A Day of Rest

We try to keep Sundays as our day of rest.  It has been made easier by colder temperatures and a continuous, if light, snowfall.

Last night, I found a way to prop the doors into the sun room so we could let the kittens in overnight, but the skunk should not be able to squeeze in and leave a mess for us in the morning.

It seems to have worked, though I suppose we can’t really be sure that the skunk didn’t come in and out without us seeing.  All I can say for sure is, no “presents” on the floor for me to clean up!

20181014.feeding.time My husband wasn’t up to doing the cats this morning, so I took care of it.  Here are the moms, three of Butterscotch’s kittens, and one of Beep Beep’s, plus The Outsider.

I’m fascinated by the markings on Rosencrantz or Guildenstern.

Bob has filled out so much, he’s almost as big as Jim, now!

It seems the kittens have decided today is a day of rest, too!

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I’m not sure if this is 6 or 7 kittens.  There’s that ear behind Doom Guy’s back.  I can’t tell if it’s attached to The Outsider or not. :-D

I am appreciating being able to rest today, as tomorrow is going to be a long one for me.  I will be taking my mother to a follow up appointment for her surgery at the smaller, slightly closer, city.  Then I plan to go to the RCMP and file a report about the vandalism on our lock.  Whoever is doing it may think it’s just a nasty trick to play on us, but this is a potential safety issue, if we ever had to evacuate suddenly.  There’s nothing the police can do at this point, but as long as there’s a file, there will be a past record, for when it happens again.

What a pain.

The Re-Farmer

There’s a reason we lock our gate

You would think, living in the middle of nowhere, we wouldn’t have to worry about things like vandalism and security as much as when we lived in the downtown area of a major city.  In many ways, that is true.  However, we are certainly not immune, and in some ways, folks in the country have more to worry about.

I won’t get into the reasons here, but having to put locks on our gates has been quite disheartening.  It is what it is, however, and we just deal.

Like today.

My younger daughter and I loaded up the van to go to the dump, then she walked ahead to unlock the gate while I drove over.

She couldn’t unlock it.  The key wouldn’t even go into the lock.

This would be why.

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What you’re seeing is after my daughter used a knife to try and clear it, to no avail.  Not that it would have made a difference.  Even if she had been able to get the key in, the glue would have prevented it from turning.

(The black, by the way, is from a graphite lubricant I used when the weather was making the lock a bit stiff, about a month ago.)

While we were at the gate, a candidate for some local elections came by to drop something off, so she saw what we were dealing with, too – and later saw my daughter getting into the van with the bolt cutters, after we got through.

So our trip to the dump was followed by a trip into town to get a new lock.

This is the second lock we’ve had to replace.  I don’t expect it to be the last, unfortunately.

Frustrating.

The Re-Farmer

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 quiet day

One thing about the chillier weather; it has made for much quieter days!  It’s too cold to do much outside, and what little we have left to do can wait for the few days it’s supposed to warm up again.  Otherwise, it was a good day to stay warm inside, drink lots of tea, and catch up on various things.  In my case, crochet. :-D

I did want to share this cute little thing that happened, though…

Heading into the Old Kitchen, to close up the sun room’s outer doors, I turned on the sun room light and immediately saw through the window, all these pairs of ears turn towards the window!  A pile of kittens, in their favorite spot.

So I go back to get my phone to see if I can get a good photo.  It was a pile of the shiest kittens, so I wasn’t expecting to get them all, but who knows, right?

I open the inner door and check them out through the window of the second door.  There they all are, looking at me.  As I unlatch the door, they jump around a bit, startled by the noise.

They weren’t the only ones.

Our stinky friend ambled out from under the swing seat and headed outside!

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I just managed to snag a photo through the screen before he was gone.

Then the kittens all scattered, so I wasn’t able to get a picture of them.  Ah, well.

A few things were knocked over and pushed around that needed to be cleaned up.  No turd bombs that I could see, but it does look like the skunk left some puddles. :-(

At least this time, it was easier to get everybody out of the sun room to close it up for the night.

After the last few years, I can really enjoy things like this being the most exciting action in my life. :-D

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

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 →

A Deer Returns!

Note: I’m trying something different with my photos this time.  We’re close to our storage limit on our free WordPress account. I don’t want to reduce the number of photos we post, and we’re not in a position to upgrade yet, so we now have a Flickr account and I am going to try embedding the images.  Please let us know in the comments, if you are having any problems with the images loading, etc.  Thanks!

My darling husband has taken on the morning feeding of the critters.  With the bird feeder, this includes scattering seed on the ground for those birds that prefer feeding that way, and for any deer that happen by.  We’ve seen the odd deer, but they haven’t really hung around.

Well, this morning, one did!!!

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He’s a young one, and I’m sure he is one of the little ones that visited us in the winter.  There’s something about that swoopy snout that I recognize.

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Just look at those little antlers! :-D

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Getting the photos was a bit of a challenge for two reasons.  One, we keep the telephoto lens on the camera (for those new to this blog, we keep a Nikon D80 on a tripod in our living room window permanently, to photograph the wildlife out our living room window).  The deer was almost too close to the house for the lens!

He looks like he’s laughing at us, in this next one!

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The other challenge is reflections on the window from inside.  At the time I was taking these photos, I had to contend with reflections of my avocado on the glass.  :-D

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If it seems like he’s looking at something specific in some of these photos, that’s because he is …

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Sometimes, it was us in the window.

Most of the time, it was…

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… Doom Guy!

I wasn’t able to get a photo of it, but at one point, they were nose to nose!  So adorable!!

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He was quite attentive to all the noises around him, but not at all skittish.  Which is good, because it’s warming up today, and after all the snow yesterday, it’s falling off the trees with clumps.  We are hearing “phwomph” noises all over.

Also; avocado tree reflections. :-D

Then we got another curious kitten!

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In this photo, the deer had moved to the far side of the bird feeder, and The Outsider was on this side, watching him, while Doom Guy was on the other side of the feeder base, though he had left by the time this photo was taken.

I’m so happy to see deer back again!

I also managed to get some really fantastic pictures of The Outsider after the deer left.  Those will get their own post, next. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Give it a shake

Ah, what a day!

When I headed into town to pick up prescriptions and allergy medications, it was snowing, but fairly lightly.  It picked up a bit while I was out and about, but not too dramatically.

Then I got a text from my husband.

The power went out at home.

Driving back through our own little hamlet, I could see no lights, anywhere, so I could at least be assured it wasn’t just our place!

Also, it was snowing quite a bit more heavily by then, too!

The power was out for about 2 – 2 1/2 hours in total.  The girls and I were about to head out to town, where we could get a data or WiFi signal, so we could check online to see what was going on.  The power came back on, just as we were putting on our shoes.

So we stayed home, and instead walked around and knocked snow off of the trees.

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I had already knocked the snow off of these lilacs, before I went into town, and it had to be done again, later on.

It was just above freezing, which means it was a wet, sticky and heavy snow.  Since it started off as rain, there was also a layer of ice under the snow.  All the trees that still had their leaves were drooping like crazy.  The girls and I went around shaking trees, or knocking the snow off with a rake or broom, as high as we could reach.

It’s a good thing we did, or there would have been a lot more weight on those branches!

It continued to snow heavily for some time.  I was sitting in my crochet corner when a noise out the window caught my attention.

Then I watched as a piece of tree came tumbling to the ground!

Soon after, I went outside to check on the trees and, right outside our door, this is what greeted me.

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This is from the Chinese elm, outside our kitchen window.  This is also where we park the van, when we drive it into the yard.

Thankfully, it was safely in the garage at the time!

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This is the piece of tree I watched from inside, as it fell.  It took me a while, but I think I found where it fell from.

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This is the dead spruce whose top we watched fall down in a storm, last winter.

I really look forward to when we can have this tree taken down!

The lilacs by the house were again heavily covered in snow.

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The cherry trees are drooping so much, you can’t even see that they’re there!

The girls had already knocked the snow off of this just a few hours before.  One of the branches was right on the bird feeder platform.  As I tried knocking the snow off, I found that it had broken right off.

I continued around the yard, shaking trees or knocking snow off with a rake, but some things, we just can’t reach.

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You can see the lower branches, where I knocked the snow off, but the upper branches are still a risk.  It doesn’t normally touch the roof there.  Hopefully, no more branches will break, and if they do, they’ll be ones that fall into the yard, not on the roof.

Another reminder that this tree needs to come down. :-(

Also…

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Snow and ice covered willow branches are hanging heavily over the power lines.

And there’s nothing we can do about it right now. :-(

The Re-Farmer

Well, that was longer than expected

The plan was; head out in the late morning to get the tires torqued, then keep on going for a quick trip to the city.

Seven hours later, we finally get home!

But before I get into that, here’s what we got to come home to.

Continue reading →

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