I glanced out the bathroom window to see what cats were in the sun room, and …
…
Who is this??
The photo does not do justice to this massive brick of a cat.
I didn’t recognize him, but when the girls came down to see, they did. Apparently, he used to show up around the time Nicky the Nose used to, and would sometimes appear at their window. They remembered him partly because of he’s got the saddest expression ever.
I think we may be looking at Tissue’s daddy. :-D
Rolando Moon was in her spot in the window, while Potato Beetle was at the food bowls, and they were all quite chill with each other.
Counting today, we’re expected to have three cold days before the spring-like temperatures return.
Not that it’s particularly cold – until you step out into the wind!
The outside cats barely made an appearance this morning. They were far more interested in staying out of that wind!
The wind was mostly coming from the north, which meant stepping around the house to put seed out, was like walking into a wall.
A cold wall.
The path to the sign cam was pretty much blown in.
I paused this morning to check out the deer damage to the Chokecherry and Saskatoon bushes we uncovered while clearing out the invasive spirea at the edge of the spruce grove. Cleaning things up meant they got more sunlight and actually produced fruit during their first uncrowded summer, but now the deer can get at them. All the lower twigs are nibbled away, and there are many broken branches. And by “lower twigs”, I mean basically anything under about 7 feet. The deer can reach pretty high when they stand on their hind legs!
I wonder if these deer were among those causing damage?
I didn’t see any deer when I came out this morning. They’d already left. :-D
The winds are still high and it’s quite unpleasant out there.
Rolando Moon the Wise has staked out her spot in the sun room, where it’s much warmer and cozier! Not to mention, she has her own private food and water bowls. :-D
As for today, we’ve got a big project to work on. While doing the laundry last night, I came to the entry and found water all over the floor.
It wasn’t from the washing machine. At least not directly. It’s from the drain. I’ve long had concerns about it. When the water starts to drain, you can hear it flowing, but the tone changes until the sound stops. Basically, the water is draining out of the washing machine faster than the water is flowing through the pipes, and what I’ve been hearing is the water backing up until it reaches the end of the drain hose from the washing machine, and then you can no longer heard the water flowing. I’ve been keeping an eye on it, to see if it’s at risk of overflowing, but until now it’s been fine.
I did a larger “heavy duty” load last night, and it may have been just too much water this time.
So what I want to do is see if we can clear the drain a bit. Which means we have to move the washing machine.
The washer and dryer just fit between the built-in closet and the wall the taps are in. There are two steps from the entryway into the dining room, and the bottom step is several inches in front of the washing machine. Which is handy for short little me to stand on and reach the bottom of the washing machine, but it also means we can’t simply pull the washing machine straight out. In order to move the washing machine, we have to move out the dryer.
Since we have to move the machines out, anyhow, we’re going to clean up the mess we know is back there. The cats have been knocking things down off the shelves and, from the smell of it, they’ve been peeing back there, too. It’s just so difficult to get back there, we haven’t done it, yet. I would love to find some way to keep the cats from going back there, but no practical solution has come up yet.
I am not looking forward to this particular job. I’d almost rather be working outside, in the wind!
Once again, the kibble was all gone from the food trays, and I don’t think we can blame that piebald deer this time.
We did get some rain and a light snow last night, so we could see tracks all over the place.
These are kitty paw prints.
With their pretty little toe beans, well defined in the snow.
These are NOT kitty paw prints.
Check out those claws!!! Aside from the claws the paw prints are about the same size as most of the kitty prints.
These are from a skunk, and I found some tracks around the kibble house, too. I know for sure it was a skunk, because I saw it running around our driveway last night, on the garage cam’s live feed.
Skunks don’t go into total hibernation. It’s more of a “lethargic sleep” than full hibernation, and they do come out now and again, throughout the winter. February and March are their mating season, so not only would they be out in full, we’d have pregnant females by now, looking for food.
Speaking of food…
Did you find all twelve hungry kitties in the kibble house?
Tuxedo Mask is almost completely hidden by Creamsicle Jr, in the far right corner of the kibble house. I love that you can juuuust see the tips of his ears above Creamsicle’s back.
Then there’s one of the ‘iccuses peaking from behind the kibble house, at the tray on the ground.
Along with these twelve, there were three more in the sun room. Not quite all of the yard cats, but close!
Things continue to remain mild; I think last night was the first time we didn’t go below freezing, overnight.
This morning, there was no kibble at all left outside, and even the sun room bowls were empty, and the room was slightly ransacked. The outside heated water bowl was overturned, the there was still liquid water in the other bowls – and the hole in the ice left by the heated water bowl is full of water! That cats even seem to prefer drinking out of the ice bowl instead of the actual bowls. :-D
As expected, when I did my rounds, I found the new path dug to the fire pit had lots of new hoof and paw prints going back and forth. :-D
No digging today, though. Too wet. Supposedly, we’ve had rain today, though it seems to be one of those things that showed up on the weather radar, but not outside our window.
So today, I got some work done on an indoor project, which I will post about next. :-)
The outside cats don’t mind at all, and have been widening their horizons. This morning, I only saw 10 of them, even though there was no kibble left in the kibble house at all. The warmer temperatures has them needing fewer calories to keep themselves going.
When I put seed out for the birds and deer, our three usual visitors took off. They seem to have formed an actual little herd together. The piebald has always been a loner until now, but the mother and her yearling seem to have accepted her as part of their group.
Even if they do still bicker over the seeds.
Since digging the path to the sign cam, I now head over to switch the memory card right after putting the seed down. The deer usually come back to the feeding station right away, so my going in that direction seemed to confuse them! They went onto the road, milled around the intersection, then ran off down a different road.
While I was switching out the memory card, I heard noises.
They were running back again! Then they stopped and watched me while I finished with the trail cam. As I walked back to the house, they came running along the road again. There’s one spot along the north fence they have been able to use to use to get into our yard, and that’s what they were heading for.
They’ve been in front of our living room window, on and off, ever since.
While things were still below freezing, I decided to keep working on the path to the fire pit.
This is as far as I got, yesterday. You can see the shape of the BBQ under the remains of the tent – and the piece of tree that fell on it!
The tent, not the BBQ. The tent protected both the picnic table and the BBQ from damage.
To the right, there’s a bar with a handle on it sticking out of the snow. That’s where the fire pit is. That handle is for the cooking grill.
This is why I didn’t want to wait until it was warmer. I’m standing on the cat path to the storage house to take this photo. There’s a low spot that fills with water, and it’s still too chilly for my rubber boots. ;-)
Here, I’m standing where the path curves, so the rest of it can be seen. I’d dug out most of the fire pit by this point. Yesterday, I had dug to just past the big maple tree.
We have a fire pit again! Yay!
Now that it’s uncovered, the sun should melt away the remaining snow in it rather quickly. There are two concrete blocks on the sides, and a the support for the cooking grill is in a half-block. Those will warm up quite a bit, once the sun hits them.
I don’t know where my parents got those glazed bricks around the fire pit. They are everywhere, and I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have them. I like them but, my goodness, they are dangerous! So incredibly slippery! I accidentally stepped on them more than a few times while shovelling, and almost lost my footing, every time.
The space around the fire pit still needs to be widened, so there’s room to set up chairs or even just stand around a fire and not be too close to it. From here, I’ll dig to the collapsed tent to access the BBQ and finally put the new over on it. The snow on the fire pit side of the tent isn’t as deep as around the other side.
There are a couple of large, hollowed out spaces under a nearby spruce tree. I think they are where deer had lain down in the snow.
Then a path needs to be dug to the wood pile.
Critters have already made their own path to the pile!
There’s a cover over most of the wood, so if we did want to do a cookout, we have dry wood available.
Here is the entire path, looking back towards the house.
There is something absolutely delightful about walking down these paths, through hip and waist deep snow. They’re like some sort of secret passageway!
I fully expect to see hoof and paw prints down here, soon. :-D
Now we just need an excuse to have a cook out! For the past few years, we’ve hardly been able to use the fire pit at all, due to dry conditions. Winter has been the only safe time to light a fire.
Hhhmmm… Now I’m thinking of what we’ve got that would do well, cooked over a fire… LOL
Today was originally forecast to be only 0C/32F. Then the predictions were for us to be “5 degrees colder than yesterday’s high” – apparently we reached 8C/46F at some point!
Even as I was reading that on my app, we’d already surpassed that adjusted forecast, and as I write this, we have continued to warm up and are now at 6C/42F.
It’s awesome out there!
The outside cats are loving it.
I think the heated water bowl is working again. The metal bowls had iced over, though they weren’t frozen solid. The hole formed around the heated water bowl, however, was a pool was water. I’d chipped the ice and snow away from part of the cord so I could see if there was any damage (I couldn’t see any), so I had enough slack to move the bowl to a new location, out of the water. It had no ice in it at all.
We’ve been clearing snow off the winter sowing experiment as best we could. They all have holes in the tops for air circulation, but I did put snow inside them every now and then. That has completely melted away.
In comparing the 4 different types of containers, so far I like the milk just style (it’s actually a water jug) the least. The plastic is a lot softer, so if feels less stable, and the packing tape I used to hold the top and bottom halves no longer sticks to it. Other than that, they all seem to be responding to the light and temperatures the same, as far as I can tell. We’ll have a better idea of which type of container works best once the seeds start to germinate.
If the seeds start to germinate, I suppose!
Today is Saturday, which means the dump is open longer hours. Between the weather and vehicle troubles, we were way overdue for a dump run, and finally got it done today. The van was backed up closer to the people gate in the chain link fence for loading, but the packed snow of the driveway had softened so much, we almost got stuck trying to leave!
The part of the drive that bothered me the most, however, as the lane to the dump itself. I’m particularly paranoid when it times to tires. Between the vans we’ve had and my mother’s car, we’ve dealt with quite a few tire problems. I’ve had tires blow out on me on the highway. I’ve had to drive on a rim for blocks before finding a safe place to pull over. I’ve had tires suddenly and unexpectedly go flat on me (only one of which I could reasonably say was not vandalism). I’m far too familiar with how it feels to drive on a flat.
Driving down that lane was so rough, it felt like driving on 4 flat tires.
I was never so relieved to get back onto a muddy, pothole ridden gravel road than after we were done at the dump! :-D
Once at home, my daughter was sweet enough to take the time to clean the windows and lights on the van. They needed it!
I took advantage of the warmth and started digging out another new path. This time, towards the fire pit. In past winters, we were able to maintain paths around the entire house, a path to the fire pit, the area around the fire pit itself, and of course, a path to the wood pile.
This winter, even if we’d managed to start some of those paths, we couldn’t have maintained them. Maybe if the big snow blower was working, it would have been possible, but certainly not with little Spewie. There was just too much snow for that little electric machine.
One of the main reasons I want to clear a path to the fire pit is because the BBQ my brother gave us is there. We had a gazebo tent over it, but then a storm broke a tree branch on top of it, and the whole thing collapsed. It was still covering the BBQ and the picnic table, so we left it for the winter. My brother, however, bought us a new cover for it that is the right size; the one that was on it when they brought it over was for a smaller BBQ, and while we could get it to cover the important parts, the wind ended up tearing it to shreds, which is why I had it under the tent. So along with clearing the fire pit out, I want to be able to put the new cover on the BBQ, too.
This is going to be a multi-day job, though. For now, I just got a path about 2/3rds of the way to the fire pit. The warm weather is supposed to continue through into April, with the exception of 1 day that’s supposed to dip below freezing, so we’ll have plenty of good days to work on it.
The sun room, meanwhile, has been reaching almost 20C/68F during the day! The overnight temperatures are still a bit too chilly, but it’s going to be time to stop letting the outside cats have access to the room, now that their water outside is no longer freezing, and start prepping space for the seedling trays, and work out how to set up the new shop light.
I am so looking forward to being able to get more seeds started!
We are having another lovely, warm day today. Not as warm as yesterday ended up being, but still enough that things are melting.
Things are starting to look really messy and gross as the snow melts away to expose layers of dirt, but it’s so uplifting to finally feel “spring” happening, no one cares. Least of all the cats!
I checked the tracking on our Purolator package last night, and was happy to see that the replacement bands for our vacuum cleaner finally came in. I headed into town this afternoon to pick them up, which is when I saw the one unfortunate thing of the day. The first sign of trouble was when I saw two sets of headlights, side by side, coming towards me on the road – with a third vehicle on the side of the road in between. I started slowing down, of course, but so did the truck that was passing a car – which also pulled over to the side of the road!
When I saw the driver of the first vehicle on the side of the road get out and start walking around her car, I considered stopping to see if she was okay, but the truck stopped beside her to talk to her, so I kept going. Then I saw someone get out of the other vehicle that had just pulled over, which is when I spotted something on the road, across the lane.
It turned out to be a deer. The woman in the first car must have just hit it. The woman in the second car pulled it off the road.
This time of the year, we always see a LOT of deer crossing the roads. It makes driving unexpectedly dangerous.
Since I was in town to pick up our package anyhow, I made a quick stop at the grocery store. Bizarrely, the staff are still all wearing masks, as where most of the customers. Even outside, walking around by themselves. The psychological addiction can be very strong.
I was very happy to see one familiar face, though. A friend of mine that I used to work with, the last time we lived in this area, many years ago. She was just as pleased to see a face as I was. We chatted a bit about it, as well as the vaccine mandates that have also been lifted. Like us, she and her husband would be far more at risk from the vaccine than getting Covid, so the whole thing was very frustrating for them.
They have a farm to the north of us, so of course we started talking weather! Such a relief to see things melting. The amount of snow we got this year is not enough to make up for the last couple of years. Much will depend on spring. When she hears people complaining about how much snow we got this winter, her thought has been like mine: this is what our normal winter’s snow is! We needed more, to make up for last summer’s drought, and the conditions of year before. The response she usually gets to that has been comments on spring rains taking care of that, but she says we haven’t and spring rains around here for 7 years. Yes, we did get some last spring, before the heat waves hit, but nothing close to the average amounts. So these drought or near drought conditions have been around for quite a while now.
Of course, they garden as well, plus they have an assortment of animals. The cost of feed has been going up, and seed is running out. They’ve noticed lots of people diving into gardening as well, contributing to the supply shortages and increased prices (at least until the seed companies can catch up). As we were chatting, her husband joined us and commented on the cost of oats for human consumption. Seed oats cost over $17 a bushel right now. It used to cost about $3 a bushel!
Time to stock up on oatmeal while it’s still affordable!
Before I left the store, I picked up a lotto ticket. I figure if they can win the jackpot, so can I! :-D
Once at home, I opened up the vacuum cleaner and changed out the broken belt, and immediately started to vacuum my disgusting, disgusting floor. The carpet in my office/bedroom is a strange, felted sort of surface, and it probably 50 years old. It used to be in our living room, but when we got the current shag carpet put in, this one got slapped down on the floor of what used to be my parents’ bedroom, like a rug, with molding along the bottoms of the walls holding it in place. It’s severely stretched and lumpy-bumpy in places, and attracts dust, dirt and cat hair like nothing else I’ve ever seen! I was so thrilled to finally…
… break the new band on the vacuum cleaner.
It turned out I hadn’t quite lined the cover up right over the beater bar when I put it back.
I’m glad I got extra bands! If I break it again, there’s still a couple more.
It feels so good to finally have a red carpet again, instead of grey with cat hair. :-D
You know you’re getting old, when being able to vacuum a carpet is exciting.
Unfortunately, with the noise of the vacuum, all the cats ran off, including Butterscotch and Nosencrantz. Nosencrantz has started to explore the house more on her own, and has even visited the girls upstairs, but Butterscotch still hadn’t even shown an interest. Nosencrantz has made her way back and is settled down on my bed with several other cats, but not Butterscotch. Right now, I have no idea where she is!
Well, I guess that’s one way to get her to check out the rest of the house! :-D
Here’s a switch. Instead of being colder than predicted, today we were warmer! Only a degree warmer than forecast, but that was enough to make quite a difference outside!
Inside, I had Turmeric making it difficult for me to make my bed.
She won.
Rolando Moon claimed the favourite sun room bed for herself. Since we’ve been leaving the doors propped slightly open, so the cats can get to the inside heated water bowl, I’ve noticed she’s in there quite a lot! She may not have the temperament to be an inside cat, but she does claim some of the luxuries when they are available. ;-)
The outside cats were very active this morning. Since I shoveled most of the snow off the cat room, we now regularly see several of them up there at the same time, when we first pop outside.
I counted about 14 of them this morning. While setting out the kibble, The Distinguished Guest came by, so I took advantage of the opportunity and copped a quick feel. Alas, I did find a tiny pair of nibs under that long fur.
Well, I guess we’ll have “long haired black cat” added to the genetic diversity of our yard cats!
I stayed out to get the burn barrel going again – it really did not want to stay lit!
With today’s warmth, it was getting a bit more dangerous, moving around. Formerly hard packed snow would collapse under my feet, or I’d find a layer of ice – the hard way – and came close to losing my footing.
Which meant that we had issues when we headed out to pick up the pizza’s my daughter ordered. The van just sank into the softened snow. We didn’t get stuck, at least!
The highways were nice and clear, though the visibility was down.
Where we live is a transition area between prairie and Boreal forest. We don’t have far to go before we leave the trees behind, and see this.
This is with the camera on my phone cleaning up the shot! It looked like there was fog, though it was actually snow. The white expanse and reflective light was actually a distraction in my peripheral vision. I kept thinking my daughter’s window was getting frosted over, but it was just … whiteness. She took some pictures to try and capture that for me. You can just see some trees dotting the horizon. These are most likely shelter belts around distant farmhouses.
Once in town, it was warmer, of course. That urban heat island effect had all sorts of things melting, and some of the streets were starting to flood. I was more concerned about dodging the fresh potholes. ’tis the season! We’re supposed to reach temperatures just above freezing, every day for more than a week. The streets and highways are going to get torn apart during the overnight freezes!
After we got home, I found this little bundle on my bed.
Nozencrantz was all curled up like a shrimp, snoozing right in the middle of my bed – with several other cats nearby! She may not be settled in enough to join the cuddle piles, but she’s at least allowing other cats near her more often. Even cats she normally hisses at. Progress!
Over the next few days, we’re going to have to keep a close eye on some things. Though I shoveled as much as I could from the sun room roof, I expect we’ll have water leaking in there. My daughters are having to deal with a leak that comes through one of their windows, even though they’ve cleared the snow off the low slope roof. We’ll have to watch in the old basement in particular, and if the sump pump goes off, make sure it is able to pump through that section of hose outside that was previously blocked. If water starts showing up on the concrete, we’ll have to make sure the big blower fan and the dehumidifier are up and running, to try and keep things dry. We’ll need to keep an eye on the new part basement, too, now that we know the weeping tile is likely full of silt and roots. :-( This will the the first winter since we’ve moved here, where any of this will be an issue.
We had to deal with some of this, during our first spring here in particular, but this winter, we’ve got a lot more snow. Without being able to clear snow from the yard so we could drive up to the door, we can also expect a lot more water in front of the outhouse. I remember having difficulty getting to the door at the back of the garage, because of a large pool of water that had formed. I recall seeing through the hole under the outhouse, that the pit was flooded out. That hole has been blocked off, now, but this year, a groundhog made a den under there. I hope it has a back door, because after clearing away the gravel it filled the pit with, the back of the outhouse is now blocked with wire mesh. It’s set up to keep things from digging in from the outside, though. I think a groundhog would be able to dig its way out from the inside. Assuming it comes out of hibernation before its den floods out. :-(
After about a week, the temperatures are supposed to drop to just below freezing again, through into April. If things go well, we will continue to have this slow, gentle melt, giving the ground time to thaw out and absorb the water, increasing our water table, rather than surface flooding and draining away to towards the lake. We need every drop of moisture to make up for last summer’s drought and heat waves. The local farms could certainly use a good year, after the last two disastrous ones. Me, I’ll be happy to not have to water all those far flung garden beds every day, twice a day! Though we will be shifting the garden beds in the north east corner close to the house, we’ll still need to be able to water the berry bushes that will be planted where we had the sweet corn and sunflower beds, last year.
So much work to do, once the snow it gone. :-) I’m really looking forward to it!
Well, today, I finally got it done. My daughter and I made it to Costco in the city and survived. ;-)
It wasn’t too bad, actually, though I did have some concerns when we first headed out.
Of course, the critters got fed before we left – and Ghost Baby made an appearance, too! As you can see, it was snowing again.
Chadiccus is not impressed with more snow.
It was coming down heavier by the time we left; enough to make visibility a bit of a concern. Especially when passing oncoming trucks, and all the snow they were kicking up. The main concern was more about deer than traffic – and I counted at least three dead deer on the side of the road, just between our place and the town my mother lives in. By the time we picked up a bit of gas and breakfast, it was starting to clear up, though, so that was good. We did see several deer crossing the highway on the way home, though. Thankfully, visibility was just fine at the time, and all the traffic could see them and slow down!
One of the changes in today’s plans had to be about my glasses. I don’t know how much they will cost, but I did have an idea of what our shopping list would cost, and I knew we probably couldn’t do both. I still thought I might be able to get an eye test, though, which our insurance covers 100%, once every 2 years. While standing at the counter, being ignored, I noticed their sign on the eye exam door making a big deal about masks, due to close proximity. All restrictions are supposed to be lifted in our province tomorrow, but I’ve been able to go without even my Mingle Mask (which I shouldn’t be wearing, either), without any problems lately. This Costco location has been particularly good, except for the odd harassment from customers, though I’ve heard of others getting abuse from staff. I think it can depend on who’s on shift at any given moment, and how much they are into power tripping. Either way, after reading the sign, I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and left. I’ll see if I can get a eye exam somewhere, later, and hopefully will not have to deal with medical discrimination any more.
There were a couple of things I found at Costco that I decided was worth getting, even though they were not on our list. One was a large bag of soil for seed starting. I’d been getting smaller bags until now, because that’s all that was in stock. With this one, we now have enough for all the seed starting we need to do, and probably have some left over, all at a significantly lower cost.
The other thing I got was a shop light that was remarkably affordable.
Last year, we rigged up the long aquarium light fixtures that are currently being used on the big aquarium greenhouse that they were designed for. This is brighter, and much less fragile! If I can avoid moving those more than I have to, that’ll be a good thing.
While it’s intended for the sun room, once we start transferring our seedlings there, I have it rigged up in front of the mini-greenhouse right now. For an overcast day like today, it’ll be much more efficient than the little lights I’ve been making do with right now. I’ve actually got it hanging from one end from a plant hook in the ceiling of the living room, in front of the mini-greenhouse. It’s braced in place, but I do have some concerns a cat will knock it aside. If that happens, at worst, it’ll just be dangling from the ceiling and not lighting up inside the mini-greenhouse. We are still relying on the aluminum foil lining the back and sides to reflect the light. At some point, we might be able to get smaller lights that will fit under the shelves of the mini-greenhouse but, honestly, by the time we’re ready to invest in those types of lights, we’ll be using larger, sturdier shelving to start seeds in, so it’ll be a moot point.
This light can be linked to others, so if it works out in the sun room, we might pick up more. If they’re still available by the time we can test it out, of course.
The remote control is an interesting thing to have. It means that we’ll be able to control the light from inside the house, if we want to. Most likely from the bathroom window, which overlooks the run room.
We’ll see how it works out and adjust accordingly.
While we were unloading the van, I spotted an Agnoos. He was having so much fun rolling around on the cat house roof, he almost rolled himself right off of it! :-D Silly boy!
So we finally did the big shopping trip we normally would have done at the end of last month, and are all stocked up again. We now also have all we need for starting the remaining seeds, and even an extra light. About the only thing we’re short on is a storage bin of the appropriate size and shape for when we start the kulli corn. We’ve been saving our toilet paper tubes to use again, with some modifications after things didn’t work out as planned, last year. We got 100 kulli corn seeds in total which, if we can find the right size and shape storage bin, we should be able to fit into one bin. We still have the under-bed storage bin we used last year, but that will be too long for just the corn. Last year, it fit both corn and sunflowers. It worked, but I’d like something less awkward to move around, and we’re not starting sunflowers indoors this year.
Oh, there was something else that has progressed. Or should I say, has actually stalled. We hit the mail before heading into the city, and I found a letter from the RCMP. My PAL application went through, but my “credit card” didn’t work. They can’t do debit Visa. I don’t have a credit card. The letter included a form for new credit card information, but I’ll have to phone them tomorrow and see if I can mail them a check, or if I have to go to the bank and get a cashier’s check. There is also a letter saying the quality of the photo I sent them was not good enough, and they want another one. I could probably use the same photo; the problem would have been with my printer. I’ve printed other photos since then, and the quality has been much better, so I’ll try again.
Anyhow. We got some good progress during what has turned out to be a very dreary day. Not as warm as was predicted (no surprise there). We’re also getting predictions of above freezing temperatures tomorrow, but still overcast, so… we’ll see what actually happens!
Tomorrow, however, is pizza night. One of my daughters has a birthday this month, so she’s treating the whole family to pizza. The place she wants to order from is a 45 minute drive away, but what birthday girl wants, birthday girl gets. ;-)
The cats got into one of the aloe vera we moved out of the large aquarium greenhouse, to make room for seed starts.
They even went after the one that was the most barricaded! As you can see by the aloe looking like it was carefully set aside, it’s not the plants they want. It’s the dirt!
Repotting that and figuring out how to protect it, is a job for later today.
The new location for the mini-greenhouse seems to be working well. It was getting direct sunlight this morning, on all levels. With the aluminum foil around the sides and back, the seedlings were getting light from all sides. I’m rather pleased with that.
We had a much warmer morning today, almost no wind, and lots of sunshine, so I took advantage of that.
So did the outside cats! I counted 17 of them outside, plus there was one in the sun room, so they are all accounted for.
I startled our usual 3 deer away from the feeding station, but they were running back almost before I finished putting out the seed.
I then took advantage of the conditions and got the burn barrel going. It’s a lot harder to burn off the wood pellet cat litter, when it it’s too cold for it to dry out.
Then, in between tending the burn barrel, I started clearing out the paths that were blown in by the high winds we’ve had recently.
I actually enjoy shovelling, so I just kept going, and ended up clearing all the paths, in both the inner and outer yards.
I found Potato Beetle enjoying his sun spot, when I cleared a path to the front of the garage. :-)
I even took the time to break up the ice and snow near the cat’s house to haul it away. There was no more room for the ice from the metal water bowls anymore. With things warming up as they are, I also cleared the roof of the cat house of most of the snow, and even the snow overhang on the kibble house. I considered clearing the kibble house roof, too, but by then, I was done for the day!
The problem with doing all the shovelling is that, once I stop, that’s when things start to hurt! As soon as I sat down, my entire body started to stiffen up and ache. *sigh* Thankfully, though, there was a hot breakfast and a pot of tea made. Between that and some painkillers, I’m going all right. :-)
