Lately, Beep Beep has been very aggressive about wanting human attention.
She has very sharp claws!
After we made our trip to my medical appointment yesterday, the girls and I ended up going for a walk-about beyond the outer yard.
Beep Beep followed us.
Continue readingBrrr, today has turned out to be chilly!
With some help from my daughter, though, I was able to get a lot more done outside than I expected.
First on the list was to move the old dog houses to what I hope will be a permanent – or at least long term – location.
Unfortunately, things are really level in the area I wanted to put them. After discussing it a bit, we decided which space was the most level, then hoisted the dog houses over.
Continue readingWe started leaving food out for Junk Pile Kitten and his mom beside the junk pile, since the other cats crowd around the food bowls by the house, and sometimes chase them away.
Then the other cats discovered we leave food there.
In fact, it’s now become routine for the other kittens to follow me as I put food out, ignoring the food by the house and eating the food being left at the junk pile.
I’ve taken to leaving little piles of food on the ground beside the bowl, and even on the log I’ve set up as a seat. I started doing the same thing by the pump shack, too, since not only have some of the kittens started following me there, so do Butterscotch and Beep Beep!
I will start with the good news, first.
Mild Cheddar went through surgery very well!
Continue readingWhile switching out the empty hanging bird feeder for a full one, I noticed Junk Yard kitten was out.
So I sat down on the log I placed near the junk pile as a seat, and tried to lure him in.
There was a cat toy I’d found while cleaning out the old wood pile; one of the ones we’d left for the kittens that were living in there for a while, last year. Between it and the tree branch I wiggled around, I was able to get him to come within 3 ft of me and play!
He (she?) is such a beautiful cat! Those dark framed, golden eyes are just amazing!
The Re-Farmer
A couple of days ago, my daughters noticed something wrong with one of the kittens.
Check this out.
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
When doing my morning rounds, I used to get followed by at least Beep Beep and Butterscotch. Sometimes, other cats would come along, but it was usually those two in particular. That changed after they had their kittens. Butterscotch no longer even likes to be picked up anymore (I think it has become uncomfortable for her) and she’s become a lot more stand-offish. Lately, I’ve been seeing her as infrequently as the male cats.
Beep Beep is a lot more homey and, while she doesn’t like being picked up as much as she used to either, it doesn’t seem to be out of any sort of discomfort. She has started to follow me again in the mornings, and the kittens are beginning to expand their territory.
Even Big Jim came out to see what was going on.
Today, I stayed in town for my daughter’s short shift. One of the things I ended up doing while there was picking up a magnetic lifter. You know, the kind of thing you would use when you drop a screw and it rolls under a shelf. I wanted to try and see if it would help me find nails in the dirt in the old wood pile.
It kind of worked.
The first challenge involved kittens, who thought it was a springy new toy!
The second was the fact that I wasn’t completely sure if I was feeling a magnetic pull or not. I did find a nail in my test, but I don’t know that the magnet is quite strong enough to find things in that much soil. Sometimes, though, it felt like there was a constant magnetic pull, even though I could find nothing in the ground.
The third problem was… well…
…let me show you.
My attempts to get a photo of the nail it successfully found in the dirt was foiled by Doom Guy, who was absolutely desperate for snuggles!
His claws are incredibly sharp.
He is also having some major respiratory problems. :-(
Which meant I was stuck with a sneezing, snorting, snotty cat that was poking holes in my body while trying to get comfortable in my arms.
And shoulders.
And back.
And head…
Since I was in the area and not working on the area today (I try to keep Sundays as my day of rest, as much as possible), I decided to look beyond were I’d cleared, and get an idea of what I would be working in, next.
I found more of my mother’s flowers. Sort of.
I recognize those plants with the long, slender, pointed leaves. There is a bunch of them in the old kitchen garden. Those have finally started to show flower spikes. I doubt these will bloom at all. They are growing among many dead cherry trees that have new cherry shoots coming up at their bases. My mother had mentioned planting some flowers here, then blaming them for apparently killing some spruce trees I was telling her about. Except these aren’t near the spruce trees I was talking about. Anyhow, I did know she had deliberately planted flowers under the trees somewhere in this area, and now I have found them.
Once this area is cleared and more sunlight gets to the ground, I’m sure we’ll see more flowers, just as we are already seeing more flowers along the edges of the spruce grove that I’d already cleared a bit.
Then I found this.
That’s, my friends, a big patch of poison ivy.
Western Poison Ivy, to be precise.
sigh
We’ve been on the look out for poison ivy since moving here, and while we have seen some similar plants, I was able to confirm that they were NOT poison ivy. I had never seen poison ivy on the property before, even as a child who spent many, many hours roving wild among the trees. I had begun to hope I still wouldn’t.
sigh, again.
The patch doesn’t seem to be very wide, but I also can’t see how deep it extends into the trees – and I won’t be able to until I start clearing back there.
I’ve been looking up how to get rid of it, and not looking forward to the job. At this point, I think I will just leave it for next year. I can avoid the patch when I’m clearing behind the outhouse and moving the debris pile I’ve raked out of the wood pile area. If I have time this year to clear into where those flowering plants that aren’t flowering right now are, I can avoid it on that side, too.
I really could have done without this.
Ah, well. It is what it is. We’ll deal.
The Re-Farmer
