Happy Thanksgiving Day!
I had lots of kitties greeting me when I went out to feed them. Much to my amazement, one of the cats that came running, and even let me pet her, was Rosencrantz!!
Then, after I topped up the inside food, I realized that one of the cats eating was Guildendstern!
Continue readingI’ll start with the things I found today. :-)
The first thing I found this morning was a Pump Shack kitten! After opening up the sun room to let the other kittens out and get some cat kibble, I turned to find him at the door, waiting to see if he could sneak past me for some food!
He never did come in while I was there, but after I put food out by the junk pile and pump shack, I came back to find him, with Junk Pile kitten and Rosencrantz (his mom), sharing food with Doom Guy and Keith.
We rarely see Rosencrantz these days, and we haven’t seen Guildenstern in ages. Same with Jim, Bobby and Rolando Moon. I hope they are okay, wherever they are.
While checking the yard for any fallen branches or damage, I found…
One of the tree mushrooms had fallen.
That thing is really big!
I looked around for the others I’d spotted a few days back; they are not only still there, but bigger than ever. All this rain is definitely mushroom weather!
The final find of the day was something my daughter had to point out to me, or I would have missed it entirely.
During the night, I kept hearing the kittens getting onto the dining table, where they are not allowed to be. In coming out to chase them off, they were usually already down, but I could see the cords from our ceiling fan swinging. They were getting on the table to try and play with them!
A friend of mine has had success with using aluminum foil to get her cats from doing where they are not supposed to, so I figured I’d give it a try, leaving sheets of them in front of each chair that they are using to get onto the table.
As you can see by the paw prints, it didn’t work!
Another find I made was a few days ago, during my rare times to the basement. I needed a washer of a particular size and hoped I could find one among the various drawers and cabinets down there.
I found this.
The old syringe my dad used to use to treat cattle. I remember it used to be stored in a case, together with needles of various sizes, but there is only the syringe, now. Check out the inner chamber, that would be sterilized and reused, again and again – as did the needles! They certainly don’t make them like this, anymore!
Interestingly, we found these just the next day.
I found them with my feet. These are the sorts of medicine bottles that would have been used with that syringe.
Knowing my brother was coming with some wheels to try on the old trailer frame in the hay yard by the barn, my daughter and I went to pull it out of the grass. It’s really heavy, so we were not going to be able to drag it out of the old hay yard, through the barn, and into the outer yard, as I’d hope we might be able to, but we didn’t want to just leave it in the grass again, either. Leaning against the barn were some old tires, so I dragged several out to put under the frame. While pulling out the first tire, I stepped on something that my foot slipped on, and found an old medicine bottle, half buried in the dirt. I moved it aside but when I came back for the next tire, I stepped on another one!
We took them into the barn. I don’t know what we’ll do with them, but I want to keep these! :-D
The Re-Farmer
I had some company while doing my rounds this morning.
Beep Beep also joined me, emerging from somewhere beyond our driveway.
We have been having plenty of rain during the night, which is making things really beautiful.
Like the berries on this self-sown asparagus along the eastern fence line.
So beautiful!
The Re-Farmer
In the last while, the kittens have become more interested in following me around as I do my morning rounds. Especially when I go to switch the memory card in the trail cam. Usually, it’s just one or two kittens, though.
This morning, my daughter came along, and that really got their attention, so we had 4 of them from the start. :-D
It’s been a while, but I managed to get a bit of progress on cleaning up the old wood pile.
This is almost how it looked when I left off last time.
I didn’t realize I’d neglected taking a picture after we shifted the doghouse aside and I took away the pallet it was on.
Today, I started digging and pulling up what I could of the rotted out pallets.
Continue readingWhile doing my rounds last night, I found Junk Pile Kitten at the stack of maple wood behind the house, playing with other kittens.
He let me play with him!
At a distance, of course.
This photo was taken yesterday morning.
I had let the kittens out early, since my husband and I were heading out to get our lab work done as early as we could, so I could put an end to my 12 hour fast. As I went to bring the van over to the house, I found kittens watching over me. Literally! LOL
These kittens bring such joy to our lives.
The Re-Farmer
How much is that kitty in the window?
The one with the fluffy tail?
How much is that kitty in the window?
Please make him stop using his nails!
The little bean is finally as tall as my stuffed kitty, if still quite a bit smaller!
He is now very adept at getting to the window ledge. It’s a miracle the screen is still intact, as he goes after moths on the other side.
Nothing like waking up to the sound of claws on a screen.
Yesterday, I heard some odd meowing noises out my window, so I went to check it out.
I walked right by one of the apple trees by the old kitchen garden, completely missing it was the source of the meowing!
The base of this tree is one of the cats’ favorite rolling-in-the-dirt places. When I first spotted them, though, he was mostly hidden behind the tree. It was his Aunty Beep Beep that had me laughing. It looked like a pair of eyes was watching me from the ground!
Then she rolled around some more; the epitome of grace. Not. :-D
Since I was there anyhow, I stopped to take a good look at this apple tree.
You can see one branch is hanging quite low, weighted down by apples as they get bitter.
Much if it, however, did not survive the winter. It wasn’t doing well last year, and I guess that polar vortex that kept hitting us was too much for parts of it.
As you can see from its base, it has been cut back a few times. I don’t think there’s anything left of the original graft. The two main trunks that you see in the above picture seemed to be dead. With living and dead branches so entwined together, it was really hard to tell where one branch started another began. I couldn’t tell if they were completely dead, or if they still had a live branch or two on them.
Either way, down they came.
Not a living thing on either of them.
I cut them at about 3 feet above ground, with the intention of cutting the remains, further down. Instead, I decided to make use of them.
I took the branch that was hanging down the most and braced it against one of the remaining trunks. It had a secondary branch that immediately began leaning over in the other direction, so I used rope and the remaining trunk pieces to support them. If they survive, with this support, they will continue to grow stronger, upwards.
This is not a healthy tree, however, so we shall see.
This is how it looks now.
It’s hard to tell, with the maple grove in the background, and with the dead wood gone, there’s surprisingly little left. Basically, they’re just suckers that have survived while the rest of the tree has slowly died.
After finishing with this one, I turned to another apple tree next to it.
This tree had quite a bit pruned away, but also had signs of a fungal disease.
The branches that had the most signs of disease seem to have died.
Once again, with how twisted the branches were around each other, it was hard to see how much of any particular main branch was dead.
I ended up taking out three major branches.
One of them did have a still-living off shoot, but…
The part of it closest to the main branch is blackened. It almost looked burned.
One of the dead branches I cut out was so intertwined with others, it was really hard to pull out of the tree, with several dead branches breaking off and staying stuck among the living.
After cleaning it out, one of the living branches ended up hanging down almost to the ground. It turns out to have been supported by one of the dead sections. I could have mucked about to give it support, but in the end decided it would be better for the tree to take that weight off completely.
There was a third apple tree, growing between the plums, with a dead piece I cut off as well, though I neglected to take photos of that one.
I haven’t done much beyond maintaining what I did in this area last year, trying to focus on the East yard and the spruce grove, instead. Even so, I can see how the trees that seemed the weakest last year are either struggling even more this year, or have died outright. The row of apple trees to the north of the spruce grove is no exception. I don’t think we’ll be getting many apples this year. Not just in quantity, but they bloomed so late, it’s unlikely they’ll have time to ripen before the cold sets in. One that had been pruned back the summer before we arrived had started to recover fairly well, but not enough to survive this past winter. Others in that row have lost quite a few branches. Those, I think I’ll leave pruning back until next spring or so.
Something we will have to keep in mind as we plant more food trees: either they will be varieties hardy enough for our bitter winters, or we will have to ensure they get extra protection wrapped around them in the fall.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 