks!

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The bucket was just refilled a couple of days ago.  A new bag filled it just a couple of inches from the top.

It’s now at about the half way mark.

Taking into account what was used since it was refilled, about a quarter of a big bag of cat food got eaten overnight.

The bucket is now kept in the Old Kitchen.

The Re-Farmer

A Good Day – and critters!

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Before I go into today’s events, I wanted to share this photo from a few days back.

2018-10-robinsI had been watching the birds at the feeder and noticed some much bigger birds under the apple tree.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many robins, all together (there were several more that I was unable to get in a photo) .  I also didn’t know robins like to eat crab apples!

Between the birds and the deer, any fallen apples get cleaned up, real quick! Continue reading →

One and a half bathrooms

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So when someone from the city is talking about the rural communities, I don’t believe they truly understand what they’re talking about (at least I didn’t) .

Take us for example; we went from an in City dwelling which had two and a half bathrooms to a single indoor bathroom dwelling with optional emergency options… so far, I haven’t had to go that badly yet.

A Day of Rest

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We try to keep Sundays as our day of rest.  It has been made easier by colder temperatures and a continuous, if light, snowfall.

Last night, I found a way to prop the doors into the sun room so we could let the kittens in overnight, but the skunk should not be able to squeeze in and leave a mess for us in the morning.

It seems to have worked, though I suppose we can’t really be sure that the skunk didn’t come in and out without us seeing.  All I can say for sure is, no “presents” on the floor for me to clean up!

20181014.feeding.time My husband wasn’t up to doing the cats this morning, so I took care of it.  Here are the moms, three of Butterscotch’s kittens, and one of Beep Beep’s, plus The Outsider.

I’m fascinated by the markings on Rosencrantz or Guildenstern.

Bob has filled out so much, he’s almost as big as Jim, now!

It seems the kittens have decided today is a day of rest, too!

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I’m not sure if this is 6 or 7 kittens.  There’s that ear behind Doom Guy’s back.  I can’t tell if it’s attached to The Outsider or not. :-D

I am appreciating being able to rest today, as tomorrow is going to be a long one for me.  I will be taking my mother to a follow up appointment for her surgery at the smaller, slightly closer, city.  Then I plan to go to the RCMP and file a report about the vandalism on our lock.  Whoever is doing it may think it’s just a nasty trick to play on us, but this is a potential safety issue, if we ever had to evacuate suddenly.  There’s nothing the police can do at this point, but as long as there’s a file, there will be a past record, for when it happens again.

What a pain.

The Re-Farmer

There’s a reason we lock our gate

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You would think, living in the middle of nowhere, we wouldn’t have to worry about things like vandalism and security as much as when we lived in the downtown area of a major city.  In many ways, that is true.  However, we are certainly not immune, and in some ways, folks in the country have more to worry about.

I won’t get into the reasons here, but having to put locks on our gates has been quite disheartening.  It is what it is, however, and we just deal.

Like today.

My younger daughter and I loaded up the van to go to the dump, then she walked ahead to unlock the gate while I drove over.

She couldn’t unlock it.  The key wouldn’t even go into the lock.

This would be why.

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What you’re seeing is after my daughter used a knife to try and clear it, to no avail.  Not that it would have made a difference.  Even if she had been able to get the key in, the glue would have prevented it from turning.

(The black, by the way, is from a graphite lubricant I used when the weather was making the lock a bit stiff, about a month ago.)

While we were at the gate, a candidate for some local elections came by to drop something off, so she saw what we were dealing with, too – and later saw my daughter getting into the van with the bolt cutters, after we got through.

So our trip to the dump was followed by a trip into town to get a new lock.

This is the second lock we’ve had to replace.  I don’t expect it to be the last, unfortunately.

Frustrating.

The Re-Farmer

Settling in, little by little

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I did my rounds around the yard this evening, and it’s really something to see how everything is settling in for the winter.

While I have been fighting those invasive vines all over the place all summer, there is one area where I am keeping them.  They are, after all, quite pretty, when under control!  They have gone to seed, now, and are all covered with lovely little puffs.

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I spent some time going around the yard, picking up the fallen branches, and going through where I cleaned things up in the maple grove.

When talking to my family about what I was finding, I mentioned the rows of trees that were planted too close together, with many dying because of it, and how I wanted to eventually transplant the three poor little tamarack trees.  One family member told me to just cut them down to give the other trees space.

Nope!  Not going to do that.  I really want to save these trees.

This is one of the reasons why.

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They turn a most glorious golden yellow in the fall!

In the future, I would really love to plant more of them!

It’s not unusual, when I make my way through the yard, for me to have a cat follow me.  That’s typically when Rolando Moon makes an appearance.  Otherwise, it’s Beep Beep or Butterscotch.

Today, I had two cats following me!

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Beep Beep and her boy!

Later, my younger daughter helped me move some leaf piles onto the flower garden by the Old Kitchen.  The girls have been raking the grass, but with the latest drop of leaves, it’s rather yard to tell in some places! :-D  We are starting to use the leaves as mulch in different areas as well as adding more to the garden – and that’s without doing any raking at all in between the trees!  Those will be left to decompose where they are.  We’ll just stay on top of picking up fallen branches in those areas.

Earlier today, we made a trip into town to get some prescription refills.  When they were ready, the pharmacist went through the three bottles with me.  There was supposed to be four, however.  So she went back to check what happened.  It turned out that, for some reason, the insurance wasn’t coming up to cover that one at all.  They figured it was a glitch in the system.

They ended up giving me the refill, without charging us for it now.  When I come back in about a week, for some other refills, they will charge us for it then.

Which kinda blows me away.

When we had issues with insurance, shortly after moving here, the Costco pharmacy my husband had set up with wanted to charge him full price. We didn’t even know there was a problem until they wanted some $400, when we should only have been paying $40 or so.  It was a most frustrating experience, and my husband went without some of his medications for a long time before the mess was fixed – and then even longer, because the fix put him at the wrong rate, which meant we still couldn’t afford it.

I’m rather glad we are with this pharmacy, now!

One of the benefits of going with a small town pharmacy, instead of one in the city!

Something to be thankful for, for sure!

The Re-Farmer