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
She has been coming out more often, even with other cats around, though she wants nothing to do with them, and is more likely to growl and hiss, even if they’re just going by, than anything else.
Interestingly – and not necessarily in a good way – she and Beep Beep are not getting along at all. I’m sure they remember each other, but Beep Beep has been pretty aggressive towards Butterscotch. Mind you, Beep Beep bullies the other cats a fair bit, too, but she seems to be unhappy to be reunited with Butterscotch!
The main thing is the Butterscotch actually does seem to be happier now that she’s indoors, which was so totally unexpected based on her past behaviour. She would just rather be with people (not me, though! LOL) instead of other cats.
We have another day that is turning out to be warmer than predicted – again, by only a degree! We were supposed to reach a high of 1C/34F but, as I write this, we are at 2C/36F, and for this time of day, we could potentially warm up a bit more before cooling down for the night.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling very well this morning, and one of my daughters was sweet enough to do the morning outdoor chores for me. It seems we all had rough nights last night, though with the girls, they are having issues with the roof leak coming in at one of their windows. They ended up having to move their computers (they have a double sided desk that they share) and other electronics. Unfortunately, one of the only 2 outlets in that room happens to be under that window, and it’s the only one that takes 3 prong plugs, so they don’t have a lot of choice on where to set up. For my older daughter, that means a delay on her being able to work on commissions.
The temperature changes fluctuating above and below freezing have been absolutely brutal on my husband. He’s had to resort to “take as needed” medications he’s been able to avoid for months, just to be able to stand up more or less straight. The down side is that one of those medications causes drowsiness, and while a deeper sleep may seem like a good thing, it isn’t when one is also on a water pill.
Among my disturbances of the night was dealing with the mess Nosencrantz made. She has been using the litter to pee in just fine but, for some reason, she prefers to poop in my closet, near where we’ve got a cat bed set up in an old laundry basket; one of her favorite places. I’d already resorted to using carpet cleaning powder on the area and leaving it there instead of vacuuming it up (the replacement band for the new vacuum cleaner still hasn’t shown up, so we’re not able to properly vacuum right now, anyhow). It seemed to be working but, last night, I discovered her pooping right next to the powder.
*sigh*
So at 2 in the morning, I was cleaning it up, adding more carpet powder, and re-arranging things stored on the bottom of my closet to protect some of my longer clothing, like my summer dresses, that the cats were mucking about with. Then, since I was up anyhow and she was cooperative, I checked out Nosencrantz’s surgical site.
The stitches they use are supposed to dissolve, but for some reason, only with Nosencrantz, some of them aren’t. We could feel them when brushing a hand across her belly, but this time I took a closer look. One piece with a knot at the end that stuck out seemed to be loose, so I thought I could gently brush it out – only to see skin being tugged in another spot!
After getting a better look at it in daylight, I decided to call the vet about it. They asked for a photo for a technician to look at it, so I sent this one – at full resolution, so the tech could zoom right in.
My daughter’s fingers are pointing at the 3 spots of concern. On the right, that purple dot is the knot. It sticks out surprisingly far. In the middle, you can actually see a stitch joining two reddish spots. On the left is another slightly reddish area. We couldn’t actually see anything there, but we can feel something. That spot seems to be the other end of the thread.
I got a response from the vet very quickly. The technician said that sometimes, stitches just take longer to dissolve. It should be fine, but if it seems to be irritating her, we could make and appointment and they would remove it.
So it still should dissolve away. Nosencrantz seems utterly oblivious to it, except when we are checking it. The slight redness is a bit of a concern to me, but it isn’t getting infected or anything, and the knot doesn’t seem to be catching on anything.
We decided not to take her in, but having been assured that it will, indeed, dissolve, I did snip that bit in the middle, and was able to pull part of it out, from the knot.
It was almost an inch and a half long! That doesn’t look at all like it’s in the process of dissolving, either. :-/
The main thing is that there is no longer a piece sticking out, and no loop tugging her flesh together, which is likely the cause of the redness we could see.
We will keep monitoring the area, of course, but I think it should be fine, now. We could have done it earlier, but I didn’t want to remove only part of it, if the rest of it wasn’t going to dissolve away.
I also have some news that I’ve been sort of waiting until I had more information to share.
There have been some major changes in regards to the Cat Lady that has slowed down the adoption process for a while.
The Cat Lady has left the organization that was covering most of the vet bills to get the cats spayed, examined, vaccinated, etc. There had been an intake freeze with the clinic we use, because of the vet costs of so many sick cats, but now there is an organization wide intake freeze. This organization is completely by donation, so I can understand that needed to happen at times.
The Cat Lady was also having issues with them. There was, of course, the usual issues that seem to plague any organization; gossiping, internal politics, etc. The final straw, however, involved out of province adoptions.
They wanted to adopt Saffron and Nicco out of province.
It would have meant a THREE DAY van ride!
The cats get stressed out enough just with a ride to the vet in the city! She couldn’t let them inflict that on Saffron and Nicco. Since they are still with her, instead of a with fostering household, she simply quit her job and is hanging on to them longer.
She is now going independent, and Saffron and Nicco will be the first cats up for adoption when her new website goes live. Cabbages is the model on her flier, though Cabbages is not up for adoption. Her daughter is too attached! She already has 10 foster families lined up, has the support of the local shelter, and just worked things out with a vet, but she has to get things live quickly. She’s picking up another 10 or so cats from the area this week! In the middle of all this, she was also able to get another pair of cats settled into a new forever home. She has placed a priority on getting our cats adopted out, though, so as soon as she can, she will be taking on the next pair of cats for a trip to the vet, recovery time, then adoption.
Now, we could continue to work with the organization she left, as they do have a lot of resources she doesn’t, however I’m not keen on the possibility of cats being adopted out of province, so we are sticking with the Cat Lady! Her organization is going to be specific to our region, too, not the entire province.
This is a huge leap, but she’s got 13 years experience in animal rescue, and clearly cares deeply about the cats, and where they get adopted to. I think she will do fabulous.
Which brings me to our ongoing fundraiser. I’d set a goal of $1500 to surprise reimburse the Cat Lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, knowing it likely would be more than that. I’ll be keeping the goal at $1500, but anything above and beyond will still go to the Cat Lady, to help with her new cat rescue organization.
If you would like to contribute to the fundraiser, you can go to the fundraiser page though this link, or click on the button below.
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. :-)
We had another colder than predicted night, with a bitterly cold wind chill. It’s supposed to warm up quite a bit today, though not until this evening. After that, things are supposed to keep getting warmer.
We’re also supposed to be snowing, as I write this, and it isn’t, so… yeah. We’ll see.
I counted 14 or 15 outside cats this morning. Then I spotted Ghost Baby later on, so we had a headcount of possibly 16 of the outside cats.
They are most definitely appreciating having access to the heated water bowl in the sun room. As you can see in the above photo, the outside bowl is completely empty. Likely, the piebald visited the kibble house again, and finished off the water, too.
Speaking of which…
The three regulars were at the feeding station when I came around with seed. They ran off, but almost immediately started to come back. So I paused to see what they would do.
As usual, the piebald would chase off the other two, but they kept coming back.
They came within 20-25 feet of me!
I’m happy my phone was able to pick up that huffing sound the piebald makes.
I was making them nervous, though, so I moved on and let them be.
Chadiccus does not approve of my taking his picture, instead of petting him!
Oh, what a loaf Rolando Moon makes!
They keep breaking and knocking out the rigid insulation. I’ll have to think of something better to use, if we are going to keep using this old shelf as a cat shelter.
I had been talking about doing our Costco trip today, but one of my daughters has been suggesting that Costco on a Saturday might not be a good idea. Looking at the weather, we might not be snowing here, but it’s sure to be snowing to the house of us, and I’d rather not drive in it, if I don’t have to. So that will probably wait until Monday, then.
I’ve been keeping a close eye on the seedlings, and today we’re going to be doing some major changes, from re-planting to replace losses, to physically re-arranging a whole bunch of things. I’ll post about how that goes, later.
Today was a deceptive day. Beautifully bright and sunny – and colder than forecast! As I write this, we have warmed up to -19C/-2F – with a wind chill of -30C/-22F.
Oh, look at that. We’re supposed to warm up a few more degrees, but as I typed the above sentence, my weather app’s desktop icon just dropped to -20C/-4F, with a wind chill of -32C/-26F
We’re supposed to warm up over the next few days, until we reach above freezing, where we are supposed to stay for almost a week before dropping a couple of degrees below freezing again. Considering how off the forecasts have been, with the cold hanging on longer and colder than predicted, I’m not holding my breath.
Needless to say, I was not looking forward to going out today.
The outside cats were happy to see me. Or at least the fresh kibble I brought out for them! Even the kibble in the sun room was all gone. As cold as it got, the outside heated water bowl still had liquid water, and not even a layer of ice over the top. I’m not sure if that means it started working again, or if there was simply enough water in it to keep it from freezing over.
I left really early to go to my mother’s, giving myself time to shovel away the small snow drift that formed overnight, in front of the garage doors where her car is parked. I wanted to make sure to get to the post office before it closed for a couple of hours for lunch, as my daughter got notice that a parcel was delivered.
It wasn’t there.
Then I went to my mother’s town with plans to get some gas and pick up some take out chicken and wedges for lunch. Had a small heart attack when I saw the gas prices had gone up another 10 cents per litre, to 174.9. That works out to Cdn$6.63 per US gallon, or US$5.21 at today’s exchange rate.
Ouch.
My mother doesn’t do meat on Fridays for Lent, so we shared the potato wedges for lunch, and she saved her chicken for tomorrow. I gave up most social media for Lent, which is a heck of a lot harder for me than giving up meat!
With the lockdowns, a lot of the social activities my mother so loved about where she lived had ended, but after a while, people started just making their own coffee nights in the lounge on their own. Which may be why events are starting up again. (We’re supposed to open up completely in a few days, but the powers that be are already talking about locking down and imposing restrictions again.) Today, the social workers from the senior’s centre were going door to door (happily, I didn’t see a single mask in my mother’s building. What a relief that was!), letting people know there would be coffee and cake in the lounge this afternoon. My mother was quite excited about it, so we headed out as soon as we finished lunch. Once her errands were done and her groceries put away, it was early enough that she still had time to watch Mass on TV before her coffee date, so I didn’t stay very long. She was in very good spirits, and was even moving around better on her bum knee than I’ve seen in a while. So that was encouraging.
This meant I was on my way home a lot earlier than I expected, giving me time for a quick stop at the post office/general store again, to pick up more deer feed. A full bag is more than fits in the bin we use for the deer/bird feed, so I put an extra bucket of feed out. I’d startled a deer in the yard when I got home, so I figured it wouldn’t be long before I saw one or two out the window once inside.
It was more than one or two! We had five of them out there, in no time at all!
After taking a few pictures, I sat at my computer to upload them when my daughter called out, asking me if I saw the seven deer outside the window.
Seven? No I hadn’t! So I grabbed my phone to get some pictures and…
There was a LOT more than seven.
Where did they all come from?
This is our fifth winter here. The most deer we’ve ever seen outside our window at one time has been seven. Today, we counted at least fourteen!
I’m guessing some of them came from my brother’s farm, across the road, as he puts a bale out for them. He’s had as many as 30, during some really severe winters. I’ve driven by and seen as many as eight that I could count while driving. But fourteen? Wow! The down side of that is, the coyotes start coming in, and he’s seen them take down a deer, right by his house.
I only scoop out enough feed to fill a 1 gallon container at a time. That’s barely a snack for the few deer that usually show up, minus what the birds manage to eat. I’m not sure how this tiny bit we put out has managed to lure so many deer!
We are definitely going to have to take this into account when we plant our berry bushes this spring. The buggers are doing a number on the chokecherry and Saskatoon bushes we found between the spruces near the feeding station, after cutting away some self-sown elm and maple, and the invasion of spirea. They never went for the spirea twigs and branches. Berry bushes must taste better!
Once we start cutting down all the dead spruces, that whole area is going to open up quite a bit. We want to get rid of all the spirea in there, allow the wild roses and red osier dogwood take over as undergrowth, reduce the chokecherries, and increase the Saskatoons. We also intend to plant fruit trees that require more protection from the winds in there. It’ll all be a waste, if the deer just come in and eat them! We’ll have to figure out the best way to protect things, while still following our plants to turn some of the tree stumps into benches, seats and tables. My long term goal is to create a little park-like sanctuary in the area behind the stone cross, surrounded by rose bushes and dogwood, and whatever wildflowers re-emerge once things are cleared out and the ground starts getting more sunlight again.
So… deer, racoons, groundhogs, squirrels and birds are all critters we’ll have to take into account. Probably black bears, too. They haven’t shown up in our yard, but one of my neighbors about a mile away from us had them raiding and destroying his bird feeders all last summer. With the drought, they were pretty desperate for food.
More reason to plant forage trees, well away from the house. Near the newly dug out gravel pit, which should be able to hold a lot of water for a much longer time now, would probably be a good place. If they have enough food and water elsewhere, they won’t have reason to come close to were people are.
The Re-Farmer 