I managed to get a picture of Ginger this morning.
This was just a moment before he leapt up and tackled my phone! :-D
He was very fierce-some this morning!
I got this picture of David the Magnificent, yesterday, and just had to share.
He is such a pretzel!
Meanwhile, I had a whole crowd, outside!
The Ghost Baby was peeking between the shelters to see if it was safe to go eat!
She finally dared!
My daughter told me that she sometimes shows up at their second floor window, describing her as a ghost baby. I figure that’ll do just fine as a name. Better than “that sort-of calico cat…”.
My daughters have also been telling me about another grey and white tabby. I honestly can’t remember (I’m losing track!), but they say it’s Junk Pile’s baby from last summer, and it looks like here, except thicker. So they call it Thickilous.
:-D
I may well have seen it and thought it was Junk Pile, but until I see them both at the same time, I have no way of knowing.
So we have these 7, possibly Thickilous, and Nicky the Nose, hanging around. We have more cats inside than outside right now!
Well. At least until the kittens are born. Only Butterscotch looks pregnant, but that doesn’t mean the others aren’t!
My daughter’s orchids are looking beautiful this morning!
They have been doing very well since she starting using kokedama, though finding a place to hang them where the cats couldn’t get at them was more of a challenge!
Unfortunately, one of them seems to be struggling. You can see some of the dead leaves behind the flowers in the above photo. My daughter has figured out that, when we had the polar vortex hit us in February, it simply got too cold for them at the window, and one in particular is having a much harder time recovering.
Now that we have the aquariums converted to cat proof greenhouses, next winter we will be able to move them into one of those to keep them warmer.
I also saw some fluffy, furry flowers this morning. ;-)
I was able to bring them some meaty treats from the kitchen this morning, and they were very happy!
I love how Creamsicle Jr. is licking his chops! :-D
We’re supposed to have a nice, warm day today, and I’m looking forward to getting some garden preparations done outside. The cats have already discovered the soil my daughter moved to the old kitchen garden. They LOVE rolling around in dirt. We have several trees with bald patches at their bases, because the cats roll under them so much. One of them is an ornamental apple tree in the old kitchen garden, and now they have bonus dirt to roll in.
I don’t mind them rolling at the bottom of the tree. We can’t plant anything under them, anyhow – but it’s going to be a problem if they decide to roll in the new soil after we’ve planted!
The girls had gone out for a walk and excitedly told me I needed to go outside – with a camera!
You know those garlic in the snow I got a picture of this morning?
There’s more of them now!
The two on the left where not there this morning!
We also have a first appearance.
One of our muscari (grape hyacinth) has emerged! The first of (hopefully!) 200. :-D
Though today has stayed just below freezing, it was enough that a lot of areas warmed up and the snow melted. Including roofs.
Long before we moved out here, the storage house got a new roof, but the eaves troughs were never reattached. In fact, the other side has none at all. So most of the snow melting off the roof just drips straight down.
(Also, that wasp nest is a couple of years old and empty)
Which made for an interesting double layer of icicles on one of the step below. :-D
Unfortunately, ice has also formed directly on the grape vines at ground level.
If these have survived the winter, we really need to find a better spot to transplant them!
The nearby spirea can handle the ice just fine!
It’s like the cross bar on the grape vine support is exactly under the drip line! :-D
The cats, meanwhile, are wisely staying out of the wind! I was surprised and pleased to see Butterscotch in there, with her boy Nutmeg. :-)
It’s so awesome to be seeing anything growing in the weather we’ve been having! Talk about resilient! :-)
We were supposed to get rain, first, but if we did, it wasn’t much. Not a lot of snow, either, but we’re supposed to get more, later in the week. These are our “April showers” that will hopefully lead to May flowers. :-)
I managed to snag a photo of Ginger this morning!
He has been very active, so it’s been hard to get photos! :-D
As squirmy as he was while I tried to get that photo, it was no comparison to Beep Beep.
I hadn’t even tried to pet her. As soon as she saw me taking pictures of Ginger, she started rolling around like mad, beeping for attention!
When I came outside, I saw Ginger’s brothers and Junk Pile coming out of the cat’s house, while his mom emerged from the shelf shelter by the sun room door. I’m not sure where Rosencrantz emerged from! :-D
You can see the chickadee on the bird feeder platform, and if you look carefully, you’ll see another one in the lilac bush, just under the thicker branches.
The snow almost made even the ugly fence look pretty!
I so look forward to when we can take that fence out!
The little garlics peeking through the mulch are visibly bigger than when we first spotted them! Thankfully, they should be able to handle this weather just fine. Likewise, the onion starts in the sun room are doing quite well. The temperatures in there don’t go below freezing (and the trays also have heat from below), but it gets chilly enough that if we had the tomatoes or squash in there, we’d have to bring them into the house for the night. The sun room still manages to stay warmer overnight than the old kitchen!
I spotted the shy calico disappearing under the fence on the far end of my mother’s “living fence” of hawthorn, carigana and oaks.
One of these months, I’ll get to cleaning up around the collapsing log cabin, and that corner of the fence. The chain link just sort of got dropped to the ground after the last fence post, so the junk there, and on the other side of the cabin, act as a sort of fence on their own. Once it’s cleaned out, if the renter’s cows get into the outer yard again, there will be nothing that can stop them from getting into the inner yard. Another reason to fill in any gaps, should the electric fence fail again.
I do love seeing the cows, and the few times they have gotten through, they did a great job of eating the overgrown areas in the outer yard, which in turn reduces the fire hazard in those areas. :-)
By the time I was done my rounds, the cats were making their way back into their shelter. I think it’s even dark enough for the light sensor on the timer to turn on the ceramic heater bulb.
Those things have been so handy, I think we will pick up more!
As I write this, we are at -3C/27F with a wind chill of -11C/12F. It’s the wind that’s more of an issue than the snow or the temperatures. Meanwhile, short range forecasts have us at 1C/34F over the next couple of days, with a sudden leap to 15C/59F on Thursday – only to drop to -3C over night, with more snow into Friday. Which is supposed to reach a high of 2C/35F, so it’s all going to melt away very quickly. Long range forecasts show rain and snow in the first days of May.
Somewhere in there, we have to get our septic tank emptied, and get those loads of garden soil delivered. There are things we need to be able to direct sow two weeks before last frost, and everything we are planting this year depends on having that soil available.
It feels like we’re starting to cut it close. Even with the snow, though, we’ve had enough warm temperatures that they should be able to load the soil into their trucks by now. I need to remember to make some calls tomorrow and find out.
It seems the more we get these little snowfalls, the more antsy I am to get gardening! :-D
The outside cats were, as usual, very excited about that whole “food” thing. ;-)
The super shy one was even down to “shy” instead of “super shy”. :-D
Usually, she’ll peek in between the shelters, see me and run off. Not this morning!
She actually joined the buffet while I was still there!
Then she ran off as soon as I moved.
Ah, well.
Mornings get very noisy this time of year. :-) While I was doing my rounds, I was hearing SO many Sandhill Cranes, as well as Canada Geese. Then a palliated woodpecker showed up, moving from tree to tree as I walked around, making sure I couldn’t possibly get a photo! :-D They have such a raucous call. I’d heard it before but this was the first time I saw one actively making it. I had no idea that noise was from a woodpecker until now! :-D
We’re supposed to have a warm one today, with a high of 11C/52F. Normally, I would be outside, doing more clean up and making use of our newly sharpened little electric chain saw. It’s got a 10″ bar, which is just enough to use on some of the downed trees nearer the house that have to be cleaned out.
Instead, I will be heading out this afternoon to help my mother with some grocery shopping. Which is probably a good thing, because I have been strangely hurting. I always have aches and pains, of course, but yesterday I started feeling the oddest chest pains. Mostly around the sternum, but also in the muscles in front of my shoulder joint. The “clavicular head”, according to the anatomy charts. It makes reaching for things much more limited. It’s the sort of pain I would normally associate with having overdone it with heavier physical labour, or pulling a muscle or something. I haven’t done anything that would explain it, though. The closest thing was to load the lawn mower in and out of the van, and there was nothing taxing about that.
Whatever caused it, I’m still feeling it today, and it seems unaffected by the pain killers I take daily for my osteoarthritis. It’s more annoying than anything else. I only really notice it when I stretch to reach for something and discover my range of motion suddenly limited.
Bah.
We have a few cooler days coming. Hopefully, it’ll pass by the time things warm up again, and I can get back to cleaning up in the spruce grove.
It was a very gorgeous 9C/48F outside, so I took advantage of it to check some things out, beyond the outer yard. More specifically, I wanted to check out the dugouts.
But first, I got accosted by a very affectionate – and still very round – Butterscotch. She really wanted attention, and even got me to pick her up. Which tells me she has a bit longer before she has her kittens, since she doesn’t want to be picked up when she’s closer to her due date.
For all the snow we got and what’s still on the ground, things are still on the dry side.
In this photo, I’m standing in the deepest part of the dugout in the old hay yard. There isn’t even any mud. This time of year, this should be a small pond. This is the area we hope to excavate deeper, a few years from now, in hopes to have water there all the time.
This dugout has even less water than the last time I came out here, a few weeks ago. This should be a large pond right now.
Finally, some water! This is the old gravel pit, and you can see by the lumpy ground from the renter’s cows, how high the water would usually be. This is deep enough, and there’s enough clay under it, that it is very rare for this spot to have no water at all. There is a low, marshy area that runs from this spot, towards the dugout in the previous photo, and there’s no water in there at all. Just mud in a few places. I could hear frogs, though, so that’s encouraging.
When I dropped of the lawn mower for servicing earlier today, the guy I was talking to mentioned predictions of up to 7 inches of snow on Sunday. I don’t know where he heard that, because when I look at Environment Canada and Accuweather, there are no such predictions. We might get some rain and snow tonight, but there’s very low chance of snow on Sunday, and no other rain predicted.
At least we got what we have so far. It will be a huge help.
The weather system has finally weakened and moved on. Over the next while, we’ll be slowing warming up, with a bit more snow predicted on the weekend (depending on which app I look at! LOL). With temperatures hovering only a few degrees above freezing during the day for the next while, we should have a nice, slow melt. We’re not expected to get into the double digits (in Celsius) until May. Which means no flooding, and no washing away of soil, and the still frozen deeper soil will thaw out slightly faster.
If things actually turn out as forecast, it will be pretty much perfect.
The outside cats are doing just fine in all this! When I came out this morning, I saw Butterscotch coming out of the bottom of the shelf by the sun room that we put rigid insulation in, adding more to the front to create a shelter for them. Creamsicle Jr. was in the middle shelf, sitting like a loaf in the opening, watching me as I changed out there water. I’m really glad that little shelter is working out for them.
The weather at least seems to have kept away the skunks, as there was still some kibble left in their food bowls.
Rosencrantz (in the foreground) has the densest, fluffiest fur! All the cats have their dense winter fur, but hers is so incredibly fluffy! :-D She would not let me pet her this morning, though.
Butterscotch, on the other hand, is looking rounder and rounder.
*sigh*
We’ll just have to assume that Rosencrantz and Junk Pile cat are also pregnant, but they don’t look any bigger than their winter fur would normally make them.
:-/
Anyhow.
In total, I would say we got about 6-8 inches (15-20cm) of accumulated snow in our area. The snow is so heavy and wet, it actually made shoveling the sidewalk a challenge, because the snow kept sticking to the shovel!
Meanwhile, we don’t need to actually go anywhere until tomorrow, so we’ve got another quiet day at home to catch up on things indoors. :-)
The weather system has stalled over Ontario which, for us, means that the winds have actually reversed; Instead of coming in from the west and slowly cycling to the north, it’s swooping in from the east and swinging to the south. The entire system is covering the south end of three provinces (well, four, really, but it’s just barely touching one) and at least three states with snow, switching to rain to the east.
We’re just on the norther edge of the system, and seem to be getting more gaps between snowfalls, but there is still heavier snow expected.
The winds have increased, but we’re still at a very mild -4C/25F with a wind chill of -14C/7F.
I saw Junk Pile watching me through the window when I came out, but had to take a photo when I saw through the other window, that Nutmeg and Creamsicle Jr. were snuggled up under the heater bulb, I just had to take a picture! By the time I got my phone out, though, Nutmeg was at the window, checking me out. :-D
Smart kitties know where the warmth is!
I saw Butterscotch, too. I don’t know where her hiding spot it, but it’s not usually in the inner yard.
While switching out the trail cam memory cards, I remembered to get this picture.
We had started out with rain, but these icicles formed on the bumpers only on one side of the gate. There’s even icicles inside the gate post, at the ends of the hinge bolts!
The temperatures are expected to stay pretty constant, dipping only a degree or two overnight. By the end of today, they’re saying we may have a total of 20-35cm of snow. (8-14 inches) We have about 8 inches now.
The sun room, meanwhile, is staying steady at around 10C/14F. The onion seedlings, with their heater bulb below, are doing just fine in there. Of the various seeds that needed to be started this early, they’re easily the hardiest.
As I write this, the snow has stopped, but from the looks of the weather radar, we’ve got a patches of heavy snow about to hit us. Mind you, according to the radar, we should be snowing right now, so… we’ll see what happened.
Either way, I’m glad we don’t have to go anywhere, we’re warm inside, well stocked, and hunkered down. This is a good time for me to catch up on some crochet! :-)
Well, the forecasts were actually right for a change!
Somewhat.
When I checked the forecasts last night, they were suggesting the southern areas of our province might not get any snow at all, or if they did, it would be just a bit. The system was expected to hit more of the Northern areas of the province. The city, in particular, was predicted to get maybe a couple of centimeters of snow (about an inch).
We’re more central, so either of those forecasts could have included us, but we should have gotten at least a little snow.
When I checked the weather radar this morning, the system was over three provinces, and their bordering US states.
What caught my eye in all the blues of snow was the circle of pink and purple directly over the city. Pink and purple denoting severe weather. So while the rest of us were getting an ordinary snowfall, the city – and only the city, at that time – was getting a storm!
It has since moved on, but the area of snow is still over us, and it will continue through tomorrow.
We started out with rain, yesterday evening, and it was still warm enough that the cat’s unheated water bowls did not freeze overnight.
They just got slushy with snow!
The outside cats were more than happy to be out in the weather once their kibble bowls were filled again! Even Junk Pile cat almost came close to me!
Their bowls are completely empty every morning, after nightly visits from skunks. I’ve only seen one, once, when I popped outside at night to investigate something, and found it inside the kibble house. They can get in easily enough, but they have a harder time getting out, over that board that keeps them from knocking the bowls out, with their short little legs. We catch a whiff of their presence in the night, fairly regularly. I don’t mind them too much. Sure, in the summer, they dig up holes in the lawn, but they’re eating up the grubs, and the divots can be put back. Still, cat kibble is not good for them, so we don’t refill the food bowls in the evenings anymore. It means that cats are pretty hungry by morning, though. :-(
We may be getting snow, but we are still just barely below freezing. Our expected high for today and tomorrow is -3C/27F. Today, we’re supposed to get between 6 and 12 cm of snow (about 2 1/2 to almost 5 inches), and another 2-4cm (roughly 1 – 1 1/2 inches) tomorrow.
In the sun room, however, it was nice and warm. The thermometer was at 10C/50F, though with the heat under the seedling trays, they would have been a bit warmer than that. No danger of them getting too cold in there!
The snowfall was pretty light, this morning. Changing up the memory cards on the trail cams was a bit funny. I could really tell which way the wind had been blowing! One of the trail cams had its front face covered with snow, and under that was a layer of ice that I had to scrap off the lens cover and the motion sensor. It still managed to record some videos, though! The other camera’s front was clear, but one side was coated with ice and snow. The side with the latches to open it, of course. ;-)
I’m really happy with what we’re getting right now. The temperatures are still mild. There’s no deep freeze expected, and no high winds. While there are a few patches of severe weather in the system, they’re not anywhere near us. We’re just getting the snow. Looking at the long range forecasts, the temperatures will rise just above freezing for the next while, and we’re even expected to get more snow as we go into May, which means a slow melt, and all that precious moisture is going to be absorbed slowly into the soil, rather than being washed away. This is exactly what we need!
The girls and I have been paying particular attention to where we planted all those bulbs and corms last fall. With it being so dry, we were concerned. We planted 200 grape hyacinth and another hundred crocuses. The crocuses in particular should be starting to poke through, and even blooming, while snow is still on the ground. We’ve had so little snow this past winter, though. Add in the tulips and irises the girls planted – with the tulips coming with instructions saying NOT to water them! – and it’s hard to guess how many have survived the winter, and the very dry spring we’ve had so far. Getting that polar vortex with so little insulating snow on the ground certainly wouldn’t have helped.
Well, we won’t know how they are for some time yet. If they survived the winter, this snowfall will be a huge boost for them.
I am really happy to see this snow. If things keep up like this, the fire bans might even be lifted. Some local farmers had managed to do controlled burns earlier, but the more of those that are done, the less wildfires we need to be concerned about later.
It is pure joy when the baby boy comes over for morning cuddles.
He doesn’t want to be picked up, and he doesn’t want to be held, but my goodness, he wants pets and scritches and snuggles, and he loves to roll and stretch and squirm on the soft, soft bed. :-)
If only we could get the outside cats even half that friendly!
This was the crowd that greeted me this morning. After I took the picture, I looked up and saw the sort-of-calico cat come running under the fence into the yard.
The Re-Farmer 