I know I’m posting this mid-summer, but I’ve been preoccupied a bit and have been neglecting this blog for a few months… so let’s start the catch-up with Spring!
Spring began with some animal friends, some familiar, some newly seen
Okay, that last one probably needs some color balance – the lizard isn’t quite that orange. But it was a lot of orange. I never tire of seeing these little creatures.
While kind of uninteresting in this photo, these fox kits were having a significant frolic when I came upon them during an afternoon walk. They must have been a little camera shy, since they stopped playing just as I got out my phone to take their picture.
At first, I thought this young deer was an albino, but she’s got a brown patch by the ear and regular color in her eyes, so not albino. I learned a new word for what she is: leucetic.
Phoebes built a new nest on my porchlet and had a new brood. I had to remove the old nest because it had become contaminated when the pest control people were engaged in chemical warfare against the carpenter ants.
But what really says “winter is over, I mean it” is when the leaves emerge from the buds…
Spring tends to be quite soggy here, and it turns out my road has gotten rutted and full of divots from all the mushy driving.
So I thought: I know! I can use the bucket attachment on Bob to just scrape it back to a nice tidy grade. This should be easy when it’s all soggy-like!
And yanno, it didn’t look too bad after I graded it. But this did not last long at all. Just smoothing it over was not the answer, no matter the intensity and sincerity with which I wished it to be so. Ruts and divots returned forthwith. What I really needed was a roller machine to drive over it and compact it all flat and tight. But I don’t have one of those. So instead, I’ve just been sprinkling small rocks into the ruts and divots from time to time and driving over them. It’s getting better, slowly.
But speaking of Bob, when I took his snow chains off for the spring, I couldn’t help but notice how much they reminded me of recently shed snake skin.
On Mother’s day, I bought a Little Kim Lilac and a Rhododendron.
Since then, the Rhody has absolutely thriven! It has more than doubled in size. The lilac is slower-going, but also seems to be doing decently in their new homes. That’s more than I can say for the cherry trees I keep trying to grow here. Both the new ones and last year’s that were doing well have succumbed to a leaf fungus because it has been so wet… I fear the orchard is a lost cause.
The phoebes weren’t the only creatures building this spring. I also wanted to upgrade my wood-drying tent to something more durable. This frame-and-tarp structure (left) was replaced with this metal carport (I added heavy duty diagonal snow braces). The next batch of milled boards will go in here to dry. I’m hoping the carport is more durable than the tent, which was starting to get ragged after just a couple of years in place.
It’s unlikely you remember, but there was a big tree right in front of my house that came down a couple of years ago. The stump has been there ever since, but recently I decided the stump was a nuisance, so I went at it with my chainsaw to try to make it less of one.
The operation was successful – and I happened to notice that the rotten wood of the stump had some very interesting figure in it! So I set aside these chunks to dry and then I’ll see about slicing off some decorative boards. Click for detail.
Speaking of wood that grew here… I made this picnic table from boards milled from trees that once stood here.
I’m very pleased with how it looks. The natural wood grain is very pretty. And it being hardwood (maple, I think), it’s tough, too. It was actually made as a gift for a friend, who was quite delighted to receive it
The table features a wide stance, so it cannot tip, no matter how heavy a person sits on the bench. And the bench boards are supported by a 6″ rail below, effectively turning them into 2/3 of an I-beam, greatly improving strength and resistance to sag. My 275# self could stand in the middle of one of those bench boards and nothing happened. It didn’t sag, it didn’t tip. This is a heavy duty table.
My apologies for the color inconsistencies across photos – these are all casual cell phone snapshots and I wasn’t really paying attention to color accuracy at the time and honestly, I just didn’t feel like post-processing them all to converge on color temperature, tint, exposure, etc. They tell the story just fine as-is, inconsistently-colored or not 🙂
I have a new neighbor, who has a bit of a menagerie at her farm. It was a fun to meet one of her goats
But the donkey stole my heart. Such a love!
Donkey nuzzled into me as I pet her, making happy-donkey sounds. It was really sweet.
And now, for some random pictures… make of them what you will 🙂
