Home Again

Well, it’s been about a week since I’ve updated this so I guess it’s about time to fill you in on what we’ve been doing since we got back home.   It turned out to be a very good thing that we came home 6 days earlier than originally planned. 

When we got home last Wednesday, Jim went down in the basement to turn the water heater up and do the other things he does down there.  Near the bottom of the stairs, he noticed one of his Coleman lanterns was knocked off a table and the glass globe was shattered.  Hmmm…he thought, that’s weird.  Then he went into a room he uses to store our bird seed and discovered a bunch of sunflower seeds on the floor and on top of other things.  Okay, so he keeps looking around trying to figure what was/is down there and finds droppings here and there.  Bigger than mouse size droppings, but what the heck is it?  OMG, not a rat he hopes. 

Time for an emergency trip to Walmart for traps and sticky pads.  Now back to the basement and he sets up a trap area.  Seeds in the corner, surrounded by sticky pads.  By this time, he’s convinced it’s a squirrel, because he can hear it moving and making little squirrel noises up in the ceiling panels.   By now it’s getting evening and he figures little ol’ squirrel will be getting hungry and will get trapped on it’s way to the seeds.  He’ll check it in the morning.

Morning comes and squirrel is still up in the ceiling panels.  I’m not liking this at all, so I decide to Google it to see how to get this critter out of our house.  Seems this is a fairly common problem with an easy solution.  Open a window so the little guy can get the heck out of your house.  So that’s what we did.  We left the window open while we went off to have a great Thanksgiving day with my relatives.  When we returned we were very thankful to find our house squirrel-less.  In the meantime, Jim searched high and low trying to figure out how it got in.  Well, it chewed it’s way in through the wiring/piping for the central air.  It must have gotten quite a shock in the process, because there were bare wires out there.  He’s taken care of this problem so they can’t try to become house guests again.

So that was our wildlife moment right here at home.  We still like squirrels, just not in our house.

Other than that and Thanksgiving, we’ve been busy getting back into the swing of the city, putting things away and getting the house restocked.  I had a great Black Friday at my Etsy shop, so I’ve been busy making more items for all those great Etsy buyers. 

I’m happy to be home again, especially when I look out the window and see grass and not snow.  You will notice my new theme here has quite the winter look.  I just couldn’t find anything I liked that I could use with 3 columns, so that’s why I went with this plain and simple winter look.

 

Turkey Week

I saw these guys or girls a couple weeks ago before the big snow.  They were just picking their way through the woods.   I’m pretty sure they won’t be on anyone’s Thanksgiving table this year. 

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The time has come for us to get things put away, packed up and say good bye to all our furry, feathered and northern friends.   The snow from a week ago is still on the ground, yesterday we had freezing rain/drizzle and now there’s a thin layer of ice on everything.  Tonight and into tomorrow more snow is predicted.  We planned on returning home next week, but with all this snow and cold coming, we’re going to take advantage of the clear weather on Wednesday and go home…and just in time for Thanksgiving with all my family.

We’ll miss all the wildlife around here and I know they’ll miss us too.  Just last week we had a new visitor…a gray fox.  Every night around 6:30 it arrives to eat some corn or sunflower seeds.  We’re baffled that the trail cam doesn’t get a picture of it, but I took this one last night through the window.  It’s not the best, but it’s typical of what you get at night when shooting through 3 panes of glass.  It’s really a small animal.  Just a little bit bigger than a cat, but it has a beautiful silvery, red fur coat.

 

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I know I won’t be updating this again until after Thanksgiving, so I’ll leave you with this Thanksgiving greeting.
  

 

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Didn’t Go Postal

Yesterday Molly and I came back home and left the Great White Hunter to fend for himself.  Tomorrow is the official start of deer hunting in Wisconsin.  It’s the one weekend I do not like being at the cabin.  I like coming back home and going to the Christmas craft shows and spending the day with my friend Connie.

Anyway, yesterday I stopped at the Post Office to pick up the mail that was being held and there with all the bills, catalogs and other junk mail was a Return to Sender package.  It was a set of pins for one of my Etsy buyers.  So I contacted her, told her what happened and asked for her correct address.  She answers back saying it happens all the time.  Her address and the one I used is 101 University Drive.  She said the Postal carriers try to deliver it to 1001 or 4001 University Drivem addresses that don’t even exist.  So to avoid the risk of this happening again, she gave me the address of her aunt & uncle in an entirely different state and asked me to send it there.

So I put the package in another envelope, with a new address label and go to the Post Office to mail it out again.  I told the whole story to the Postal lady, saying I didn’t think I should have to pay again, when my original package had a valid address on it.  She agreed and the USPS paid to resend my package.   Small victory for me!  

I guess I haven’t undated this since the big snow last Saturday.  Man, did it ever come down!  It started out as rain, then turned to slush and finally heavy snow that got pasted onto everything in it’s path.  Here’s before and after pictures of the pond.  Yeah, I know “it’s so pretty”!

This one has some frost on the edges and a thin layer of ice.

This one has lots of snow on everything, the layer of ice is gone, but there was still more snow coming.   Total for this storm was 6-8 inches.

Four days later the snow was still hanging.  Lots of branches broke from the weight of the snow.  Even whole trees snapped and fell onto the road.  It was a mess!

It was nice to see green grass when I got back home.

The Heat is On

We burn wood for heat at home and at the cabin.  Last week when we went home for my uncle’s funeral, we started up the little wall furnace so the cabin wouldn’t get too cold while we were gone.  We got back just before dark and as soon as we opened the door, the smell of propane just about knocked us over.   Jim looked around and couldn’t see any obvious problem and decided to call in a professional.  We knew this was nothing to mess around with.  Didn’t want to risk the place blowing up or all of us getting carbon monoxide poisoning.

Long story short, the repair man arrived at exactly the scheduled time, cleaned this, blew out that, looked at the propane tank, looked at the venting, ran the furnace, shut it off, ran it again and finally said he should put a big red X on it and say to never run it again.  He said it could be used to heat up the place if we were to leave while that was happening.  It would also kill any mice in the process.  First of all, we don’t have mice and secondly, we don’t want to risk anything by using this ancient little furnace.

We heard so many good things about infrared heaters that we decided to get one for our backup heat source.  Great decision, in my opinion.  It’s small, quiet and economical to run.  We don’t have to rewire, revent or remove the old one.   Just plug it in, set the temperature and let it do it’s thing.

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A couple other good things happened this week. 
1. We didn’t get any phone calls about having to go back home for a funeral. 
2. A new cell tower was activated and we’re right on the end of it’s service range.  It won’t be long and another one that’s about 5 miles closer will be activated.  Now to decide what kind of cell phone to buy.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.
3. We had some super weather this week and got out and enjoyed it.  Yesterday was sunny and windy.  Today is cool and cloudy.  Tomorrow & Sunday could bring that dreaded 4 letter word that starts with S, ends with W and has NO in the middle.

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And again, I want to thank everyone for all you kind words about my Uncle Wally.  He was a real treasure.

Quiet Time in the Northland

Like the title says, it’s getting very quiet around here.   About the only wildlife we’re seeing now are deer and eagles.  This little doe was standing along the edge of a dirt road when I spotted her.  Jim backed up and she just stood there while I took her picture .  She was turning her ears from side to side listening for sounds of danger.  I really like this picture of her in a totally natural setting.  The eagles have been feasting on road kill and deer carcasses.  It’s not unusual to see  eagles every day. And then there’s the mysterious stuff.  Just when I thought all the bears are in dens, I see this track frozen in some mud. The day after Halloween, I saw this skeleton looking image in a pool of water.  Aliens perhaps? And this morning on our walk we saw some confused willows.  It’s been nice, but I didn’t think it was warm enough for pussy willows to bud out. 

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I want to thank everyone again for all the kind words, thoughts and prayers you sent me on the recent passing of my aunt and uncle.  Uncle Wally’s funeral was on Saturday and I want to share this with all of you.  This is the back side of the little memory card that was handed out.  He was a character and a real Honey.

And then there were none….

Last Tuesday we got the news our last living Aunt had passed away.  She was 87 years old and lived a full, happy life.  We were at her funeral last Saturday along with all my other cousins and family.  I was so happy to see my last living Uncle there too.  He looked very frail as his health hasn’t been the best in the past years either.   I gave him a kiss, held his hand and teased him about his new crop of whiskers.  Last night we learned he passed away also.  Just 6 days after his sister’s death.   So now that family is all together again.  Uncle Wally and Aunt Gerry, Aunt Marie and Uncle Hilly and of course Mom and Dad.

So now all my lovely aunts and uncles from both sides of our family are gone.  I never thought this day would come.  I mean I thought they’d always be with me, but that’s just not possible.  I loved them all and miss them so much.  But now my brothers, cousins and myself are the old people in our family.   Saturday will be another family reunion .  We’ll gather together to celebrate Uncle Wally’s wonderful life.  He was a character and will be missed by all who knew him.