I had a very happy surprise this morning, as I headed out with kibble for the yard cats.
One of Junk Pile’s kittens was in the cat’s house, looking at me through the window!
Unfortunately, it ran out and off before I could get a photo. To I have these, instead.
Rosencrantz, Nosencrantz and Toesencrantz enjoyed their private dining area. :-D
I got to boop Nosencrantz on her nose as she gave my fingers a sniff, but she wouldn’t let me pet her today.
The kitten that was in the cat’s house is at the food tray, in between her two siblings. It has the same white and grey tabby markings their mother has. The kitten in the front looks just like Bradicous and Chadicous! I’m told I accidentally closed it up in the sun room a couple of nights ago, so I’m going to have to stop leaving the door into the sun room open behind me when I’m working in the yard. The girls had a hard time getting it to leave, because any time they came near, it would high. Apparently, the tuxedo and Nosencrantz were trying to rescue it. :-)
While picking up fallen branches and adding them to the pile, I had an audience!
I am hoping their curiosity will help us eventually socialize them. :-)
Kittens make for a great way to start the day!
On another note, we found a mystery burrow yesterday!
We found this near a tree, not far from the old doghouse critter shelters by the outhouse. I was working around there not long ago, so I know it wasn’t there just a few days ago.
We don’t know what critter made this! It’s way too small to be a woodchuck. It might be the size of a gopher/prairie dog hole, which are about half the size or less of a woodchuck, except they leave piles of soil around their dens, too. In fact, that’s part of the mystery. This is a very deep hole. Where is the dirt? There is no dirt scattered around at all. I’ve been trying to think of all the burrowing critters that live in our geographical area, and nothing matches. They are either too big or too small for the hole, or they leave hills around their dens. The closest I can think of is rabbits, and we don’t really have rabbits here. We have hares; the big ol’ jackrabbits that are the size of a small dog. There is one type of small rabbit that might be in our area, but from what I can find of what their dens look like, this isn’t it.
Curious, indeed!
I just moved the garden cam back to the driveway. Maybe I should set it up here, to see what lives here!
Well, it looks like we’re down another bird feeder.
This is all I could find this morning. The top cap and the base.
There is no sign of the seed canister and the frame.
The canister is somewhat understandable. It’s just clear plastic, so it would be harder to see if it ended up under the lilacs or something. The frame, however, is red. It should be easily visible.
There is no sign of either.
I’m sure we’ll find them eventually, but I am curious what happened to them. With the winds we’ve been having, I’m almost willing to accept that the feeder was blown apart in the wind. On the one hand, that doesn’t make too much sense, since at least the top would still be on the hanger, and the pieces would be nearby. On the other hand, it seems very unlikely that critters did the damage, because of the weather conditions we had last night. Critters would have been taking shelter, not climbing posts for bird seed. Especially since there are still piles of sunflower seeds on the ground from when the big feeder fell down and broke apart.
Gosh, it was so lovely to do my rounds this morning! It has finally cooled down (for all the rain we had yesterday, it was still hot and very muggy!), and as I write this, it’s a lovely 17C/63F outside. There is the possibility of more rain, then things are expected to get hot and sunny again. I don’t know of we’ve had enough rain for the burn bans to relax a bit; it would be nice to be able to light our burn barrel, or use the fire pit.
We do still have a few plant babies in the sun room that will eventually get transplanted. This morning, I found a new gourd seedling.
A third Ozark Nest Egg gourd has appeared! We only planted 2 per pot, so we have plenty of seeds to try again next year – starting much earlier, and with a warmer set up!
With the Thai Bottle gourd, if this one seedling survives, we might at least be able to try them, as they are edible at 4-6 inches. There is no wait for them to reach full maturity. The other gourds, however, were planted for crafting purposes, and with them sprouting so late, they just won’t have the growing season for it.
Another reason I’d like to set up polytunnels and/or greenhouses. Extending our growing season would open up a lot of options for us.
I’m happy to see the grapes are leafing out nicely! They had a slow start (which I am beginning to think is normal for them), but once they do, they grow really fast! There are new vines this morning that were not there, yesterday.
The Peruvian Purple Fingerling potatoes are filling their grow bags faster than any of the other varieties. Gosh, they look so pretty! I love that hit of purple at the stems.
One of the nice things about the clean up I was able to do in the spruce grove this spring, is that I can now cut through it to get to the main garden, while doing my rounds. This morning, I found this lovely explosion.
The wild roses are blooming! The rains have been a huge boost for them. :-)
As we continue to clean up the spruce grove, everything in here will be cut back and cleaned up. Unlike the spirea, which we are trying to pull out by the roots as much as possible, the roses will just be trimmed to ground level. Once it’s all cleaned out, they should grow back better than ever. This area, however, will probably not get worked on this year. We’re focusing more on the south and west sides for now.
Checking the various garden beds, everything it looking really good and strong. We do have a couple of mysteries, though. One is in the yellow bush beans.
A while back, I noticed a few of the seedlings appeared to have had their heads chopped off. Remarkably, the stumps still seem to be growing!
I’m not sure what did this. Normally, I would have thought it was a deer, but if it was, I would have expected a whole swath of seedlings with their tops gone, like at the ends of the spinach beds. Not 2 here, 1 there, and 2 more in the other row.
Well, whatever it is, it seems to have stopped coming over, as there is no new damage, and nothing is showing up on the trail cam.
There is another mystery, though.
All the radish sprouts have disappeared.
There had been so many sprouts, before the corn started coming up, and now, nothing. Not a trace. Not a stem or leaf to show it was bit by a critter, or cut by an insect. There were only 2 rows with the daikon type radish, but the watermelon radish was interplanted in every row of the other two corn blocks. The corn is coming up nicely, but the radishes have simply disappeared.
It is so very strange!
I should also take back the “no new damage” statement, though this damage is no mystery. Nutmeg has taken to following me along when I do my rounds, wanting attention. While looking at the sunflower transplants, supported by their twine, he decided to rub against the twine, then drop to the ground and start rolling.
Right on a sunflower, breaking the stem.
*sigh*
It wasn’t completely broken off, and it’s been put back between the twine for support, but I doubt it will survive.
Destructive little boy!
As I continued checking the beds, I would stop to do a bit of weeding, and he’d be right in there, pushing at my hands for attention, walking, sitting and rolling on top of the plants! I kept having to move him off the beds, only for him to jump right back, as long as I kept trying to weed.
When the girls and I were just starting to head home from the city yesterday, my husband messaged us to let us know that a low flying airplane had just gone over the house. This morning, it happened again, though it wasn’t an airplane.
Instead, we had a low flying helicopter! Seeing helicopters flying around is not that odd (there is a small airport not that far away), but seeing one flying this low certainly is. I don’t usually see ones coloured like this, either. Usually, they’re black.
When I was done my rounds, I uncovered one of the spinach beds to do some weeding and thinning.
Yes, these are just the thinnings, and just from one side of one bed! They’re packed down a bit in that colander, too. The spinach is doing just fantastic, now that they’re not being eaten by deer. ;-) I was able to uncover the bed on my own, but with are makeshift covers we have right now, it takes 2 people to put the covers back again.
I supposed we’ll eventually get to the point when we’ll have more spinach that needs harvesting than we can eat right away, so I’ve been thinking of what to do with any excess. I know they can be frozen, but why ruin good spinach? ;-) I’ve decided to try dehydrating them, then making spinach powder. This would keep for a long time in a jar on the shelf, and be a handy ingredient to toss into soups, or pasta dough or something like that.
I’ll have to get some photos later, but our chives have started to bloom, and I’ve started using them to make chive blossom vinegar. I picked up a bottle of white wine vinegar, and we’re just adding the cleaned blossoms straight into the bottle, after removing a small amount of vinegar to make space. It will get strained after 2 weeks in a cool, dark place, though we might keep adding more blossoms over the next few days, as the chives finish their blooming. We’ll count it as 2 weeks from when the last of them are in the bottle. :-)
*sigh* This post has been taking MUCH longer to finish that it should have. Our internet is crappy at the best of times, but whenever we get rains or winds (not even over us, but anywhere to the south of us), we start having troubles connecting. Getting images to load is the worst. It’s taken me half an hour to get the above image to load, and as I’m writing this, it STILL won’t load! Once I get the bloody thing to work, and hopefully get this post published, it’s time to get off the computer before I go completely bonkers!!
While doing my morning rounds, I made sure to check the tulips. Nothing has been showing up on the tulip cam, trying to get at them again. There are files of cats passing in front of the camera, and one of a skunk running along the lilac hedge, as if something had startled it, but that’s it. Nothing has been going after the tulips.
And yet, I found this.
It was on the ground, next to one of the tulips that got its flower bud chomped off, but not the leaves. The only signs of digging in the area were the old ones from before, which was likely a skunk digging for grubs in the leaf mulch. With how deep the girls had buried the bulbs, there should have been a fairly large hole if it had been freshly dug up. The bulb doesn’t even have dirt on it, or in its roots.
As far as I know, it wasn’t there before, though it’s possible it was covered in leaf mulch that got blown off, but… I don’t think so. When I’d seen that something was digging in the leaf mulch, I checked to see if the tulips were damaged, so I’d looked right in that spot. I expect I would have seen it then, if it had been somehow dug up then.
So I brought it inside, and it will be planted, once we’re sure of where we want to put it. The girls and I were thinking to put it in one of the blocks in the retaining wall that has nothing in it right now. That area is going to be draped in mosquito netting to protect it, once the netting comes in, so if it’s planted there, it will get protection from being eaten or dug up.
Still, I have no idea where this came from!
I’ve also been finding another mystery in the mornings.
For the past several mornings, I’ve been finding the rocks at one end of the path we made along the house, scattered like this. I put them back, and the next morning, they’re scattered again. Something has been digging among them. I suspect it has something to do with this being the only section of rocks that had some soil put over them, before I changed my mind about doing that the whole way down. My guess is that it’s the skunk, but there’s really nothing to show, one way or the other, what is doing it.
On the one hand, I’m glad whatever it is, is digging here and not in the garden beds nearby! On the other hand, those rocks are there because I found the concrete pad under the sun room was as thick as I thought it was, and they’re keeping the soil under the concrete from eroding out. The last thing I want is for a critter to start digging under there! The sun room is shifting enough, as it is. :-/
I did see the skunk again, this evening. I was just putting things away before going inside, when I heard a cat get startled out of the kibble house. When I looked, the skunk was in the kibble house, munching away. I made noise to scare it away, and it did start to leave, but it must have been very hungry, because it turned around and started heading quickly towards me, then jumped back into the kibble house to eat. I suspect we have a hungry mama skunk. Kibble is not good for them, though. Ah, well. It seems to have a peaceful relationship with the cats, at least. We need to get one more, smaller, hose to keep hooked up to the tap on that side of the house. Much safer to chase it away by spraying water than walking towards it, making noise!
My older daughter and I went for a walk, and decided to head through the pasture, towards the plowed field.
This was the route I took to check how much I could see of the fire from the night before, and I’m surprised I missed this. I may have been distracted by seeing a bald eagle fly off. It was the first time I’ve seen one this close to the house and outbuildings!
Yeah. That’ll be my excuse for not seeing this.
This, lying in open pasture.
It looks like an oil drum converted into a furnace.
Like so many things we find, we are left with questions.
Converting oil drums into various things isn’t all that unusual. The unusual thing, as so often is the case, is the location.
Why is this here?
I can’t even say it has something to do with the junk pile that’s out this way. This pile, I know my late brother had dumped there, because I recognize the concrete filled oil drum. This was stuff he’d cleared away from the property my parents used to own. That was where we’d lived the last time we lived in this province. The building he’d converted to a workshop and is now being used for storage had been brought from there.
But this was not from there. It’s also quite far from the junk pile, so it’s not like a cow had somehow managed to drag it out (like so many other things we find, scattered about), even if a cow could somehow roll this around.
Yet another mystery!
After checking this out, we went to the junk pile, which my daughter had not yet seen. While poking around she found a few more things for our “found object art display”, where the crushed teapot now rests. Three mugs and two worn Old Spice bottles. :-D There’s also a toilet, which I intend to salvage and use with the others we’ve found, as a planter or something. The weird thing is, the toilet looks to be in excellent shape. No idea why it’s there, either, but at least with that, I hadn’t walked past it several times since we’ve moved here, and somehow not seen it.
Like the oil drum furnace that’s been sitting there long enough to have lichen growing on it! :-D
So this lends weight to the “defective tire” theory.
I checked the trail cam files from yesterday. With the one camera, there just isn’t a view of that tire, but with the other…
I cropped this from a screen cap of the video. It’s the best I could get.
Even taking into account that the tire is sunk in mud, it looks really low!
The last time the car was used was then I took my mother grocery shopping about a week ago. It has been sitting in the garage every since. The only reason I took it out at all is because my sister helped my mother with grocery shopping, so I wanted to make sure the car got some time on the road.
I’ve just taken it out and checked the rest of the tires as much as I can. I’ll be asking the mechanic to give them a quick inspection once he has it up on the lift.
I was telling my brother and his wife about what happened, and they had the same immediate thoughts I did; could it have been deliberate? In their case, they actually know someone who had … issues… with someone else, and that person vandalized the inside of their tires. All four of them!
I don’t think our vandal did anything, though. Not just because it would be physically difficult; where the car is parked is so cramped, there is no way anyone of his size and lack of mobility could have gotten to that tire. Plus, he wouldn’t have been that subtle. If he was going to damage our tires, he would have just slashed our tires. So I don’t think this is the result of an act of vandalism.
It should be interesting to hear what the mechanic has to say when he finally sees the tire this afternoon!
Over the past couple of months, we’ve been finding cats – usually Tissue – batting around something metallic sounding on the floor. On checking to see what was making the unusual sound, we have been finding all sorts of nails and screws! The cats (probably just Tissue, but we’re not 100% sure) have been digging into the various containers in the basement, taking out a single nail or screw, and carrying them upstairs to play with.
Yes, we did place these in locations the kittens couldn’t reach, but they’re almost adults now, and they can get into a lot more trouble!
We keep taking away the nails, but it usually isn’t long before a new one gets dragged up from who knows where. Tissue does not like having her toys taken away, and it is most amusing, if annoying, to see her pick up a nail and running off with it in her mouth.
Last night, I heard that familiar metallic noise.
There was Tissue, under the dining table, batting at something.
The noise was … different, somehow.
Of course, I went to take latest nail from Tissue and…
… this is what I found.
!!!
Now, there has not been a gun in this house since years before we moved here, and while I’ve found spent cartridges in the barn, in all our clean up of the house, I don’t recall ever finding bullets like this.
I tucked it away into a container on a shelf, only to have a daughter bring it to me, a couple of hours later. Tissue was playing with it again! So I put it in a slide lock baggie and tucked it onto a shelf the cats can’t get at.
Then my other daughter found Tissue playing with another one.
When she brought it to me and I realized it wasn’t possible for the cats to have retrieved the one I’d just hidden away, I went and looked… Sure enough, the bullet I’d found was still in the container I’d left it in.
The cats had dragged out a total of three bullets from… somewhere.
My daughter and I went digging around the basement, trying to see where they could have come from, to no avail. I did find a higher caliber bullet in a container that I remember seeing when we were cleaning out the basement, so I grabbed that to tuck away with the others.
We still have no idea where the cats found those three bullets. The only place we could think of was the top of the closet in the entry. We’ve never been able to clear it out, but the cats have started to find their way up there, knocking things about. We rescued a couple of more fragile objects that we could reach, but there is more we can’t reach at all. My husband – the tallest of us – did use our little step ladder to try and see, but there’s too much clutter up there. Still, if anyone had stored bullets there, back when my late father’s guns were still around, they wouldn’t have been tucked in the back, but have been near the edges, where they could be reached. Even so, they would have been in their boxes, not loose.
As I write this, we are still at -21C/-6F with a wind chill of -30C/-22F.
Before heading out, I made a point of starting the van, then headed back inside to give it a good 15 minutes to warm up. As usual, the power steering pump was whining loudly when I started the engine.
When I came back to it later, for the first time in weeks, the noise was gone.
Because, of course it was. I was finally getting it checked today.
As I was driving, I did hear a slight whine, but only while doing a hard turn, for example, but not if I were just changing lanes, and not at all while driving straight.
When I got there, I was happy to see he didn’t have other vehicles in the bays, which meant I wouldn’t be spending hours waiting for him to squeeze a check in between other jobs. He just had to deal with getting a vehicle outside loaded and hauled away. I had a chance to talk to him about the noise now being gone, even though it was there when I first started it. Yes, he agreed it could be just the cold causing it. He asked me other questions, and I told him that we’d had problems with the pump leaking before, but not for years (since I topped it up with a leak-stop fluid, it’s not been an issue). There’s no puddles under the vehicle, the fluid level is still fine, etc. Since I had the opportunity, I mentioned the power train error code that I got with the OBDII reader, and he also thought it was probably just the residual carbon from changing out the valve, and that it will clear itself after the van has been run a bit. Then I left the keys and went to the grocery store. Since I was stuck in town, anyhow, may as well get a few things!
It did not take him long at all to call me back.
He could find nothing wrong.
He could not recreate the noise. The closest he could get was when he turned the steering wheel as far as he could, and at that point, the noise was nothing out of the ordinary.
Everything checks out fine.
At which point I was saying, I should be happy to hear this, but the van has become like a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. Thankfully, he took my concerns seriously, and told me to keep an eye on it over the next while, as things are warmer. If the noise comes back, he wants be to bring it back and he’ll check it again. If it doesn’t come back, then it was likely the cold causing it.
Now if only medical doctors took our mystery health issues as seriously when they don’t know the answers, as our mechanic does about our vehicles!
That done, I took the van back to the grocery store to load up the cart I’d left at the door, went to fill the gas tank, then headed home.
When we had the valve replaced, one of the things he recommended I do for the next while is floor it, every chance I got. I normally never do that. I tend to be a “gentle” driver. I do the speed limit. I don’t slalem back and forth between lanes. When I get on the highway, while I do try to get to speed quickly, I don’t gun it. I don’t even like passing people, if I can avoid it, and that is partly because the van has no get up and go.
Or should I say “had” no get up and go.
On the way home today, I followed his instructions and floored it whenever I could do so safely (clear road, no other traffic, etc.).
The van’s get up and go is the best it’s been since we bought it.
While the poor quality gas would have cause problems to escalate since the move, that build up of carbon probably started long before we owned it.
If I hadn’t been assured, long ago, that the vehicle was actually worth maintaining, we probably would have tried to trade it in for something else, instead of spending all that money on it.
Even so, with our need for a reliable vehicle that meets my husbands mobility needs, the constant issues cropping up are adding a level of stress I just don’t need!
However, having had it checked out, and with tomorrow supposed to reach above freezing temperatures again, I am finally going to try and make a trip to the city and do a full, much needed, monthly shop. I’m going to try going to Costco, in our usual location, which I’m told does accept face shields or Mingle Masks, and even complete medical exemptions still – though that seems to depend on who is on shift at any given time.
And if that goes well, I’ll later be able to pick up the replacement hot water tank and get it installed.
Just thinking about making these trips is stressing me out. Not just because of the vehicle paranoia, but because going out in public, surrounded by faceless people, is increasingly becoming the stuff of nightmares. As a student of psychology, I understand the effect it’s having and why, but knowing that, and feeling that, are two very different things.
Thank God we don’t live in the city anymore. If I were surrounded by this on a daily basis, I’m pretty sure I would have wigged out long ago.
If you notice strings hanging down from under the roof of the kibble house, I left those for the cats to play with, after tying down the tarp I put over it last night. :-)
When I do my morning rounds, I don’t typically go all the way around the two old dog houses we’d set up near the outhouse as critter shelter last winter. The last time I went around them was when I took some of the straw to bury in what became our garlic beds. Some time between then and now, this showed up.
This is in front of the opening of the bigger dog house, facing away from the house.
That’s quite a lot of fur.
There is no skin attached to any of it. No sign of blood or bones. So this is not the remains of an animal that was killed and eaten.
Since I can’t really see into the old dog house, I turned the flash on on my phone’s camera, stuck it in the opening, and got this.
It looks like more fur, and even a pile of droppings in the corner near the opening.
If it were spring time, I would be thinking this is some animal shedding its winter fur. Usually, we just see tufts, but it’s possible an animal would use the sides of the opening to scratch off mats of itchy old fur.
But it’s not spring. So nothing is shedding their fur right now.
I don’t even recognize the fur to know what type of animal it is. Any animal I can think of is unlikely to be in our yard, and certainly not using the old dog house.
Well, at least I know that these old dog houses are still being used by critters for shelter!
I got a call from the garage today, about our van.
Once again, he drove it around and examined it on the lift.
Nothing.
Not a knock. Not a shudder.
The van is running fine.
The only thing he could find, after going over the entire front end, was a minor tear in the front driver’s side boot (bellows). It’s something that is good to get fixed before it causes problems later, but it could not be what caused the knocking and shuddering that was happening before I dropped it off, because there wasn’t any at all when he drove it.
He cannot find anything that could have caused that noise or shuddering. Anything that normally could have caused it, is fine.
I asked about our theory that mud had kicked up in there and got into something, but after the van sat as long as it did, things melted and whatever it was had simply fallen off. He said it was possible, but he didn’t sound very confident about it.
So I asked him to let me know how much it would cost to fix boot, since I may as well get that done while it’s there! He said he’d get back to me, but he wasn’t able to before he closed, so I expect to hear from him tomorrow.
I was able to describe to him more about how it handled throughout the day, and how it went from some odd noises to suddenly being so bad, it was alarming just to drive across the road. How could it have been so bad, so fast, and now nothing? He is very perplexed as well.
I just don’t understand it.
I do hope we can get this done and fixed tomorrow, because we need to go into town, and I don’t want to make multiple trips with my mother’s car.
Thank God the things we do need to do aren’t urgent or anything! I will be much happier when we have our van back, though.
The Re-Farmer 