Busy day on the home front!

Another snowy day today. While it wasn't fun going out in the blowing snow the cats did venture forth, shaking off a paw now and then. When they came in they wanted me to make them a fire.


Lots went on today. I did some school work in anticipation of my new course.



The cats helped me repot plants; the avocado plant was potbound. Cyril (my grandplant) has some new growth and buds and we repotted his little friend who has yet to be named.

Sady stole Oliver's tuna can treat. (Sady is on a special diet and is on hypoallergenic food) But we didn't want to interfere with the cat hierarchy. She growled at liver and he promptly removed himself to the kitchen carpet and away from the bowl.

The cats checked out lots of birds and squirrels at the feeder.
They supervised (safely indoors) as I shovelled off their deck. (You don't own cats. They let you look after them!)

The turkey vultures came to check out the food under the deck (spillover from the bird feeders!).

A lone wolf came loping by around dusk.

squirrels and raccoons

It appears to me that the battle with raccoons is only analogous to that of the squirrel debate. Our squirrels are quick learners, and have gotten into every bird feeder I have bought over the years. I have fashioned baffle, bought real baffles and still they get through around or under them. The Squirrel Be Gone II feeders gave the least resistance. They hung from the roof of that one and fed to their hearts content. I refuse to buy them anymore. With the Squirrel Be Gone I style: theoretically the weight of the squirrel brings a door to close over the food opening. They ate the perches and then the plastic to get into it. The little tree rats gnaw anything plastic and have destroyed many bird feeder perches.

We have read about various means to keep squirrels from our precious garden bulbs: put in chicken wire over the planting and under the soil, plant double in each hole, and so on.
I have given up my squirrel war. I now embrace God’s creatures. I have three bird feeders: finches, large birds (sunflower seeds) and one on the ground for the mourning doves with cracked corn. There is a squirrel feeder with peanuts and sunflower seeds.

I usually feed them all in the morning, and only enough so that they finish by dusk (when my little masked, rig-tailed friends come to visit). When is precious about the winter is that here in the north the raccoons are now hibernating. We haven’t seen one for a month or so. I keep the seeds outside in a metal can I inherited from my parent’s estate. Most of the time (spring and fall) I keep a big rock on it to keep the critters out. I learned that lesson last year as they gnawed off the bungie cords and dove into the large can. In the morning I found the can upended, with seeds EVERYWHERE.

I have taken the rock off of the seed can with the varmints asleep. The squirrels, while getting fat on food, do not yet have the strength of opposable thumbs necessary to pry off the lid. The mice find nooks and crannies and I found one in the bottom of the can once. It’s little friend did not survive the cold. I keep the lid on much more tightly these days.

We love feeding the birds and have accepted all the critters for the beauty of nature and the cycle of life that they embody. What we haven’t seen in our little paradise are groundhogs! I do not miss them navigating new dens in my garden. We learn to get along with all the wildlife. The turkey vulture I felt badly about. I haven’t seen it back. It has a job to do, though, keeping the road kill cleaned up. I wonder what it subsists on now?

Rain & Snow

It appears that the weather is quite changeable. From rain, and melting snow, a beautiful sunset, to freezing rain, to blowing snow in 24 hours. The ice is still quite thin with all the rain and above zero temperatures. In two days we go from this:

to this:
The sunsets are gorgeous.

shovelling the cottage roof

Anticipating rain or freezing rain on a roof that dates from 1962, covered in a layer of thigh-deep snow, I decided I had to get the snow off. This is a Muskoka ritual, methinks. The wind was beginning to pick up. It was pretty grey in the distance. The clouds from the west usually bring precipitation. It was a fresh smell in the air. Good to get out and do something useful.

Unfortunately, I really don't know the best way to do do a roof. know many hire themselves out, stronger men with little fear of heights. With an aging back, I tried the big shovel that would push it off the roof, but since there was a knee-deep layer of snow on top of 5 cm of solid ice, the tool was useless. I didn't have the strength. I had moved 4 m piles of dirt in the summer, but it had been a while since I had done such labour.

I had to go at it a layer at a time.
I managed to shovel it off on one side, making myself a soft landing pad in case it got too slippery or I lost my footing.




After an hour of work, I sought help. Hubby, with two wonky disks in his back was not a candidate.

How about the cat? She was happy to supervise, but not inclined to pick up a shovel. She checked out the balcony, making sure she could get up there. All was well, but she disappeared under the cottage to look for mice.




The blue jays and mourning doves, while quite content to eat the bird seed I put out on a daily basis, were too busy to help. "Not mine! Nothing to do with me!" they all chorused.


"I have to eat and keep up my figure." mourned the dove.






I was on my own. Two hours later, after special delivery of water, removing a layer of clothes, wearing only my Long Lake fleece I had given my dad two Christmases ago. Feeling the wind pick up, evaporating the sweat off my back, and feeling quite damp and cold, I quit. Most of it is done, but I konked out. After a hot bath, and a hot toddy, I felt much better. It was time for a silly Christmas movie, lounging in the easy chair, then I opened an early Christmas present: a beautifully wrapped box of Belgian chocolates and felt even better.

fire in the sky

The sunset that followed the big blizzard (fire in the sky)



can be compared to the ice on the water.

Slow Eddy

There was a snow squall. In a moment, the lake disappeared behind a wall of snow. We felt as insulated as the plants, happy, I am sure, with a blanket of snow to protect them from the cold.
The squirrels were absent but for one brave soul who was carefully clearing out the squirrel feeder from under its snow cover.

Brian thought that this little guy had been elected to go out and shovel.

“Who wants to go out and dig out the feeder?”

“Let’s send out slow Eddy!”, he heard them say. “He’ll go out and shovel the feeder for us!” The poor squirrel had to shake the snow off his face as he used his nose to smell for hidden peanuts. We have to feed the squirrels to keep them from worrying the bird feeders. It is a compromise with nature we are content to make.

This squirrel kept sniffing and looking for fresh, unfrozen seeds, raising his head to shake it off doggy-style, several times more. He sits in the small, brass dish - an upside down shell-shape. It was really a bird bath; a gift from my daughter one Mother’s Day. It serves as a great feeder. We give them peanuts, too. The squirrel is buried as the wind picks up and blows several centimeters of snow off of branches above.

We wonder if the new line of cloud across the horizon forecasts another blizzard. The squall passed in an hour. The snow broke out and warmed the house. It streamed in the windows. The house was cozy. The indoor plants basked in the warmth, the cat stretched in yoga-like fashion in the sunbeams. Life is good.

Hey there!

He eyes the two raven-feathered birds on the feeder. They seem aloof, cold and metal in their demeanour. Unconcerned, he looks them up and down, back and forth he looks at one then the other, until he choses the one that refused eye contact. He likes a challenge.



Delivering his line, smooth-talking jay that we know is: "So, you come here often?

Tired of the irksome one-line pick ups, she ignores him. He takes a couple of sunflower seeds in his gullet and flies off, undaunted.



The squirrel snickers on the other feeder.
She has heard all the lines before in her wild youth. Her back to the trio, hidden behind her bushy tail, she peeks back at them over her shoulders that shake in mirth. She has settled into a great relationship, glad to find a partner who respects her as the nicely groomed tree rat she has turned out to be. She is glad she doesn't need to talk to creeps like this anymore.

A blanket of snow

I woke today to a blanket of snow. The blue jays fight madly over the last peanuts in the feeder. Mourning doves hover nearby in the trees, much like dead leaves they sit on branches mourning summer. Hopeful of a feed on the deck, they cluster waiting until the cat goes back into the house. Chickadees continue to feed.

The sound of dripping snow water punctuates the sounds of traffic, much louder without the forest's leaves blanketing its sound.

The mergansers are down in the lake, still fishing in colder and colder water. I wonder when they will head south?

Hunting Season

The guns fire in Muskoka. Once, at dusk, I heard 4 shots in a row. It breaks my heart and causes me to fear. Hunting season began a month ago. This month they are firing in earnest. I fear for my fellow creatures. Brian’s experience on the farm included that with firearms. The farm animals have to be protected. I can see the hunters in their bright orange jackets travelling by boat across the lake. Hunting, Brian tells me, is good on the railway tracks that run on the other side and parallel to our lake. The hunters travel in a small motor boat. Too small to bring back a carcass, I think. I wonder what motivates them as I really do not understand how they might find sport in this exercise. They do not hunt out of a necessity for food, not if they own or rent a property by a Muskoka lake. The run at about $400,000. Rentals can be $1000 per week.

The sound of the rifle, my husband says, is a crack. A shotgun, which they use for moose, is more of a boom. In my own way I try to analyse the noise as it separates me from the knowledge that the three shots I heard this morning means that one of the men has missed something and shot again. A letter to the editor of our paper suggested that since her father hunted she knew their motivation but had two thoughts for them: that their first shot be true so that the animal feels no pain, and that they cover up the evidence of their prey, dumped in the back of their pick-up trucks. The bleeding carcass, with the heads lolling in the back, make her feel sick.

Wildlife in Muskoka