Life With The Crew

A Great Nature Day!

Yesterday we ventured out on a new trail at the little babe's request.  As the name would suggest, the "Spearmint Trail" was in a low lying area along a stream, with a lot of wet boggy areas.  (Spearmint likes moist areas like swamps or along creeks.)  We crossed a shallow stream, found some tiny freshwater clams on the streambed, and walked through an area with a lot of beech trees, some of them still clinging to their old leaves, not yet ready to let go.  We then climbed up a little rise, through a hemlock and white pine stand.  Dropping back down we followed the stream and in a flat wet part of the woods, my husband made a great discovery - porcupine quills at the base of a tree!  I then turned around and saw a very peculiar looking thing - from a large hole in a tall dead tree there was a black stain running down the side of the tree, all the way to the ground.  From my research about porcupines, I remembered seeing photos of their poop piles pouring out of their dens.  Sure enough, at the bottom of the tree was a massive pile and then my husband spotted the actual animal way up top, half in another hole.  What a fantastic find!  Unfortunately, we could not get great pictures of the porcupine.

This is a great article about porcupines.  I did not know that they had fur under their quills, which they shed in the spring.  We saw some fur in the pile of quills that we found.  We were all so excited, that we turned around and headed back home.  We figured that was the highlight of our outing!  

Out and About This Week

Out and about photos from this week.

Despite an awful head cold (I'm not ever taking Benadryl again!), the little babe and I managed to get out for a couple of quick outings.  During this last week of March, the lakes around here were still in a transition phase - ice patches still breaking up, fresh thin ice skimming over near the shore at nights.  The birds are going crazy, all the loud guys are at our feeder - grackles, starlings, blue jays, and squirrels make for quite the racket.  There seems to be a singing bright red cardinal in every tree top.  Chipmunks are scurrying here and there at super speed.  We are having a rainy Spring day here and I wish I had done some garden clean up this week, but there is plenty of time.  I am trying to avoid that "I have to get it done NOW, Spring is here and everybody is cleaning up their yard!" pressure.  We started a couple of tomato seeds inside and I am content with that.  

Happy weekend, whether you are taking it easy or getting down to garden business!

The Little Things - 3.27.19

We're having a rough morning here, so thought it would be good to remind myself about something good.  This is just a little blip in the grand scale of a happy life.  And so my little thing is the memory of my little babe, hiding in the grasses to photograph Canada geese at our local turtle pond.

A bad mood is a just a passing thing, like a rainy day.  The sun will come out and so will the smiles.

 

A Spring Sweater for Sale

This open front cardigan is knit with 100% alpaca in a lovely moss green color - just the color for Spring!  It has the feather and fan lace pattern on the cuffs and hem.  The sleeves are 3/4 length with a slight bell shape.  I knit the light worsted weight alpaca on size 10 1/2 needles, so it is an open stockinette stitch (note that you can see the stripes of my shirt through it).  The front of the cardigan drapes to the sides.  For sizing, I am about 120 lbs, 5'5" with a size 34B bust.  The cardigan fits comfortably on my arms with a form fitting shirt underneath.  It would probably be a size Small, but on the smaller side of small!  It would fit a petite person with a smaller bust very nicely.

If you are interested in purchasing it or have any questions about it, please email me at [email protected].  The price is $60 plus shipping.

Skunk Cabbage for Dinner?

Sorry for the bad photo with too much glare, but take a look at the skunk cabbage plants and you'll see that they have all been chewed.  As their name would suggest, skunk cabbage smell bad and taste bad, so who would want to nibble on them?  Apparently deer do.  According to this article, deer eat the middle spike and green leaves in the spring, which provide them with a good source of protein in a season when the food pickings are lean.  

I'm keeping it short and sweet (or short and skunky) today.  Just wanted to share something new that I learned about the wonders of nature.  Have a great weekend! 

The Little Things - 3.20.19

Today on the first day of Spring, my daughter and I hiked the whole way around a nearby lake.  We were going to attempt it on Monday, but once we got there and realized how cold it was when the sun went behind the clouds, we scrapped that plan and just threw rocks into the dam and ate our snack on a hillside.  But today the weather was perfect and so around the lake we went.  It took us three hours with lots of exploring and two snack stops along the way.  One of them was on this floating dock.  The water around the dock near the shallows was ice free, but the majority of the lake was still covered.  However, we heard the otherworldly creaking and moaning of the ice on the move.  In the shallows near the top of the dam, we saw either a muskrat or beaver head before it disappeared under water, amazing us with the thought of it gliding under the ice.  Apparently muskrat can hold their breath for up to 15 minutes. 

The whole outing was a good one, but my favorite Little Thing was sitting on this dock with the sun on my face, eating cheese crackers and watching my daughter hang over the side and play with a stick in the water.  Peaceful, calming, happy.

What Little Thing made you happy today?

Owls in the Night

All Winter I have been waiting to hear the Great Horned owls calling at night.  Several weeks ago we saw Barred owls in nearby woods and it made me realize that I have not heard the Great Horned owls.  Last Winter they called pretty regularly and I was hoping that they were still in the area.  Last night was the night.  Around 12:30 am, I heard the deep hooting.  I smiled as I then heard the second call, the softer call of the female.  I opened the window a crack to hear better, pulling back the curtains to see the bright light of the almost full moon spilling across the yard.  It makes me happy to know that they are out there somewhere, maybe in our tall White pine in the back forty, maybe in the large Spruce that we call "the General", maybe perched on top of the neighbor's house surveying our yard for secretive mice and wandering rabbits.  

The full moon for March is on Wednesday, which is the Spring Equinox.  This moon is known as the Worm Moon or the Sap Moon.  This year it happens to be a Supermoon also.  

I have no owl, moon, or worm pictures to share, so here is one of the two eggs the ladies laid today.  Two eggs a day - a sure sign of Spring.

 

Nature News

We have been out and about in the woods the past couple of days.

But we have found some interesting nature finds in our own backyard too!

~Spring isn't technically here until next week, but the birds are back in town.  The loud bossy Grackles and Starlings are here, much to the dismay of the House Sparrows.

~Yesterday I saw the sweetest sight - a Mourning Dove couple was sitting on the ground in the sunshine, under a bush in a protected spot.  It is rare to see songbirds just sitting on the ground, but it seems to be common for Mourning Doves.  It made me feel good that they feel safe in our yard.  For the past three weeks I have been hearing them cooing from our big Spruce.

~We had our first Tundra Swan sighting in two different cornfields on our way to the barn.  The regal white birds with black beaks are pretty exciting to see.  

~This morning I discovered the first wrecked House Sparrow nest of the year, packed full of chicken feathers.  The sparrows won't mourn, but will get busy right away on a new one.  visit #warm_as_wool for the photo

~While sitting at our kitchen table, I saw something gold and fluffy hanging in the tree branches.  When I pulled it down, I discovered that it is most likely cedar bark which was stripped off by squirrels; we have both red and gray squirrels in our yard and our neighbors have a long stretch of cedars across the street.  The squirrels use it as nesting material.  It is amazing how soft the bark is when shredded so fine.

It is a fantastic world in which we live - both in exotic locations and in our own backyards! 

 

 

Something Sweet for a Sweet Little Babe

The Clementine Hoodie is my latest knitting project, which will be given as a gift by my mother-in-law.  It is made with Quince & Co's 100% wool Lark in the Pomegranate color.  

The hood is worked in a feather and fan lace pattern, which is a great beginner's lace pattern.  There is only one "lace" row in the four row pattern.  The hardest part of the sweater was picking up the right number of stitches for the button band.  First time I picked up too little and the hood was pinched; the second time I think I picked up a smidge too many, but I went with it.  With each project I learn something new and with this one it was how to make a larger buttonhole with a double yarn over.  Nothing tricky; just something I had not done before.  

Hopefully it will keep the sweet little babe pretty in pink and warm and cozy.

Red, White, Blue (and Black)

We went into the woods today to feed the deer.  This is not something that we normally do, but this week we have seen their footprints in our neighborhood, leading toward bird feeders, and while they might always be here and we just don't see the tracks, the animal lover part of me thinks that they are getting desperate because the ground has been covered with ice, not snow, for an extended period of time.  I know that a plastic baggie of food is not saving a deer's life, but it might make for a nice surprise midnight snack and the little babe liked the idea, so we went.  Near one of our feeding spots, we discovered this.

Now for the whole picture.

Obviously, something had a Blue Jay for a meal earlier in the day.  The blue feathers were so brilliant.  Near the area, we found both little black legs.  The little babe said seeing them, "was cool".  

I read a book review the other day for a book about owls.  One reader said that the book was a bit too graphic - the skeletons in the owl pellets scared her three year old granddaughter.  That comment elicited a disgusted snicker and eyeroll from myself.  An artist's rendering of tiny little white mice skulls - did this actually scare her granddaughter or did she herself actually not want to see or think about it?  Guess what folks, everybody has to eat and every creature does it in a different way.  When I think about the awful things that kids are exposed to on television and computers, and then something as benign as a little mouse skeleton in a nature book, it is just ridiculously sad the way society is going.  

Okay, stepping down from that soapbox now.  Have a wonderful day.  The Blue Jay really was beautiful and the hawk that ate him really was hungry.