It’s a fairyland out there!

Yesterday’s fog kept getting denser and denser before finally being blown away last night. The live feed on the security camera looked like a blizzard, but it was just fog!

Now, everything outside looks like something out of a magical fairy tale!

The spruces are the tallest trees around, and their tops always get the fuzziest! :-D

However, even lower down bushes, like this Korean lilac in the foreground, were completely covered!

My mother’s “living fence” of hawthorn is just magical. Particularly when you know that none of those tracks in there were made by human feet!

The length of our driveway was lined with sparkling white trees!

At the end of the driveway, you could really see the wind effect! All the frost crystals in these areas were distinctly directional. :-D

People who had to be out driving in this last night described dangerously slippery roads and almost zero visibility. I am glad we didn’t have to go anywhere last night!

I do need to go into town this afternoon, though. I have a new prescription to pick up.

I had my phone appointment with my doctor yesterday. Of course, there wasn’t much he could do over the phone. I described what happened that day I found myself gasping for breath while driving, but it hasn’t happened since. I’m back to my “baseline”, so he wants to take more of a wait and watch approach. If it happens again, I need to call him. We spent some time talking about just what my “baseline” is, and my chronic cough. He may be my doctor for over a year now, but with the restrictions, we haven’t been able to actually see him much, so I’m still very much a “new” patient for him. He wants me to try using an inhaler to see if that will help. It’s meant to be used once a day. He wants to follow up with me after 2 weeks of using it. He later faxed the prescription in to our pharmacy, and I got a call from them after they got it to arrange getting it filled and picked up for this afternoon. If that doesn’t help, I will be going for lung function tests.

I’ve had an inhaler tried on me before, when I first started trying to find out why I had developed this cough. It made my cough worse, so I stopped. Then we moved out of province, so this was over 17 years ago. After the move, I had a whole series of lung function tests done. They all came back normal, but again, that was a long time ago. Probably about 13 years or more. So we shall see how this goes.

My daughter had her phone appointment right after mine, but she will need to physically go in to the clinic for the things she is wanting to get checked out. We have an appointment for her on Monday afternoon, and she will likely need at least two other appointments at the clinic, for other things.

Thankfully, the weather will continue to be mild. In past winters, we stopped my husband’s appointments completely, because of the weather and road conditions. That is not as much of a concern this year, so my daughter can make all the appointments she needs. For my husband, though, if he can get away with just phone appointments, he will. The drive itself is just too painful for him.

Ah, well. It is what it is!

The Re-Farmer

Hidden mama and glowing flowers

We have figured out where the missing kittens of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are.

Dave and Keith’s sibling is in the junk pile in the spruce grove, outside our living room window. We sometimes see him playing on top of the pile, as his mama used to do when she was a baby. He’s hard to see through the lilac leaves, but he is quite a handsome grey and white tabby.

The other litter, I found by accident. I was walking past the pump shack and noticed the wire that was keeping the door shut was loose, so I went in to see if anything was amiss (and if our vandal and come in outside of view of our camera with nefarious intent). I just caught sight of a dark, tabby looking butt and tail, disappearing behind some junk.

This evening, I checked again and found mama.

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Morning at the beach

A couple of photos of the lake, taken this morning.

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The water was so still this morning!

While it’s usually quiet in the mornings, there isn’t going to be any swimming for beach goers for a while.  Several beaches at this area of the lake are now closed.  It seems some pipe got damaged, resulting in untreated sewage draining into the lake.  From what I’ve read, the water tests were still testing safe, but the province closed some beaches to be on the safe side.

This is unusual only in regards to the cause.  The usual reason for beach closures are high algae levels, which has been an ongoing problem on the lake for decades, or high e. coli levels from bird poop.

And that, kids, is why we use chlorine in pools! ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Windy Beach

One of the bonuses of dropping my daughter off at work for an early shift is taking a quick stop at the beach before heading home.

It was very windy off the lake today, making for some awesome waves!

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As I parked, I could see a guy struggling through the waves near the water line, carrying an oar and dragging what I at first thought was a kayak.

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Passing him on the sand a few minutes later, as he fought the wind to put it on its wheeled carrier, I saw it looked more like a surf board.  So I’m guessing it was a paddle board.

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The combination of the lake’s size and how shallow it is, makes it one of the more dangerous lakes to sail on in rough weather.  Today wasn’t too bad for boats, but I would not have dared go out there on a paddle board in these conditions!

It sure is beautiful, though.

The Re-Farmer

Feeding time!

I saw a couple of birds on the platform feeder that were behaving a bit differently, so I decided to start getting some pictures.

They were hopping back and forth quite a bit, but I managed to get a good shot of this little one.

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Then I realized what was going on.

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It was a baby, being shown how to eat at the feeder…

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While also being fed.

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So adorable!

The Re-Farmer

The deer showed up, too!

One last post for today!

This morning, I was quite surprised to see Hungry Girl show up on her own.  This was early enough that the feed wasn’t quite covered by the snow, yet.

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She was very skittish coming in.  I wouldn’t be surprised that all that snow would have made everything sound very different to a deer.

Gosh, she still looks pretty rough, doesn’t she?

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Though the feed was still visible, she nuzzled pretty deep into the snow as she was feeding.

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I just couldn’t resist posting this goofy photo of her!

Later on, well after the snow had covered the feed, Barbecue came by, too.

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He had to dig his nose down pretty far to get at the feed by then, but he had no problem finding exactly where the food was!

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He gets a more dignified profile picture. :-D

I saw Hungry Girl come along shortly after, but they were both very nervous and ran off before she got to the food again.  They did come back, but not for long.

They at least got some food, though.  I’m hoping that Mama and the twins come by at some point, too, for a bit of a snack.

The snow has stopped falling now.  My brother who lives nearby was kind enough to come and clear our driveway out.  He’d fired up the tractor to do his own driveway and just popped over to do ours as well.  I’d seen the snow plows going by the main road earlier, so I’m hoping they’d already gone through the road past our place before he came over.  The last time the snowplows went by, they left a windrow across our driveway.  Not enough of one to be more than a bump, but having another one on top of that now would be much more than just a bump!

After doing the driveway, he came in for a bit of a chat.  During the conversation, he mentioned last winter being one of the coldest in many decades!  He feeds deer with hay at his place, and he said he was feeding 39 of them!  I just can’t imagine that many deer crowded around by his place.  He trained his dog to leave them alone.  He said that they were pretty mean to each other, too, attacking each other with their hooves.  One young orphan deer was small enough to jump up into the round hay bale and get some food while avoiding attacks from the other deer.  After a while, he broke up the bale to spread it out, so they could feed farther apart and not be attacking each other so much.  Sadly, one night, a pack of coyotes killed a young deer, right there next to his house!  They had heard their dog barking like crazy, but by the time they saw why, it was too late.

Coyotes can be a real problem.  Especially when the population is high enough for them to start forming packs.  That’s one of the reasons I want us to get our firearms acquisition certificate as quickly as we can, and get at least a .22 rifle.  Being on the farm without a gun feels very wrong.  It’s a vital tool.  Especially if we do start getting farm animals over the next few years.

This has been a pretty mild winter, though, so there is less chance of a hungry coyote showing up and attacking anything in our yard.

It’s supposed to be just below freezing over the next few days, then creep above freezing again.

Time to keep a close eye out on the roof, and for any more leaks that might show up!  Hopefully, once the roof is shoveled off, that won’t be an issue.  We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

In the snow

The predicted snow finally arrived last night. While other parts of the province is storming, we have had a gentle snowfall.

The feed I left out this morning has been buried, but that is not stopping the critters from finding it. Like this squirrel.

Also, our satellite internet is having troubles due to the weather. My husband has been able to get enough signal for a wifi hotspot. Let’s see how long before I can upload and post this video! It’s already failed to upload twice as I’ve tapped this out on my phone.

The Re-Farmer

Magical

Some days, it’s clear I live in a magical fairyland.

It’s warmed up again, enough for there to be fog last night.  Which promptly became frost on anything it touched.

 

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The view of our spruce grove from our driveway gate.

 

Usually, it goes away rather quickly when the sun comes out, but it’s been overcast and still a bit foggy, so the magical fairyland remains.

So gorgeous.

The Re-Farmer