Squirrels?

I started filling my bird feeder a few weeks ago.  The birds have come in abundance, but it is strange, a pint scoop of bird food lasts three days right now.  Last year, I put out that much before breakfast and it would be gone by lunchtime.  The difference seems to be the squirrels.  Last year they were brazen, three of them hanging about the feeder, one swinging  and spinning on the feeder like it is an amusement park ride and two underneath enjoying the bounty sprinkling down upon them.  Then they frisked about, ran up and down the tree and tussled in the yard.

This year there are squirrels, but they are behaving differently.  They hide.  The sneak.  They scoot from one point of cover to the next.  They are acting like the prey that they are. I'm guessing either the hawks have been voracious or a neighbor has a BB gun.  Whatever it is, the birds are able to eat the food that I put out for them.

So far this year, the usual birds, cardinals, juncos, chickadees-both Carolina and blackcapped, bluejays, nuthatches.  The titmice have been hanging out at the picture window making faces at the cats on the other side of the glass, teasing, usually the wrens do that.  The cats tightly swish the tips of their tails and make their "eh-eh-eh" hunting sounds and bonk their heads on the glass as they try to fire themselves through it.  They recover with their usual, "I meant to do that. I knew what I was doing, really." look.  I swear I heard the titmice  snickering.

The crows are strange.  They appear around the hedges from the neighbor's yard and slowly walk, like middle school kids, in a loose bunch, talking amongst themselves.  The stroll down the hill, about 50 feet, and then eat some of the millet  that has spilled on the ground under the feeder. Some days they pick at the ground to eat other things.  When they are done, they gather together and slowly walk back up the hill and disappear back around the hedge.  There are other groups of crows that fly in, but this bunch likes to hoof it. Strange.

Snow, Ice and Seedlings

Somehow it is still winter.  We had a few warmish days and then we were sent straight back to the teens again.  I'm anticipating that the schools will be closed for tomorrow due to the snow and ice storm headed our way, I must check our inventory of hot chocolate and prep some cookies.  I'm sure that the sleds will be out and there will be lots of wet mittens and gloves tomorrow.

Despite the wet and cold, I look to spring.  My big box of seeds has emerged from the closet and I have given it a good clean out, anything dated before 2010 is gone, but that still leaves quite a lot.  I generally don't plant a whole packet of most things, so I have a bit of everything left each year.  If anyone local needs veggie seeds--don't buy any until you check with me, I might have half a packet leftover from the last couple of years. The seed marketing folks don't want you to believe that seeds can be good for several years, but they are, there may be a few more duds each year, but most are still good.

The seed box, before editing.

I looked back over my notes for my garden last year and realized that I put out my cool season greens waaaaaaaaaaay too late, which may be why they were ravaged by bugs and slugs.  So, knowing this, I pulled out my seedling heat mat on Monday, and the  mini-greenhouses and dove into the cool season vegetable world.  Kale (2 kinds), collards, broccoli, broccoli raab, mustard spinach (Komatsuna), Swiss chard (2 kinds), Chinese cabbage (for kimchi!!!) and two types of bok choy seeds went into the seed starting mix.  As of this morning, less than 48 hours later, there are many germinating  seeds just popping to the surface.  I'll be firing up the plant lights  in the garage tomorrow.  In about two weeks, I'll plant a bit more broccoli and broccoli raab.

Seedlings to be (I hope)

Despite the cold, I have been back to the horse rescue shoveling manure into tubs to haul home.  The top two inches are frozen, but after I break through the crust everything is shovel-able.  I've extended my long narrow front garden another five feet and will widen it when the daytime temps hover closer to the mid-thirties.  My husband, the plant doctor, says that he has been getting e-mails at work predicting more dry weather in California this year, which would cause much higher vegetable and agricultural product prices because of poor harvests.  He is encouraging me to keep the back garden because of this.  If he helps weed and water, I'm all for it.

It's time to pull out the wire fencing and leather gloves to fashion critter resistant cages, the battle with the squirrels and bunnies last year destroyed any hopes I have for ever raising uncaged okra, cantaloupes or cucumbers.  I'd put the cukes in and within a few hours the squirrels would have them uprooted, I'd put them in again and they would repeat the process until the plants died and I gave up.  They didn't mess with the pumpkins or watermelons though.  The cantaloupes and okra would be nice little seedlings with a few leaves in the morning and by afternoon they would be merely a tiny piece of stem extending slightly above the ground.  I'd replant and you know the story.

So, I'm off to get organized for the sledding, shoveling and pre-season gardening!

Fall, I think.

I heard my first public Christmas carol of the season yesterday, at the gas station.  It felt right in that it was crisp and cool, with a touch of winter in the fall air, but it was missing one thing--digesting turkey.  I prefer my Christmas season to be short and intense, the tree goes up a few days before Santa comes, cookies baked, traveling, wrapping presents, (all bought before the turkey comes on the scene, I hate to wait in lines and I like to have a choice) all that holiday cheer crammed into a week and a half.  Some folks like to start the holiday shortly after the kids return to school, but I don't belong to that club.  Unfortunately, we've had to bend the "no carols before the turkey" rule in the past few years. My daughter is in the school band and each year they have a winter concert featuring songs that the students have been practicing since September--so those chestnuts have already been audibly roasting in our house for a while.  Luckily, the chestnuts roast more beautifully each year.

The leaves peaked here this past week and are now starting to fade and drop, that must mean that it is time to start hauling manure again to make new raised beds in the front yard.  The back garden is too close to those walnut trees causing too much shade and juglone issues.  This past year the tomatoes all stretched laterally toward the sun, I'd tie them back and a few days later the new growth would be straining back in that direction. This coming year I won't fight it, they will receive the garden where the pumpkins went wild with full sun blazing above.  I will tote in soil for a new garden bed for the pumpkins over the next few months.

Snacking on millet

What eggs?

The chickens are enjoying their extended adolescence, they are due to start laying any day now, in fact, they might be laying and hiding their eggs from us, ignoring that lovely next box I installed for them.  They will be 24 weeks old tomorrow, according to the books and websites they can start laying anytime from 20-26 weeks, but there has been no sign of eggs.  They have started to make horrendous noises that sound like strangling geese, which chickens do during and after laying an egg.  I have searched to see if their are any little warm brown orbs awaiting us, but I have found nothing.

The girls are also enjoying all the millet that falls from the bird feeder. The birds are starting to discover it, but the squirrels will need to remove their fuzzy little behinds once in a while for the wild birds to have any chance of tasting the sunflower seeds.  The first winter we were here, we didn't see any squirrels, this year we are very nearly overrun with the critters.  Maybe it is because we have had two mild winters in a row, or maybe it is because I asked the neighbor kid with the BB gun not to use it on our property. (When we bought the house we had to replace two windows because BBs had damaged them.)

Three more "starting at 500K" houses have begun to be erected down the street. I have visited people who live in similar homes, they seem like giant caverns and are not very homey.  The ones I have seen have almost no furniture in them, so they seem that much more cavernous.   I find it interesting that the lower ceilinged rooms adjacent to the caverns have furniture and appear as if they are used, unlike the cavernous spaces. The practical New Englander in me thinks about the heating bills for cathedral ceilings. I am certainly glad that I won't be writing those checks.  The tree hugger in me thinks about the energy wastage associated with having those soaring ceilings and the real spacial needs of an average family.  The city planner in me thinks about the traffic that will be caused by the sprawling American landscape and the disconnected society caused by poor neighborhood design.  The farmer in me thinks about the loss of the farmland that the houses have usurped and that it would be cool if they landscaped with food bearing plants.  The mom in me thinks about how many more kids will be crammed onto my daughter's bus (which was an issue earlier this year), they forget when they set the bus capacity that each child will be bearing a 25 lb or more backpack and half of those students will tote band instruments three times a week.  I hope no one  in those new houses plays the tuba. It would still be better than the third world buses I have ridden with women carrying baskets of flowers or crates of chickens on their heads, with everyone packed so tightly that there was no chance of standees falling down if the bus stopped suddenly.
I digress, but my whole blog is one giant digression...

The Wildlife Refuge

We had our first frost last night, so we fired up the pellet stove. It was nice to wake up in a house that wasn't chilly.  Those in-between days when it is pretty cold at night but hit mid-sixties in the day are challenging, too warm for the pellet stove and too cold to be comfortable.

I did my final harvest of warm season veggies last night in anticipation of the frost.

There are enough peppers to make a new batch of (mostly) jalapeno pepper jelly. With my canning frenzy, I have come to the realization that I need more shelves in my pantry, yet another project to conquer.  The chill has also reminded me that I haven't found the right fabric for curtains in the kitchen/dining area.  I've been carrying around my yardage calculations for a few weeks  since I'm trying to pair it with another errand into the areas. The fabric shops seem to claim a certain radius around themselves, I can drive west 45 minutes to one (Hancock), northeast about 55 minutes to another (Hobby Lobby) and due south for 55 minutes to another (Jo Ann).  Many of the fabric sellers on-line do not seem the have the yardage required to cover four 62 inch long windows, which comes to 10-12 yards.  Gotta drive!


I'm looking out those exposed windows to the bird feeder, which I just filled for the first time this season about two days ago.  The chickens love whatever the squirrels spill, but the wild birds have not yet discovered it. I hope we have the variety that we had in the past year the usual chickadees, robins, sparrows, blue jays, titmice, nuthatches, cardinals, juncos, wrens, then there are (spring and summer) bluebirds (they like the posts we put in for the blackberries), blue gray gnat catchers (had to look them up, again spring/summer), Baltimore orioles, flickers, red bellied woodpeckers, pileated  woodpeckers, mockingbirds, catbirds, brown thrashers, and when a deer gets hit on the road (they have a crossing nearby) the black and turkey vultures (nasty, stinky things), oh yeah, wild turkeys (mom and five babies).  Then, of course, we have mammals deer, bunnies, a big possum, saw a fox once, a bazillion moles that make the lawn squishy. The moles are the reason some of the hawks (red tailed and red shouldered) come--they sit on the "lawn" and wait--then pounce on a mole when it comes up).  Nasty little moles ate the roots of my parsley!  Go Hawks!

The other day in the back yard we had two deer, a  crow and a bunny all just sitting on the lawn near each other, my husband said that it looked like it was an idyllic scene straight out of an old Disney movie and that we should hear perky music in the background.  Much of the land around us platted for development and now the recession is easing the 500K houses are going in, so our wildlife refuge of a backyard will probably be short lived.

Time to fill the feeder, I hope the squirrels will save a little for the birds today.