Settling in, little by little

I did my rounds around the yard this evening, and it’s really something to see how everything is settling in for the winter.

While I have been fighting those invasive vines all over the place all summer, there is one area where I am keeping them.  They are, after all, quite pretty, when under control!  They have gone to seed, now, and are all covered with lovely little puffs.

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I spent some time going around the yard, picking up the fallen branches, and going through where I cleaned things up in the maple grove.

When talking to my family about what I was finding, I mentioned the rows of trees that were planted too close together, with many dying because of it, and how I wanted to eventually transplant the three poor little tamarack trees.  One family member told me to just cut them down to give the other trees space.

Nope!  Not going to do that.  I really want to save these trees.

This is one of the reasons why.

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They turn a most glorious golden yellow in the fall!

In the future, I would really love to plant more of them!

It’s not unusual, when I make my way through the yard, for me to have a cat follow me.  That’s typically when Rolando Moon makes an appearance.  Otherwise, it’s Beep Beep or Butterscotch.

Today, I had two cats following me!

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Beep Beep and her boy!

Later, my younger daughter helped me move some leaf piles onto the flower garden by the Old Kitchen.  The girls have been raking the grass, but with the latest drop of leaves, it’s rather yard to tell in some places! :-D  We are starting to use the leaves as mulch in different areas as well as adding more to the garden – and that’s without doing any raking at all in between the trees!  Those will be left to decompose where they are.  We’ll just stay on top of picking up fallen branches in those areas.

Earlier today, we made a trip into town to get some prescription refills.  When they were ready, the pharmacist went through the three bottles with me.  There was supposed to be four, however.  So she went back to check what happened.  It turned out that, for some reason, the insurance wasn’t coming up to cover that one at all.  They figured it was a glitch in the system.

They ended up giving me the refill, without charging us for it now.  When I come back in about a week, for some other refills, they will charge us for it then.

Which kinda blows me away.

When we had issues with insurance, shortly after moving here, the Costco pharmacy my husband had set up with wanted to charge him full price. We didn’t even know there was a problem until they wanted some $400, when we should only have been paying $40 or so.  It was a most frustrating experience, and my husband went without some of his medications for a long time before the mess was fixed – and then even longer, because the fix put him at the wrong rate, which meant we still couldn’t afford it.

I’m rather glad we are with this pharmacy, now!

One of the benefits of going with a small town pharmacy, instead of one in the city!

Something to be thankful for, for sure!

The Re-Farmer

A lovely day

Today is officially Thanksgiving, so I will happily say again, Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope my Canadian visitors had a wonderful holiday weekend, with lots of food and family – or a lovely, quiet, non-party weekend, like we did!

Since we did our celebrating yesterday, and today was a fairly pleasant day, we were able to get some work done outside.  The girls were able to rake up lots more leaves to layer on the flower garden by the Old Kitchen, which I’m pretty excited about.  Lots of lovely organic matter! :-D

We are going to have to stop keeping the sun room doors propped open overnight.  More turd bombs were discovered this morning, plus something chewed a hole in the bottom of the open back of cat kibble.  Most likely the skunk, we think.  We did end up still leaving the door open during the day.  Which makes looking out the bathroom window something to look forward to!

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I was called over to see this adorable pile of fluff, and while I was taking photos through the bathroom window screen, I started getting called to look out the living room window, to see a deer!

It was under the crab apple trees, looking for apples, and we did get some photos with the DSLR.  I will upload those tomorrow to see how they turned out.  Unfortunately, I did not manage to get a photo of the deer standing up on its hind legs, trying to reach the apples on the tree!

After a while, it slowly wandered away down the garden, and we couldn’t see it anymore.  However, when I went into the master bedroom, I found I was able to see it through the maple grove.  As I stood watching it, I suddenly saw a second one, going through the trees and heading towards the house!

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I was able to get a few photos through the screen of the west facing window.  This one was also going under the crab apple and plum trees, looking for fallen fruit.

So beautiful!

After the deer left, I went to work on the sun room.  Most of the kittens took off when I came in through the Old Kitchen.  Doom Guy, however, managed to dash in before I could close the door!

Good thing the inside door to the rest of the house was closed!

I started taking things out of the sun room so I could clean the floor.  In the process, I have come to the conclusion that the turd bombs are not from the cats, but from the skunk.

After I got the mess cleaned up, washed the floor and transferred the cat kibble from the bag with a hole into a bucket, I sat outside to clean my late father’s wheelchair with a disinfectant cleaner while the floor dried.

When I was able to start putting things back inside, I found the sun room occupied already.

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Doom Guy is such a cutie!  He even let me pick him up and sit for a while with him cuddled in my arms.

Later on, I found him back again – this time with company!

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Corvo is letting me come closer, but still won’t let me pet him.

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Adorable brothers!!!

After all was finished and we were settling in for the evening, I found out about a legendary raid – Mewtwo – in Pokemon Go that was happening in town.  My daughter and I have not been able to do one yet, so we decided to head into town and join the raid.

When I came out the door, I was immediately set upon by Doom Guy.  As I picked him up to cuddle, I saw we had company…

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He’s back!

(In fact, he’s back right now.  I can hear him under my office window, knocking the metal food bowls around, as I write this!)

Before we left he dashed into the sun room.

*sigh*

Well, it’s now closed up for the night, so hopefully, no more turd bombs!

The Re-Farmer

Visiting kits and cats

While getting photos of the birds, I saw Jim at the base of the planter and started taking pictures of him, as well.

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Then The Outsider came through from the other side and posed!

It looks like The Outsider has moved right in with our cats.  It seems a bit odd that a lone kitten would show up like this.  It may be from a neighboring farm, but in that case, I would expect it to go home and only show up once in a while.  Alternatively, he may have been abandoned; something that still happens, unfortunately.

Whatever the reason, we are happy to have him, and so are the other kittens!

Then we have our other visitors.  Like this guy.

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It seems to now be a pretty sure thing that this is “dad cat”, that the girls would sometimes see while raking the yard.  We’d never really seen his face before, so no one recognized him when he showed up in the sun room a while back.  He’s coming closer to the house more often, and not just to quickly grab some food, and we’ve been able to get a better look at him and his rather distinctive face markings!

There is a grey cat that also comes around.  The grey and Dad Cat got into a big and nasty fight under our living room window a few days back.

I would not be surprised if we find ourselves with more kittens in the not too distant future. :-/

The Re-Farmer

Winter Prep, and future plans

Well, I’m certainly glad that yesterday was a good day, weather wise, because today certainly wasn’t!

Yesterday had warmed up quite a bit, which meant the ice and snow was melting and coming off the trees with a constant rattle of ice pellets hitting the ground.  When I had the chance, I checked around the yard to see if we had lost any other trees or large branches, and am happy to say that we did not.  Just a few little branches.

Heading over towards the apples, I could see that, while we only saw one deer over by the bird feeder, there were certainly others we didn’t see! Continue reading →

Little Ball of Floof

Here are some of the photos I was able to get of The Outsider this morning, after the deer left.

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Those incredible eyes!

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He is getting more comfortable with my husband – more so than some of our own kittens.

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I don’t know where he came from, but I’m glad to see he’s making himself at home with us.

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He’s the only long haired cat hanging around.  We thought he was from my brother’s place, which is the closest occupied home to us.  My brother’s dog has started to visit more often, and he loves the cats.  Most of our own have started to get used to him, but this kitten took right off as soon as he came near.  There was no familiarity there at all.

Oh, what an adorable little floof!

We have been finding ways to prop the doors into the sun room so that the cats can get it, but still keep most of the weather out.  If it works, we’ll start keeping their food and water in there, instead of outside, this winter.  I even found an old dog food-and-water bowl that we can use for the water, as the containers we used last year should probably be thrown out.  The cardboard from a flat of drink cans serves for the dry cat food, and is large enough for pretty much all of them to eat at the same time.

We are such sucks. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Crazy kits and cat strangers

Just before I headed out to my mother’s to help her with some cooking, my husband starts laughing out loud in the living room, calling us over.

If you’ve seen his previous post, you know why!

I managed to get some photos on the DSLR, too.

Too funny!

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What a handsome boy he is!

While he was going around the platform feeder, birds would start flying over, see him and abruptly change directions.  It looked like they were dive bombing him!

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He so wanted to get onto the hanging feeder, but it kept moving! :-D

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I don’t know what he found to nibble on up there.  We saw him chewing on things a few times.

I probably don’t want to know what he was eating.

He also was standing on his back legs, trying to climb even higher, but I wasn’t able to get photos.

While Corvo was busily entertaining us, Doom Guy and The Outsider also came over and hung out at the bottom of the planter.  We couldn’t get pictures at the time, but my older daughter caught this one.

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He’s here all the time, now, and seems to have made himself at home.

My daughter also got a photo, a few days ago, of one of the mystery cats that sometimes shows up.

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This is one of two strange adult cats that have been showing up now and then.

He seems pretty chill. :-D

Beyond getting entertained by cats at home, I spent some time with my mother, doing some cooking that will be used by home care when they come by for meal assist later on.  I noticed that another jar of the chili we made for her finally got used.  She told me I should take it home, because it wasn’t “fresh”, and she needs to only eat “fresh” food, for her health.

Well, she eats plenty of stuff that isn’t “fresh” all the time, so I know that’s just something she came up with to excuse not eating the chili.  I explained again to her that the reason I put them up in jars the way I did, was so that it last longer.  It didn’t matter.  Like the chicken my sister-in-law made for her, that ended up going to the cats, she’s simply decided it has gone bad, and that’s that.

So much of the fresh food that was prepared for her ended up being thrown out, because she wouldn’t eat it for some reason, and it actually did go bad.  Such a waste.

I had a chance to show my mother some photos of the clean up I did along the fence line up to the gate, because of a concern she brought up when she phoned to ask me to come over.  It seems “people” have been telling her that I was not just cutting down dead branches, but taking down living trees.  Now, I’ve been keeping my mother in the loop about what I’m doing, including clearing trees from the fence line, because we will need access to it to repair it.  Then she started talking about her lilacs.  She had planted special lilacs by the gate.  I told her on the phone that they’re still there, I just cleaned out the dead stuff and the poplars that were growing in the middle of them.  She seemed taken aback when I mentioned poplars, but she was really upset that I had apparently cut down her special lilacs.  I assured her I hadn’t, then asked who it was that was gossiping about us that she was listening to.  I found out, and was not at all surprised it was the person that is the reason we have to lock our gates.  *sigh*  Ah, well.

So I showed her a picture of the area by the gate I had cleaned up.  Including this one.

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I don’t know what kind of lilacs those are (I wasn’t sure they were even lilacs; she has the usual purple lilacs on the other side of the gate).

It turns out, this wasn’t the gate she was talking about.  She thought I had cut down her white lilacs.

These ones.

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We cleaned up this area, months ago.

She has seen this area since I’ve cleaned it up, so she knew what I had done with it.  But when she was told I was cutting by the “gate”, she thought of the gate into the yard, not the gate at the driveway.

I’ve made a point of keeping my mother in the loop of what we’ve been doing, showing her photos every chance I get, until she is strong enough to come and see for herself.  Yet, all it takes is one person, who has no clue what we’ve done or what we are doing, to start gossiping, and she starts to panic.

So disappointing.

She saw the pictures, however, and I talked about the repairs to the fences that are needed, and the section with posts that will need to be replaces, and so on.  She was happy with what she saw.  It worked out well in the end. :-)

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Catching up on cats

Here are some photos from yesterday to entertain you. :-)

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As my younger daughter and I were getting ready to head into town to pick up the rest of a prescription refill, we got accosted.  Doom Guy came right over for attention, but when I picked him up, he didn’t want to be held in my arms.  He wanted to perch!

Then my daughter came out, and Beep Beep was just all over her!

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She was rolling all over her shoulder, and pushing herself against my daughter’s head.

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Then kept on twisting and turning.  Until she fell off and landed on my daughter’s purse before we finally got her off so we could leave!

What a face!

While in town, we remembered to swing by a liquor store.  We spotted a beer bread mix which, of course, requires beer.  The company that made the bread mix is also a small brewery, and I even found the exact brand.

I got two cans.  One for baking, one for tasting! :-D

We shall see how it turns out!

The Re-Farmer