🍁 Yay October 🍂

It's been dry in September. We shall see what October brings. I watered the garden yesterday. 

I took a nice walk in the forest, the shoulder seasons are the best, and found a few trees down. 

My first wood duck nesting box, wrecked by a bear, and three cubs, needs repair. This is my non-mental note to remind me.

Our colourful mushrooms are done, the fungus is still going.

I feel so badly for our large white pine trees. Shorn, as they were in 2023 storms. I've been stacking the wood.

After my break, I got back to work stacking. 

During and after. The rest of it is too big for our wood stove. I may just fire it down the hill! I could get them back, but I'd just have to stack it!

👀 Now, those of you with eye floaters know whereof I speak. I am still not used to them. 

Not only that, but we've these durned no-see-ums. They aren't biting, and for that I am grateful (some of the 5000 of this species do), but they hover in a cloud just to fool my eyeballs. When I sat down for a break in my orange shirt, they all landed on me! Then, I looked at the hops vine, and there they were. 

 

There was a ceremony on TV for Orange Shirt Day (←excellent information from the Canadian Encyclopedia). I taped and watched it. This is a day to honour the 4100 named missing Indigenous children at residential schools and missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW). It was a moving two-hour event. White people must bear witness, and listen to their stories if they are able.

This is another shameful saga of white colonial history. Children sent to horrid institutional schools, torn from their families. It is well represented by this famous painting.

The Scream
Kent Monkman ~ Cree
2017 pic.twitter.com/KP1Y4h3fXJ

— Canadian Paintings (@CanadaPaintings) September 30, 2023

Felting

This is a new craft for me. I watched several YouTube videos and I am getting the hang of it.

I am working on Christmas presents! SSsshhhhh – don't tell anyone in Vancouver! I have been revising it. I originally ordered a kit from Topsy Farms, one for each girl, but they only had the one style. That first one worked out well enough. 

This is Bernie, one of the kids' cats in Vancouver. Bernie lives near a busy street and he is a runner. He is often leashed. I was trying to figure out my second piece, having redesigned it myself. 😸 

I decided to improvise. My bird didn't work well. I pulled it out, felting is very forgiving, and created a dragonfly.

I tried to order more of the felting base, but even Topsy Farms has trouble finding it. I ordered kits from Amazon. More on that later!

Walkies, Cinnamon!

Cinnamon has been such a character. He sleeps on the cat bed in the office. We enter the room, and ask if he wants to go 'walkies.' He'll rouse himself. He knows the word. He'll stretch, take his own good time, but come to the door for the walk.

I love this old white pine tree. JB took Cinnamon walkies, and up he went. His little camera isn't great, but you get the idea.

The old pine tree is falling apart. It's such a shame. But we're all getting older and falling prey to time. This tree is on Lot #3. It's a great place to play, once the bugs are done. It's both forest and wetland.

The garden had a bit of rain this morning, only 2 mm, but it is something. 

 JB returned from walkies and noticed Cinnamon on the front deck. Behind him, crossing the driveway, were some wild turkeys. As I went for my woods walk, I picked up a feather. "Aha!" said I, hoping they are on a trailcam. I tucked the feather behind my ear and carried on. As I walked, I found my ear was somewhat irritated and wondered why. Oh yes, that's the feather. Isn't old age grand?! Short memories and all.

Sure enough, the turkeys went into the forest, crossed the meadow, and were on all three trailcams! 

I made a mistake editing the video. The first part of this video is one of the inexpensive trailcams in the forest, the second part is an older, more expensive camera with double the batteries (at the far end of the frog pond). This is a lesson. People often ask me to recommend a trailcam. I tell them to buy the best you can afford! wild turkeys 

The meadow trailcam had 23 videos on it. I was most excited when I uploaded it. I edited them down, and will show the rest tomorrow. In the meantime, it shows one of our fawns with the turkeys. 

Forest walkies

Down to capture the trailcam memory cards, I was startled by a barred owl. It's been hanging around, hooting in the night. Perched on the tree, upper right, I didn't see it. It flew right across the pond to the other side, or so I thought. I could see that it was the barred owl, that wingspan, and the distinct pattern.

 

As captured on the trailcam, I was looking for the owl. What I didn't know, as I walked looking up, is that it was perching on a tree on my left, behind the large tree off centre-right. It was a hoot! I practically walked by it. At that point I gave up to just enjoy the walk.

May 21, 2016 – a flashback, since I didn't see the owl!

What a gift, watching our Barred owl having a bath in the wetland. He knew I was there, I've been watching him for more than a month. In the background you can hear the rose-breasted grosbeak, blue jay, grey tree frog, etc.! Just before he went for a swim, a chickadee was trying to talk him into taking off. I thought I heard the owl chick, but I'm not sure. The siren at about 2:00 startled him. He sat a long time grooming. 

Barred Owl bathing from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

The colours around the pond, and in the meadow, are starting to show!

This is our Lot #3, which drops right off into the wetland. It's a great spot for critters, as they trot along the trails on the edge of the forest. You can see the colours of the changing leaves across the way. 

These big, old white pine trees are falling into decay. 

More mushrooms! I love the texture in the close-up.

I walked around the pond, coming back around to the front yard. Things are colouring up nicely.

Back up to the house, I checked out the last of the hibiscus. A caterpillar was munching on the last blossom. Enjoy, little caterpigly!

The potato vine fooled me and came back to life after our frosty nights. The begonia (?) has just begun to bloom. I looked for a plant tag, and couldn't find one. I started breaking off branches. Please correct me, if you know.

Nutmeg

The froggies like the low water situation in the goldfish pond. Cinnamon finds it harder to reach them, though! He creeps up to the edge, peeks over, ears flattened, and one-by-one they hop and dive. We expect rain this week, and I won't refill it from the well. 

Finally, the wild grapes are attracting all sorts of birds. A robin was here the other day. It wasn't amenable to a photo, hiding from me. 

March brings rain, snow

March 2

It's such a range of weather... March 1st, -16 C., then 2 C. March 2nd! I love the changes. I love the snow, but it is time...

We had a couple of cm of snow overnight, but I'm not bothering to shovel it. We are getting rain...

Health

Poor JB picked up his report from the GP's office. It's telling us he has a 5 x 2 x 5mm tear. He went to physio for a diagnostic assessment. No ultrasound or lasers for people with cancer, so that will slow recovery and healing. It could be months.

He bought himself a posture support duhickey. The physiotherapist said it was OK to use.


After that, he brought me a spinach salad for lunch, then he took a pain pill. He's continuing to take anti-inflammatories.

Pillow prop him up! Cinnamon is in the cat bed on the left!


He has a friend, who wants his bologna sandwich.

We ended up with 2.54 mm rain (about a tenth of an inch). I'm glad I didn't shovel! It's really wet snow. The driveway, of course, is a skating rink March 3rd.



Winter walkies, there is always something new to see. The evergreens have lots of holes, critters looking for bugs, but still they grow.

The dock is there. Honestly. The rivers are full. We'll see if we get spring floods this year...
This summer photo is from my post: Dock on the frog pond, where I showed how I built it (Jul., 2015).