Doe & Pepper

 It is pleasant doing work outside, again. The Bluebird nest box was sanded. I rehung it Tuesday morning. Phoebe is looking for a nesting spot, as well as the robins. 

In the front yard, a doe decided to help herself to the bird seed. This will come down in May, or whenever bear season begins. – April 10th, the snow is gone, except for behind the house where I would shovel off the upper deck.

Sunday I visited The Point, where land juts out into the wetland. It is so peaceful. The wood duck nesting boxes are ready. The trailcam is up, and we've two pair of ducks on the pond. 

This is for JB. I forbade him to go down there, it is mucky and slippy. After his spill in the fall...

The Point from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

On my walk I spotted a Compton tortoiseshell. Archive photo...

I know this is a perfectly good photo↑, but I appreciate the camouflage in the dead leaves:

compton tortoiseshell from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

📱We've had a busy Wednesday for old farts. New phone, and a new satellite box. 

We've Shaw, who've been bought my Rogers. We are NOT thrilled. What we liked about Shaw is they were a smaller company, with very responsive reps. This is not what we've heard about Rogers. 

🌳 The cats are happy with the changing season. We can open the Muskoka Room door, and leave it open. Nutmeg loves going out there, Cinnamon less so. He's a gentle lad, and likes the sun.

 There is only one problem. I thought  😼OREGANO cat, visiting for a couple of years, had been around. It seems as if it is a different cat. I'm calling him Pepper, as he is quite black. I know black cats roam more, and this is not good. I was playing this video ↓ and Cinn roared to the window. At first I thought it Oregano, but it is a black cat, as the Crumbly Acres camera shows.

Pepper from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

Pepper from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

More chores, et al

Note the droop of the dashcam cord in the car. I figured out how to fix it. (This is from our trip to Canoe Lake Road.) I put a large straw between the cord and the opening. Voila!

The garden crew is here.

The orchid cactus will have lots of offshoots. The leaves are sitting in water to root.

The thistle is so pretty, with the seeds blowing in the wind.

The topper is off the swing, put away for winter.  The pillows are handy, just in case we want to sit out. It's been lovely and sunny, and we don't need the shade.

'The Point' is quite grown over. you can see where there used to be deep water. It's all evaporated, and the bulrushes grown over.

Goodbye Veggie Garden

This was a chore. I've been whittling away at it. I simply cannot dig up the weeds anymore. I borrowed the kids' churny thing but it was too much for it. I have given up. The critters eat all my plants, anyway. The groundhog ripped the plants out, or maybe Butch raccoon?

JB sanded it and painted it in May, 2012, done in July [in the garden and pond]. Even then, the wood was rotting.

All gone!

This little evergreen should grow leaves back, it was attacked by those dratted LDD worms. I transplanted it from the forest.

 JB found a baby snapping turtle on his walk in town, beside the river.

🐻SNUGGLE Bears

Monday, Sept. 20th – we had a federal election. There was a voter's list, a list of candidates, as well.

Friday Walkies

 Friday, Cinnamon and I found two spots with coyote scat. You can tell, as there is much fur in it.

Sure enough, the coyote is on the trailcam! I chucked the bones out from our rib dinner. Coyote Mar 21 

The forest is glorious, with lots of places where the snow has melted. 

I asked Cinnamon  for help looking for an owl pellet, seeing the white stuff (mute), but he was not helpful and I didn't find one. With the snow gone, it's nice evidence of who is in the forest.

We made it to "The Point." Why oh why he wanted to go on the ice is beyond me! It melts from the shoreline to the centre. 

 It was lovely in the sunshine. The trees hold in the warmth of the sun. The fresh air. I went out on the ice while waiting for Cinnamon to return. He just walked into the wetland, across the ice. This is the point from the point of view of the wetland. I was waiting a goodly amount of time for him. I began to get worried. 

This old tree had fallen many years ago. Another tree leaned up and grew over it.

The snow hasn't even melted on the wetland, let alone the ice underneath. It'll be awhile yet.  

I stayed here, marvelling at the sound of the woodpecker  (0.18 sec. in) as it looked for bugs. I did a 360˚ turn, in case you want a sense of the place. Our wetlands are so important to the ecosystem. There are so many critters that depend upon it. Soon, we'll be doing the western chorus frog surveys [Frog hunting]. Likely mid-April.

He went onto the ice, off in the wetland. I kept calling, as he called to me on his way out.  Cinnamon in the wetland 

Today, we anticipate going up to 17˚ C. I've been getting some outdoor chores done. This week I'll change up my decor to yellow for Easter! 

Walkies with Hooper

I've been hearing the American woodcocks. The are also called timberdoodles! I cannot photograph them, so here is a video.
The morning sun was shining on the cat dishes, as well as the dustpan and whisk! Everyone fed, cats, people, goldfish, and off we went for a walk. It was so nice to see the sun.


Hooper is incredibly happy the snow is gone. This is the path to the meadow, where he usually stops to feel the moss, warm in the sunshine. He practically hugs the ground! This is what he did the first time we let him out last year, when he was a kitten.


The male wood duck chose to walk from the frog pond, across the ground, to the wetland.
Frog pond 1 from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

After all that work, the water is up, again on the dock. Butch raccoon visited.


Our nights have been below zero, not by much, but enough to create a thin layer of ice.


The cat's favourite tree. They love climbing it.


I'm down on "The Point" here. A spit of land in the wetland. It is rich with critters, life awakened with the warmth of the spring solstice. The sun warms the shore in the morning. This side faces southeast. The ice has melted.


This side of The Point is still frozen, the trees shading the water.


Along we walked. Just in front of me, I could see something in the water. It was a muskrat. Here is a file photo. One summer they lived in the frogpond.

The blue jays followed. I wondered what they were up to. Turns out, there was a barred owl, who flew madly across the wetland. You can see where it was roosting. Just for posterity. All I could see were it's lovely barred tail feathers. The blue jays followed it.


Wetland from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

Hooper contemplates the wetland. He ended up walking along the ice, parallel to my path, for some reason, as we ambled back to the house.


The meadow has a pond, where the mallards tend to land. The buds are beginning to grow on the trees. Soon this will dry up, or drain behind me into the wetland.

trailcam 

This is what I found on the trailcam: April 16, 1:20 a.m. Something caught its attention up in the trees. 

Back again at 5:34 a.m.