I just got back from doing my evening rounds. Our yard is littered with fallen branches. Especially willow branches in the South yard. I only picked up the biggest ones tonight. When the weather next allows for it, we’ll need to go around with the wagon to pick up all the smaller branches.
Two of Junk Pile cat’s kittens were running around while I was out. Little Braveheart was following Creamsicle around. He seems to get along with them very well! I topped up the kibble bowls, and while he was eating, Little Braveheart came over and booped her head against his before starting to eat, herself. :-) So cute!
I didn’t see Butterscotch’s kittens, which is no surprise in this weather. I did, however, get to spend some time with them yesterday, and they were co-operative enough to let me get some good photos of each of them!
Their eyes are starting to settle into their adult colours now. Which means the calico no longer looks terrifying up close! :-D Now she’s just all adorable!
We’re going to have a hard time telling these two apart!
Creamsicle Junior? He seems to be fuzzier than Creamsicle was at this age.
I think I have spotted another older kitten around. I’ve seen it at least twice, and had mistaken it for Junk Pile cat, but it has more white, and looks to be about the same age as her kittens. I have no idea where it is coming from, or which mama cat it is with! Perhaps one of Rosencrantz’s kittens? I thought she had three, but I just went back through my old photos, and I only ever captured two in the pictures; an orange one that we haven’t seen since, and the white one with grey and orange spots that I sometimes see.
While doing this morning’s rounds, I got to see all of Butterscotch’s babies!
My apologies for the terrible picture. :-(
I was zoomed in from the far side of the lilacs in the flower garden to get this. Thankfully, after clearing out the spreading cherry saplings, I had a perfectly positioned window to watch them through. As soon as I moved, however, they were gone!
I was just finishing up and starting to go into the house when I saw Little Braveheart was out, so I sat on the steps and tried to lure her closer.
This was as close as she would get. She was curious enough to come out, but content enough to just sit there!
After I while, I did see a little Tabby face peering at me through the spirea, too. :-) Not quite as brave as Little Braveheart!
I really hope we can get these bebbies socialized, at a little bit!
It was a lovely evening to do my evening rounds last night, so I found myself sitting in the sunroom, Potato Beetle curled up on the swing bench beside me, fiddling with my phone and enjoying the quiet.
When I suddenly realized there was a tiny tabby in front of me!
One of Junk Pile’s kittens was exploring through the open door, saw me, saw Potato Beetle and ran off, before I could get a photo.
Alas!
With where the bench is set up, the open inner door blocks my view of where the cat food is set up, but I could hear some crunching – and an almost non-stop, low growl.
That would be Junk Pile. Even as she sometimes comes a bit closer to give us a sniff, she keeps up that growl.
I ended up moving to the steps of the storage house to see if I could lure some kitties closer – or at least get them more used to me.
The food bowl I’ve put there for them was empty, but the ones by the house still had kibble in them, so I didn’t add more. I wanted to encourage them to go to the house.
Little Braveheart and her tabby sibling were willing to come out and play nearby. More Braveheart than Tabby, who often ran back into the spirea.
Unfortunately, Rosencrantz was in there, too, and she does not like Junk Pile’s babies. Any time one of the kittens went in there, I could hear her growling at them.
In the end, I think they felt my presence was safer!
Little Braveheart was even almost-kinda-justabout-willing to play with the stick I was wiggling around.
After a while, the kittens took to ignoring me and just running around and playing – which, in itself, is progress – before going to the house to eat.
Junk Pile, however, has three kittens.
Eventually, I spotted the shy one, peeking at me from the spirea. It never came all the way out, so I left, so as not to stress it too much.
Instead, I went into the sun room and dug up a baggie with a few cat toys in it, tossing some outside for the babies. Potato Beetle was with me again, and he went running after the toys, too. I was pleased to see that he and the kittens would sometimes play with the same toy together, with no animosity between them!
As I was walking back and forth around the front of the house, the kittens stopped running away immediately, and would either just ignore me, or pause to watch.
More progress!
Meanwhile, I went over to the junk pile, and was happy to see and hear some of Butterscotch’s kittens. She came out for pets, too. Earlier in the day, though the living room window, I saw one of her orange babies playing in the collapsed wine barrel that I’d cleared beside. I had hoped they would find it a good place to play, and they have! Now, when they do, we can see them from the house. :-)
It will take time, but I am hoping we can socialize these babies better than we were able to with Junk Pile and Rosencrantz. The biggest problem with working on that, however, is mosquitoes. I was being eaten alive while out there! I didn’t want to put on bug spray, as I’m sure the smell would be unpleasant for the kittens. Unfortunately, the times when the kittens seem to come out the most are also the times when the mosquitoes come out, too!
This morning I went to get a meter reading to submit to the electric company.
Being rather short, I tend to see more glare on the cover than the numbers themselves. My solution has been to hold my phone up and take several pictures. The display cycles, with a short blank period in between, but after taking 3 or 4 shots, I can be pretty sure at least one of them has the reading in it.
What this means is that I’m fiddling with my phone to open the camera as I walk up to the power pole.
I really should pay more attention.
After I took the pictures, I looked down and found myself staring at this, maybe a foot and a half away from my face.
There were no wasps flying around, so I took pictures.
Because I’m like that. :-D
But why were no wasps flying around?
I think this is part of my answer. These are not the aggressive yellow and black wasps. I couldn’t see much, but they look a lot like the docile bald faced hornets in the Chinese elm trees.
From what I could see, they wasps were not so much “docile” as “sluggish”. It was a bit cooler this morning, so maybe they just weren’t warmed up yet.
We are actually going to leave this nest. We go to the post once a month to get a reading, and since I’m using a camera to see the numbers anyhow, we don’t disturb them in the process. In the winter, after they die off, we can carefully remove the nest. Who knows. We might Ebay it or something. There is apparently quite the demand for the nests!
I just wish I’d noticed it before I took the meter reading. It would have been much easier on my heart! :-D
Okay, before I show you what I found while picking chokecherries, I’ll share with you why I am so super excited about it.
When I was quite young, I spotted a caterpillar on the leaves of a crabapple tree. It was unlike any I had seen before. Not only that, but I found three more!
I don’t know how long I spent, examining them while they worked on spinning silk around them. Their green colour, almost exactly like the leaves they were on. The yellow stripe around the body, with the row of spots along it. The way it’s real head was tucked and hidden below with – most fascinating of all – “eyes” that made it look almost like a fish head, with a very distinctive line next to the “pupils”! With another stripe around the real head, it looked like a fish holding something in its mouth. :-D Then there was the fact that, if I poked one (gently, I must add), two little orange “horns” would emerge from its body.
I was absolutely thrilled by them.
So it was with great excitement that I went running to my mother and brought her over to see them. She seemed very interested in the one I showed her, and even asked me to show her the others as well. I enthusiastically obliged, pointing out each leaf that had one of these caterpillars.
Then, to my shock and dismay, my mother proceeded to bash at the leaves, sending the caterpillars flying. After making sure she got rid of all 4 of them, she left. I searched in the grass for them, hoping to put them back on the tree, but never found them.
As you can imagine, that was the last time I shared my excitement over a critter with my mother. In retrospect, my mother probably assumed it was something that would eat and harm the apple tree. She certainly never took the time to explain it to me.
For years, every summer, I would find myself searching among the leaves of the apple trees, hoping to see this caterpillar again. It took me even more years (in the years before internet! LOL), but I eventually was able to identify them as the caterpillars of Tiger Swallowtails. The butterflies are rather common out here, but finding the caterpillars, not so much!
You can probably imagine my childlike thrill and excitement when I finally saw one, today!
I’ve cropped the photos, but did not resize them, so you can click on them for full size.
With its little bed of silk on the chokecherry leaf, it almost looks like it is floating in mid air!
Doesn’t that look almost like a fish head? A bit like the local catfish.
In this photo, you can see just a little bit of the real head, tucked underneath.
This little guy is, of course, different from the ones I saw as a kid. It’s a darker green and more mottled looking. The spots along the yellow stripe around the body are harder to see. This one also has a spot of purple in the black “pupil” of the false eyes. It is still, however, the same kind of caterpillar, and I couldn’t be happier!
I did, of course, call the girls over to see it, too! I had told them the story about finding the caterpillars – and what my mom did to them – years ago, so it was fantastic to be able to share this with them.
I then took great care not to disturb it, while picking berries. Alas, I did not see any others, but I did look! :-)
The area we have the picnic table set up for painting is near where the cucamelons are planted. After painting last night, the girls checked them out and spotted baby cucamelons! When I’d checked them earlier, they weren’t even blooming.
Of course, I had to check them out, this morning.
The tiniest cucamelons on the tiniest of flowers! There are lots of them, and they are all barely visible. :-D
I had another smile waiting for me when I got back in the house. Our feline matriarch has laid claim to the base from under the washing machine; she likes the Styrofoam. Before heading outside, I took the piece that was inside the drum of the washer and set it on the floor.
She took the bait.
She’s been in it pretty much all day – and if she hasn’t, one of the other cats was in it! :-D
I think we’ll keep it, just for her. :-)
The girls and I planned a cookout today. Usually, we do these later in the day, when it’s cooler and the fire looks great as it gets dark. The girls have plans for the evening, so we did it earlier than usual.
Though we bought a big bag of potatoes while stocking up for the month, I ended up getting some from the store that were already wrapped and ready for grilling or baking. What can I say. The price was really good, and I didn’t feel like fussing with foil.
Along with the potatoes, I put together something we’ve never gone before, based on a recipe I’d found online. Ground beef meatballs, stuffed with cheese, encased in onion rings, then wrapped in bacon. I have a cooking sheet that’s designed to do things like vegetables on a BBQ, and I used that as my base. I lined it with heavy duty aluminum foil and made “sides” around the edges after the meatballs were set up, then covered with another sheet of foil. I also prepped corn on the cob by peeling off only a couple of the other husks, pulling back the rest so I could remove the silk, covered the cobs with the husks again, then let them soak in a giant bowl of water.
Once everything we ready, I got a fire going and built it up until I got a good, solid base of coals. While I was doing that, the girls painted one last coat on the picnic table.
Since the picnic table wasn’t ready to use, and we needed a table of some kind, we ended up bringing a pair of saw horses and a couple of 3×4’s that we’d been using to hold things near the picnic table. The sheet of high density plastic that I’ve been hanging on to (I think it was used to cover the basement window for the winter at some point) was brought over as a table top.
Once I had a decent amount of coals, pushed them to the back, then set up one of the oven racks from the broken stove over them. Sitting on the concrete blocks, the rack is still pretty high above the coals, so I used an old roaster lid to cover them and keep the heat from above, like a sort of oven.
After about 20 minutes, I set up the other rack and put on the meatballs. My daughter had added a baking sheet over it, just in case the cats decided to go for them, and I ended up leaving it on to serve a similar purpose as the roaster lid.
I’m not used to cooking thick hamburger like this over fire, and we had some concerns about getting them cooked all the way through (the cheese in the middle would help with that, at least), but within moments of putting the pan over the fire, I could hear it sizzling!
After about 10 minutes, we checked how they were doing.
Wow! The cheese just exploded out of them! :-D There was quite a bit of liquid, so I left the baking sheet off and just loosely covered it with foil again.
The potatoes were ready by then, so I moved them to a corner away from the coals, and covered them again to stay warm.
We kept a close eye on them and, after a while, flipped them.
Sort of.
They kept wanting to fall apart, and the bacon was sticking to the foil!! My daughter managed to get it done, though. :-D
Once they were done, the pan was moved to the other corner, and the corn was put on.
The corn cooks very quickly, compared to most things. Still, after flipping them, I ended up using the roaster lid to cover them.
My husband wasn’t able to join us, so when the food was ready, I prepped a plate for him.
The plate was too small for both of his cobs of corn. :-D
The husks make a great handle to use while eating the corn. :-)
It all turned out absolutely delicious! I don’t know that I would do the meatballs again – at least not over a fire. They were quite difficult to get off the foil. Still, they were so tasty, they’re worth the fuss.
It was so nice, sitting outside then enjoying a delicious meal. We were serenaded by cicadas. Two of them. LOL (Cicadas are not really a thing in our area.) There was a constant snapping and crackling as caragana seed pods exploded in the sunlight, while we played “chase the shade” with our chairs. LOL We had feline company too, of course. Potato Beetle demanded attention, and kept steeling our chairs for naps!
While waiting for the fire to burn down, the girls (who had missed breakfast) had brought out hot dog fixings and toasted a couple of dogs early on. They left the supplies behind (in an insulated back with ice packs, of course) when they had to leave. Once the cooking was done, I started to build up the fire again and began working on the pile of branches against the old log cabin. I was out there so long, I ended up having hot dogs for supper, too! :-D
I found another smile waiting for me on our makeshift table.
Of all the places he could lay down for a nap, he chose the picnic backpack, and used the cutlery as a pillow. What a silly boy!
I’m not sure when this happened, but I noticed it after I had started to rebuild the fire again.
The half-block cracked in the heat! I pushed it back into position after the photo was taken and I moved the piece of wood off of it.
I check the other blocks, when the fire died down a bit, and can see that one of them has cracks, too. Only on the top of the brick, though.
Eventually, the piece on the half block fell right off. As I moved it to one side, I noticed this.
One of the bricks under it has not only cracked, but when I tapped it while moving the ashes around, chunks broke off.
Well, they still do the job, so I don’t mind!
Meanwhile, I’m already thinking ahead to what I want to try cooking on the fire pit next!
As I catch up with things I wasn’t able to post while our internet was down, I figured I’d start with some fun stuff!
(Also, whatever technical problems killed off our secondary account is also affecting our primary account – but at least that one still gets a signal! We will get a call in a day or two about when someone can come by to check the hardware.)
This first photo shows some impressive progress.
That’s Keith, reaching out to touch a napping Leyendecker.
Keith.
Keith, the ball of stress and anxiety that would hiss and run away anytime a kitten came near him.
Now, he will actually curl up with Leyendecker for a nap.
He still doesn’t do much with the kittens overall, but at least he isn’t freaking out anymore.
Which leaves Fenrir as the remaining problem cat. She is more aggressive than Keith was, and will hiss and bat at them. But then, she’ll hiss and bat at some of the adult cats, too.
Then there’s Cheddar. This is him in his usual state.
He has managed to take up half of my king sized bed, with his stretching and splaying!
When he came indoors, almost a year ago, I never imagined he would grow into this big beast!
He used to be so tiny! :-D I’m so glad we were able to get his eyes all healed up.
And now some bonus critter pictures!
Much, much bigger critters.
Our renter’s cows came by the barn for a visit. :-D
In the middle foreground, walking away, is the bull. What a massive, meaty beast he is!
It won’t take long for them to eat up all that grass, and it’ll be shorter than our lawn, after being freshly mowed!
I just love hearing the cows when they’re nearby. We’re not in a position to have cows ourselves, so I get to enjoy them vicariously through the renter! :-D
The Re-Farmer 