The grandies!

 Yesterday was a strike day, today, Friday, is a PD day. We took the girls.

First event: hostage exchange in the parking lot in CP. (I stayed home!)
Home safe, bagels and papaya for breakfast.
During breakfast, we did some math. I put in an on-line order and instead of two cans of sliced mushrooms, I had two flats, 12 cans in each. Isabelle thought it would be fun to figure out how many mL I ordered. It was 6816 mL.
They don't like mushrooms, Caitlin can't even sneak it into spaghetti sauce, so I can't give it away!



Josephine began writing down the formulae for finding the area of shapes.



Grampa had a Close Eyes. A book that mapped where specific dinosaur species were found, by continent. They looked up New Zealand, as they will be visiting there in April!



Isabelle's prize was a 3-D Olaf puzzle. Isabelle took a photo for me for posterity, and the blog!


After that, we did some reading.

Wetland Walkies

I managed to get us all outside to play. Iz and I wore our snowshoes, but Jos wanted to climb trees, so she did not.

Jos went up the tree again, then we went down to the meadow!



It was wonderful having a helper to switch out the SD Memory cards on the trailcamera!



Izzy from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.


Off we went to the island.


We learned that the snow is protecting the foliage. She is a great scientist, just like her mom.  When Iz dug down, she found green cattails growing under the snow cover.





It was lovely.



The lichen covered almost all of the trees. These are photos with the videocamera, and the best I could do.



Jos began building a bar. (Don't ask!) They collected lichen. Isabelle was helpful and made some plates and cups from the frozen snow.

KD and weenies, veggie tray for lunch. Temperatures dropped 5 degrees in an hour. We were glad we went out when we did.

At 3:06 p.m. (we were 6 minutes late) we watched Dora and the Lost City of Gold. I had fun watching it!



I spoiled their appetites with hors d'oeuvres that kids brought last weekend. We had to eat them up!
Leftover meatloaf for dinner, cupcakes for dessert.


Josephine elected to watch Jeopardy with us, while Isabelle read in bed. It was a great day with outdoor play, math and science.

Walkies, fungus, moss

frozen trees weep ice
boughs heavily laden
juncos sing i
n anticipation

this thaw won't last
sadly they don't know
ol' Jack Frost
hoary winds will blow

crusty ice melts
drops to the ground
birds are all atwitter
yet soon it will be bitter

The path the deer, turkeys and coyotes have trod across the wetland to the island. Today, it's too wet to cross it. The edges, near the mainland, are quite melty!

This is the north east corner of our property. Across the wetland, higher, drier land, where the property marker indicates the extent of our 16 acres, and the neighbour's 35 acres. Beyond this is more wetland, forests and another neighbour's 600 acres. On good days I can hear their cows talking to one another. It was disconcerting, at first, but now I know what they are!

Walkies to the island with Daisy

Pretty boring for some, but it's the only exercise I've been able to do. With my viral-induced asthma, I cough when I exercise or talk too much! Thank goodness for puffers!

It's been dark, damp and not the greatest, all told. I'm not complaining, but photographs are different on our treks. I love my forest walkies, as does Daisy. She launches herself at trees.



We went down to the island in the wetland. These first two photos I took from the bridge I built (third photo). In the first photo: this is the dividing line between the neighbour's property and ours. On the left, Paul's new home is being built in the forest. On the right, our forest. He's building a log home. Hubby took him over one of my nature calendars. He has a beautiful property, which I trekked in the winter (before we had the property lines marked). He confessed to the same over the years!

The region was settled in 1816, but this isn't prime farm land. It wasn't until the 80s when people were buying it up, they sent in our land surveyors who marked the property lines by chopping down trees along those lines. You can imagine what has happened in the ensuing years! We spent nearly $2000 for proper markers on our boundaries. First in November, 2010, and again, when we bought the third lot. We own three separate lots, which total 16 acres. Lot three isn't inhabitable, since it is too marshy for a septic system. We bought it from the daughter of the late original owner, when they realized they couldn't do anything with it. It gives us a nice demarcation from our neighbour's hunt camp.

Our island is a high travel spot for our critters. Plunked in the middle of the wetland, critters bring prey here to eat, deer cross it regularly, and there are several squirrels. It is a lovely sanctuary. I keep a chair here, when I want to sit and let Daisy explore.
The fungus is growing nicely.



View from the meadow, going back up to the house.


There are lots of dead trees, mostly cedars, covered in lichen. They are beautiful!

Don't Tell the Kids!

In the meantime, back at the house, I read our hydro metre, since the trees prevent our Time Of Use metre from automatically sending updates to HydroOne. I had a problem.