I can’t help it. I just have to share!
Nicco and Turmeric, all snuggled up!
Can they get any cuter?
The Re-Farmer
Sharing the cuteness
Critters
Brave babies
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!
We’re working on it, though! :-)
The Re-Farmer
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Yikes!
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
The Re-Farmer
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I found a little friend! So exciting. :-)
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! :-)
I am so excited!!!!
The Re-Farmer
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Sleepy kitties
I woke up this morning, surrounded by cats, including one curled up on my belly.
It was this one.
She barely woke up as I got her off, and was more than content to join a sleeping Susan, who’s paws you can see on the side of the photo. :-D
Another kitty had a harder time of it.
Turmeric had been peacefully sleeping on a box in my shelf, when Two Face jump up and tackled her. :-D
Turmeric is not pleased.
The Re-Farmer
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Cookout, cats and cucamelons – what a beautiful day!
What a lovely day today turned out to be!
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!
The Re-Farmer
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Feline fun, and bonus critters
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!
Then there is David…
What a goof!
He, too, has changed a lot since we brought him in, little over a year ago.
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
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Morning kitties
Some smiles to share with you!
My daughter joined me this morning, to help with crowd control. Leyendecker promptly scaled her and settled on a shoulder.
Saffron, on the other hand…
… claimed her spot, getting her way with sheer adorableness. :-D
Turmeric and Nicco, meanwhile, had themselves a wrestling match!
Big Rig settled down to eat and be completely non-photogenic, this morning. LOL
What a great way to start the day.
The Re-Farmer
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Morning critters; a bird attack?
As usual, in my morning routine, I visited the kittens.
David dashed downstairs to visit them, too.
It’s so funny to watch how he interacts with them! The kittens are quite happy to include him in their play, while he seems torn between “I wanna play, too” and “stay away from me, you strange creatures.”
Speaking of strange creatures…
… Creamsicle was in fine form this morning! What a drama queen. :-D
After dropping my daughter off at work this morning, I decided to play a bit of Pokemon Go before heading home. I was parked by a gym and playing the game when I heard something hit the side of the van.
It was a goldfinch, at the middle window.
Now, my first thought was that the bird was disoriented by reflections in the window and accidentally flew into the glass.
But it stayed, fluttering away at the glass, making its way across to the front door’s window, and sat there, at the bottom of the glass, looking at me.
When it seemed to be staying there, I opened the camera on my phone. I thought I’d lost my moment when it seemed to be flying away, but nope.
It went to the front windshield and proceeded to try and peck its way in!
This went on for several minutes! I did try and get video, but my phone’s camera does not do zoom well, and the video was horribly pixelated.
I don’t know why the bird did this, but it certainly made my morning! :-D
The Re-Farmer
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Morning smiles – and a surprise!
When visiting the kittens this morning, I was viciously attacked!
By a Nicco! :-D
Saffron has one eye that is a bit gooby, so I took the time to clean and medicate it. Then, after they’d all had a chance to devour some wet cat food, they all went after my legs!
They are tearing my clothes to shreds. :-D
Also, they really, really like my shoelaces.
Even Beep Beep got in on the action!
For a cat that has spent her entire life outdoors, she is really taking to this “inside” thing – and having access to people to cuddle!
Later on, while checking the trail cam files, I found a lovely surprise.
Other than discovering that FedEx made a delivery after we got home yesterday, and left a package shoved into the gate. I never even saw it, when I did my rounds! If I hadn’t seen the video, I would never have known until this afternoon. I was expecting it to come in the mail, tomorrow.
No, it was this surprise that really made me smile.
That baby is so adorable!!!
They found a spot in the fence where they can both squeeze through the barbed wire, without the mom having to jump it.
The baby can fit through any part of the fence, just by ducking its head. :-D
So sweet!
Also, there’s a package in the middle of that gate. It was shoved into the chain.
Even while walking up the driveway this morning, knowing it was there, I couldn’t see it until I was almost right at the gate!
At least FedEx can find our place. Unlike UPS. !!
Lots to smile about, this morning. :-)
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 