My evening rounds today included picking up fallen branches, and assessing storm damage. It’s been a long time since we’ve had so many fallen branches, I needed the wheel barrow to help pick them all up!
Here is a slideshow of what I found in and around the spruce grove.
While I was out with my mother, my daughters tell me the rain, then the storm with hail, went through so quickly, it was like a tap was turned on in the sky. One of them actually saw the top of the spruce come down.
Walking around the perimeter of the spruce grove, I found where a large chunk of dead poplar had fallen, causing damage to an apple tree nearby. As I went closer to see how big it was, I realized I was seeing more than one tree top. It’s hard to see in the undergrowth, but the top of another dead spruce had come down, and the two actually overlapped each other on the ground.
In the same general area, there was also an entire tree that had fallen. No surprise that the based had been destabilized by ants. That’s usually why the dead trees finally fall.
Going past the garage and along the fence line, there was a pile of downed branches from several trees. After that, things seems pretty normal. A few dead branches and there, but there are already so many in there, it makes little difference. There is one tree, however, that keeps tipping further and further. It’s actually still alive, but slowly falling. Meanwhile, there are two dead trees right next to it that are still standing, straight and tall!
Making my way back to where I started around the spruce grove, I suddenly saw a little kitten running across the grass, towards the covered pile of boards – what we used to call the junk pile, but I’ve clear the junk off and discovered a carefully stacked pile of salvaged boards. Whatever tarps had covered it before were disintegrated by the wind, but we were able to cover it with a new, heavier duty tarp, in hopes that we’ll be able to keep them from rotting even more, and be able to use some of them. This pile has been home to litters of kittens for a very long time – and is how Junk Pile Cat got her name!
So I had no doubt little grey tabby was returning to its next under the pile. I took a couple of zoomed in photos, but didn’t try to come any closer, as I made my way back to the house, where I saw Junk Pile (or her doppelgänger; I can’t tell them apart unless they are next to each other, and I haven’t seen one of them in ages) cross the yard to the covered pile. When I came around the lilacs, I startled a little white and grey kitten! As I slowly paused and took its picture, I spotted another kitten peeking at me from under the down spout. When the two of them got together, I had to try and get some video. The image quality drops off the more I had to zoom in, but at the end, another white and grey kitten is there with Junk Pile – and this one is much larger than the others! I’ve no doubt they’re being cared for together as one litter, but the last white and grey kitten is clearly older.
After checking things around the inner yard, I headed out to check things in the outer yard. There are several maples with a lot of dead sections, and I wanted to see if any more dead branches had come down in the storm.
As I came close to one of them, I heard some scrabbling and at first thought it was a cat climbing the tree.
I was wrong.
I went looking for branches, but found three little racoons, instead! They kept freezing, the moving a few inches, then freezing, the shifting a bit, then freezing again.
That gave me a chance to get quite a few photos, and even some video.
Gosh, they are so cute!
But I do wish they wouldn’t keep eating the cat food! We already had to stop feeing the birds because of them (and the deer), but they are quite the opportunistic omnivores!
On top of all this, I was being followed all over by at least three yard cats the whole time. This was a very critter filled evening!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 