Stalkers in Stripes

Not a great pic, since I took it with my phone, through a window, after dark.  But you get the gist of who was lurking outside my bedroom window...Pepe Le Pew!!

'Possum of the grotto

We've been here nearly ten years, and I still run to the window when I hear, "Mom! There's a 'possum on the patio!"

I shall call him Squishy, and he shall be mine!

Come here, little Squishy!

I love country living!

The Deep Dark Woods

New reader, Helen, requested photos of the woods that I so often mention here.  I have a few handy, so I hope these will do. :)

Here we have a view of the woods from my roof:

The down side to the woods?  All this pollen!! This is the day after washing the car!  Oy, and imagine what this does to allergies!! AH-CHOO!!

But the great things far out number the bad!!

This is a morel mushroom.  People here adore these things.  Me, I could take 'em or leave 'em.  Served fried, they just taste...fried.  *shrugs*  They are the only wild mushroom I feel safe eating, as they are easily recognized.

Sometimes the woods yield wondrous things...

And the best part is the view from my bedroom.  Here you can see Eol peeking at a deer, just a few yards from the house.

Outside my bedroom window

Gorgeous, isn't he?  There were two, but by the time I got the camera this guy was all alone.  A few days ago, five bucks roamed right across the front yard and hung around the driveway for a bit.  It was like the Billy Goats Gruff story...each one bigger than the one before him.  Hunting season is over, but that's ok. Sometimes it's nice just to enjoy the beauty and majesty of all that delicious venison....um...I mean...um...all that nice leather...wait...no...pretty deer.  Yes! Pretty, pretty, delicious deer.

Whoa....

Newborn bantam chick next to a quarter.

Here I was, sitting at the pc, about to post the above pic.  Suddenly, the guineas started an awful, frantic squawking...their "something's in the yard" squawk.  Then a chicken ran across the patio, squawking even louder than the guineas, followed closely by a red streak.  I jumped up and looked out another window just in time to see the same chicken, running like mad, from a fox!!

I knew we had foxes on the property, as well as in the surrounding area.  I'd seen the dens, and lost guineas and other critters to what I assumed were either fox, owl, or raccoon prowlers.  But I had never, until today, actually seen a fox.

I suppose the critters will have to stay locked up until a little later in the morning from now on.  It's time for kits (fox puppies), and the other predators will also be bringing forth new life, or splorting out spawn...depending on how you want to look at it.

A lot of people are under the impression that wildlife will not come near humans.  Ha!! We've had a coyote right on the patio, as well as a baby groundhog that actually stood up and looked in the window.  The fox, of course, ran right up against the house.  I've had deer peeping into my bedroom, raccoons and 'possums knocking at the front door, and a few too many close encounters of the skunky kind..  It only makes sense that, when animals live in such close proximity to humans, they just get used to us.

So...back to that cute little pic at the top of the page...

Two of Little Sis' pet bantams are currently broody and sharing a nest.  So far, two chicks have hatched, and the mother hens are still sitting.  She put a couple of guinea eggs underneath them, in addition to a few heavy breed chicken eggs.  We're all anxious to see what hatches. 

It's a good thing the free range bantams are so prolific, considering the hungry fox....

Another rainy morning

Here I am again, and oddly, ahead of schedule. I even laid in bed an extra 15 minutes, listening to the rain and wishing I could stay snuggled under the covers till the sun came out.

The weather has been really strange this spring. We're sort of backward from last spring, when we had a very wet April but a nice May. This year we had a wonderful early April, with warm sunny days, and now here we are with a drab, cold, wet May. I really hope this doesn't mean another cool summer.

A lot of people are already putting out their gardens. Me, I'm waiting till the official last frost date at the end of the month. I never used to pay any attention to that date, but last year we had a major frost just before Memorial Day weekend. I was just lucky I'd been running behind getting stuff out. When I had a smaller garden, it was no big deal to run out and cover things, but now that we're talking nearly 400 tomato plants and a couple hundred peppers, not to mention squash, beans, melons, etc, there's no way all that's going to get covered. So waiting is the best option. The plants are still growing, and are actually hardening off as we speak, but can easily be carried back inside in case of colder nights.

Of course the cold hardy stuff is going out as time allows. I did manage to get a pound and a half of onions planted over the weekend, but I still have more to plant.

I'm still planting seeds like a mad woman, getting the squash, melons, etc all ready to go out. I usually direct seed that stuff, but thought it may be nice to to get a head start on the last frost.

Not much else happening. The most exciting thing lately was this guy showing up in our live trap.

For those of you not from the states, that's a Virginia Opossum, commonly known as a 'possum. This one is huge, probably the size of a cocker spaniel. We let him go, since we're not much for 'possum pot pie.

Fox Trot

I'm not really afraid of anything. Big Sis always says that I'm the one that goes off into the dark, even though I can plainly hear the scary music (ie...every scary movie ever made). I always answer with, "Yep, but I'm wearing hiking boots instead of stilettos, and I'm carrying a machete."

Shortly after we bought our place here in the deep, dark woods, we were working on the house after dark one night. It was one of those nights with no moon, where the dark seems to devour any light that comes its way.

I heard this strange noise in the distance, so I went outside to listen. I heard it clearly once I was outside. I had no idea what it was. I crept to the edge of the house to try to see what was making that sound. Then I heard it again, unbelievably close to me, as if whatever made the odd noise moved at the speed of light. Needless to say, I showed my chicken side and ran back into the house with a loud, "What the hell was that?!" So much for my tough chick routine.

After a lot of time digging around online, I found the sound. A fox. I never knew they did anything but yip and look cute.

Then, just last week, I heard a noise outside and thought something had somehow gotten into the henhouse. About halfway to the coop, I realize the noise is coming from down in the woods, near the fox den (we have at least three on our property). I did check on the chickens to make sure they were snug and safe, just in case, but I was pretty sure it was just a fox, carrying on a loud argument (at a safe distance) with the neighborhood dogs (which were barking like mad). Here's a cool youtube link I found, with video and sound. The sound we hear most often around here is the one at the beginning of the video (Vixen Barking).

This time I wasn't freaked out by the noise. I knew it wasn't a brain eating zombie or anal probing alien, so I wasn't too worried. I've learned a lot of things, living here in the woods, that I never would've known if I'd stayed in the city. Identifying fox calls is just one of them. ;)

A star is born

A Star Nosed Mole, that is. DH is like the Crocodile Hunter of small animals. lol He captured this little guy darting across the yard. We didn't even know they lived here! I've always wanted to see one up close. They are super cute! Of course we let him go, back to eating insects and just looking cool.

And FYI, these little guys eat insects and grubs and pretty much leave gardens alone. 

The taming of the shrew...

...or at least I think it's a shrew.

DH found it while cutting hay. We took a few pics and then let it go. Shrews, after all, eat a lot of bugs and bug larvae.
If you know exactly what it is, leave a comment. Thanks!

The buzz

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! We sure did. I didn't get as much done as I'd planned, but I did get to rest, spend time with the family, and sleep.

The garden, however, is still under construction. It seems that no matter how much I plant, there's still more to do. I am also trying to keep better records this year. I've started a notebook, listing each type of plant and how many, the date planted, etc. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this throughout harvest, listing the amount produced by each variety, notes on hardiness, any problems or diseases...you get the idea.

So...here's the buzz....

I know it's hard to tell, but those are honeybees!! About a zillion or so. lol Our neighbor's hive split and swarmed right into one of our trees. Mega cool. Even better was watching them retrieve the bees. They took a ladder and attempted to climb up, but the bees didn't care for that idea, so instead they used the ladder to whack the branch, knocking the majority of the bees off, which fell into a box/hive. As long as the queen ends up in the box, most of the bees will stay in the box with her. A couple of pounds of bees ended up back on the branch thanks to the pheromones the queen left behind. There was still a small bee pile on the tree the next morning, but by afternoon, they'd all found their way home.

In other news, we have the only (as far as I know) arboreal rabbits in existence:


This tree stump is huge, at least four feet tall. It was an enormous double cherry tree. The hole at the top of the stump leads to the enclosed 'crotch' of the tree. Apparently, it is an excellent place for a rabbit to build a nest and have a nice pile of kits. The stump is inside our big bunny pen. We'd hoped the rabbits would dig it out, but instead they've turned it into a condo.

Enough excitement for one day, thanks

I know I haven't updated in a while, but I've been trying like a maniac to finish Little Sis' room before Thanksgiving. Actually, I wanted to finish it today, so that I could have tomorrow to start cooking and getting the house back in order for the holiday. But noooooo. I have to be a world class procrastinator and put off till today what I should've done two weeks ago. Grrr!

Today I did manage to get the last coat of paint on the walls, and two coats on the trim, and then I touched up the ceiling, only to realize that the paint doesn't quite match what was already on the ceiling. (What do you mean there are over a dozen shades of WHITE!?) So now I think I need to paint the ceiling. Grrr! again!

I hope to get her flooring down tomorrow, and her room put back together, because I absolutely HAVE to start cooking Wednesday.

Remember I started on her room to search for the Dead Thing? Turns out Dead Thing was somewhere in the wall, accompanied by Scrambly, Scratchy, Living Thing. A dozen glue traps were deposited in various locations, and last night, in the wee hours, we caught Living Thing: a teensy field mouse. I'm hoping it was the only one. I still have traps out just in case.

A few minutes ago I was out in the garage and heard more scrambly scratching. "Great," I thought, "more house guests." I did some digging around and found... a little brown bat! He had gotten stuck in a box of toys I had sorted out of Little Sis' room. I managed to get him into a coffee can and outside. I was worried that he was injured since he only seemed to be crawling, and then WHOOSH!! off he went, right onto my shirtfront. I screamed. Like. A. Little. Girl. How embarrassing! I'm not even afraid (usually) of bats, mice, etc, but he startled the ever lovin' pee out of me (not literally, thanks), and then I thought maybe he was scared enough to bite, and I screamed louder. I am SUCH a wuss! I guess he just wanted to give me a 'thank you' hug, and off he went, with the cat bounding in his wake. The girls thought it was hysterical, and Little Sis announced she had never heard me scream before. I'm sure I've lost major "mom can kick anything's butt" points.

In other news:
I've been tagged by Preston over at Me and the Blue Skies. You should definitely check him out. He's awesome. But take a snack because his food blogs will make your tummy rumble.

The meme is a bookworm meme. The rules are:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next two to five sentences.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intellectual one. Pick the Closest.
6. Tag five people to do the same

I closed my eyes and grabbed the TSC catalog and Slavic Myth and Mankind, Forests of the Vampire. I didn't mean to grab two, they just came out of the shelf together. Since TSC is just boring, I'll go with the Vampire book.

"And her presence survived even in Communist Russia: for she provided the sickle of Soviet imagery, the instrument of the bountiful harvest which nourished industry and fed the people who drove it."

That's actually the last sentence for that page. The rest is just identification of page images. Just in case you are wondering, the page is titled The Eternal Face of Mother Russia and is about prehistoric female fertility idols.

Since I was nearly lynched after tagging people last time, I'll just go with an Open Tag. That means everyone can participate, but no one has to feel obligated. Just leave a link to your post.

I'm off to work on that room a bit, and then to bed. Hopefully, not to be woken by more scrambly scratching.

Skunk Jousting and Hurricane Ike

Whoever thought we'd be hurricane victims here in Ohio? Thanks to Ike, over 2 million people in Ohio are without power (according to the news, that is...I had no idea there were so many people in Ohio). The odd thing is, it's usually our house with no power while the surrounding homes enjoy electricity, running water, and the like. This time, it's the opposite. They've been without power since last Sunday when Ike came screaming through the area with 70 mph winds. Our county has even declared a state of emergency in hopes of gaining federal funds to help clean up. We lost a few trees, but that just means more firewood. In fact, DH and I were standing in the field (well clear of trees), watching the debris blow and the trees topple, sipping wine and giving the occasional redneck 'WhoooooHoooo!'. Ok, I admit, it was me with the redneck yelling.

Anyway, thanks to Ike, we had a third tree drop on our bunny pen. One fell during the tornado last year, and one during an ice storm. And now, our place looks like the Teletubby set, minus Tinky Winky, Dipsy, LaLa and Po.

As a result, we've had the live trap baited and set, in hopes of catching the roaming bunnies. Yesterday morning, DH went down to feed the remaining captives, and found a delightful surprise in our live trap.








So...how to let a skunk out of the live trap without getting skunked? First, DH tried getting close enough to let the little stinker out. A skunk will generally stomp it's feet, do a handstand, and raise it's tail before spraying. Well...stomp went the feet, up went the tail, scatter went the people. It probably looked like an episode of the three stooges.

DH came up with the idea of making a grapple hook to toss, catch the cage, and flip the cage over. Sometimes, if the cage is upside down, the door will flip open. He managed to flip the cage over, but the door refused to budge. The skunk took the whole thing fairly well.

DH got a very long branch and an umbrella (just in case), and got close enough to push the door open. It really did look like skunk jousting.  Maybe that should be an Olympic sport?

Fortunately, the skunk was released without harm, and no one got skunked.

For those in the path of Ike in his fury, my thoughts are with you.

Some days you are the snake...

...and some days you are the toad.

Keeeesssss Meeee!!!!

C'mon..just a leeetle smooch? I'm really a prince, I swear!

Prince Charming and his cohorts are recently tailless and still thriving in Little Sis' tadpole paradise, aka the kiddie pool.

We came back from vacation to find the kiddie pool a lovely shade of green. Instead of hitting it with about a zillion pool chemicals, Little Sis opted to open a home for wayward tadpoles, having found a whole slew of them in a very shallow puddle.

Mosquitoes decided it would also be a lovely home for their little wrigglers to hatch, so of course we had to do something about that. Not knowing for sure if mosquito 'dunks' would harm the tadpoles, we opted for something a bit more...organic.

Just your run of the mill goldfish. We got 10 of them for less than three bucks, and by the next morning they had completely wiped out the mosquito larvae. I think there are still three or four of the fish living in the 'pond'.

It's been a fun science project. We've been to the library and checked out all of their tadpole books, as well as the frog field guides. I think we have about four different types in the pond.
And now...
I'm off to deal with this...

And this....

That's one peck of cherry tomatoes! I saved this bag from my last apple purchase at the Farmer's Market, since I really didn't know how to measure out a peck all on my own. lol It's about 10 lbs of tiny tomatoes.

I'll never get tired of living in the country

Today there was a deer watching me work in the garden. I ran inside to get the camera, but when I came back, he was gone.

While I was looking for the deer, an indigo bunting buzzed my head.

When I woke up this morning, there was a red squirrel sitting outside my window eating sunflower seeds.

As I was putting up the hay this afternoon, I watched hummingbirds and butterflies in the field, saw a groundhog run into the neighbor's field, and nearly fell into a rabbit burrow. lol

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon picking wild blackberries.

Some mornings, I have coffee while walking through the woods... in my pj's.

Right now, I'm listening to crickets, frogs, and katydids.

I really don't think I will ever get tired of this.

Tadpoles and bonfires

Neat!

Cool, huh? She was right outside the door while I sat there, less than a foot away, taking her picture. She didn't even mind the flash.

She's welcome to all the pet food she wants, as long as she leaves the bunnies alone. That's their bucket of treats in the background, and the cage is directly above it. The bunnies didn't seem the least bit alarmed by their visitor.

I don't know if you can tell in the pic, but the raccoon is definitely a female, either pregnant or nursing.

Who moved my rock?

We found this little guy today while doing some yard work. Isn't he cute? Judging by all the bugs around him, he was visiting the buffet. I saw one of his bigger relatives later, but didn't have the camera handy.

Hummingbird

Miss Hummer smacked head on into our window this morning. Lucky for her, we were having coffee on the patio when it happened, and I was able to grab her before the cat did. She was only stunned, and flew off after about five minutes.

Little Sis gave her a snack before she left. How cool is that? I love seeing the hummers, and holding a live one was just incredible!

When City People Move to the Country

ETA: If you are looking for real info about why we live in the country, see this post.


This was emailed to me today. I got a huge kick out of it, mostly because I know people that would do this. lol

ETA: For those of you visiting this blog from outside the lower 48, this animal is actually a 'possum.