Life With The Crew

Lola

I'm writing this right now with one dog eating his lunch beside me.  Just one dog.  Wallace, the homeless street dog from Romania that we adopted 12 years ago.  He is at least 14 years old now, but we'll never know his real age.  As of yesterday, he is the only dog in the house.  I feel the need to document this, here in this space, on the platform that I wrote almost daily on for several years, sharing my life with the crew - my pack of dogs, cats, various other animals, and my young babe.  My Corgi queen, the first dog that my husband and I got together, the Corgi that started our love of the breed which led us to adopt five more, has died at the age of 17 years, 2 months, and 15 days. 

Lola. 

She had lost mobility in her hind legs almost a year ago, but was still happy, strong, and healthy otherwise, so we used a towel to sling her outside.  She powered around the yard with no hesitation.  Since the New Year, she started slowing down and then recently was diagnosed with kidney failure.  We decided it was time to put her gently to sleep before her kidneys shut down further and she started to really feel the effects.

This dog loved my husband and I so strongly; I swear that is what kept her going for so long.  Even when her eyesight was failing, she would smell us - she knew as soon as he came in the front door from work, she would awake from sleeping if I tried to slip through the room at night to throw wood on the fire.  Lola always wanted to be where I was, that was part of her bossy nature, having to know what was going on and keeping track of me.  For the past several months, she would watch me from her thrown of fleece blankets on the floor - unable to physically follow me, but keeping track just the same.  When she was young, she loved walking in the woods and around the neighborhood, patrolling the backyard for duck and chicken poop.  This dog lived to eat and her last moments were spent licking raspberry ice cream until she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer.  

I loved this dog with all my heart and it was returned with the same strength.  My girl is no longer here.  The Corgi era has ended.  I used to walk around the neighborhood with a babe on my back and four Corgis in hand - the neighborhood oddball Corgi lady.  Now I have none and will be a bit lost for a while.  I think about the people that do not have pets or that do, but still see them as "just pets", not true members of the family, sentient beings with their own feelings and desires.  They don't have to experience the pain that is making my heart hurt, but they also don't have the joy of loving so deeply.  I have one dog left and I know how bad it is going to hurt again.  But I will never regret loving an animal - they ask so little and give us their heart in return.  A true gift that is worth the pain, but damn, it is hard.

 

Capturing the Light

Today started off gray and humid - not very October like.  It's been rather warm this week, up into the 60's.  I suppose it is nice that the cold weather hasn't set in for good yet, but it is odd to have a frost, but then I'm still picking red raspberries.  The leaf show this year has been amazing here in Pennsylvania and I am thankful every day that I live in such a beautiful state.  I think I'd get rather depressed in a place with no trees or trees that stayed green all the time.  They say variety is the spice of life (at least in some things - my morning raw milk maple latte does not vary.)  And really, the cycle of the seasons is a constant (at least for now...)

Here are a couple backyard photos from a golden afternoon in late October.  Trying to capture the light, to store it and dole it out a little each day throughout the coming months.

However, I'm not too melancholy about it because I actually love the cozy season of Winter.  Though sunflowers are nice too.

 

Hello Out There!

Hello out there!  I feel like I'm speaking to an audience of just myself, since everyone has migrated to the land of IG (myself included - I'm a sucker for peaceful photos of country houses and landscapes that are so different from my own.)  However, my daughter's 10th birthday was last week, a decade of life being a rather big milestone, so I thought it was fitting that I pop back in here to commemorate it.  While looking back to see when I first started sharing in this space - 9 years ago and 1 month - I found the first post I wrote and thought I'd share it again.

"Let's see, what happened today.  Cleaned, made cookies, walked the dogs, oh yeah, and almost lost a chicken.  The question I ask - Why jump the fence?  The chickens have to know the dogs are out there.  But they still do it.  So I go flying out the back door and try to find something to break up the massacre.  The wheelbarrow is right there, so I throw the wheelbarrow onto the mass of fur and feathers and drag the first set of dogs into the house.  Then throw the third one into the dog crate that happens to be on the back deck, and that only leaves one left, who screams like a baby when I barely touch his collar.  Amazingly, the chicken is fine and gets tossed back over the fence.  So back inside, wash my hands, and continue the dishes.  Barely broke a sweat on that one."

The "crew" is significantly smaller since I wrote that post.  We only have 2 dogs left - our Romanian rescue Wallace and our 16 year old Corgi, Lola.  We adopted a kitten last Fall named Tiny Tim, we still have a yard of ducks and chickens, and we just acquired a new Lop rabbit and a guinea pig.  My beloved Angora rabbit, Flora, was with us five years until two weeks ago and I miss her little happy furry face.  

The newest members:

We also have three horses that are kept at a boarding stable, so our outside crew has grown while the inside one has shrunk.  Shaya, the Haflinger mare, is the newest addition adopted last year, from Gentle Giants Draft Horse Rescue.  

My hobbies haven't changed that much - gardening, knitting, and spending time in the woods.  I sell my knitted items on Etsy.  My daughter and I spend a lot of time at the barn with the horses and love riding in the field and woods.  

I'm glad to have this space to look back and remember the adventures of parenthood and pets.  

 

A Slight Shift

Only almost the middle of August, but there were definitely more than a couple of red leaves on the forest floor.  Definitely enough to draw notice and think, hmm, in a couple of weeks both the ground and I will be wearing more than we what we are today.  The mornings will be chillier, although the days will continue to be warm.  After a hot dry spell, today was a wonderful breath of relief, a just right morning in the woods by the lake.  

As we do most of the time, we had the woods to ourselves, and they were abnormally quiet today.  Wood Pewees, a couple of Rufous-sided Towhees, a Downy woodpecker, and bush birdies that I couldn't identify.  I only just discovered that the call that I've been hearing in the woods, the song that has been driving me crazy because I heard it constantly yet never saw the singer, is the Wood Pewee.  My husband used the power of technology, using the Merlin app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  I now walk through the woods a little more peacefully because I'm not racking my brain trying to figure out what I'm hearing.  We all have something that drives us crazy - sitting in traffic, people that drive too slow, people who don't pick up their dog's poop, that unidentified bird in the woods (actually all of those things raise my stress level...)

Hope you have a great weekend!

An August Morning in Blooms

It has been several months since I've visited this space.  Not for any one particular reason, just life.  But this morning we didn't have anywhere to go, the not so little babe who will always be my babe, was lounging in bed reading, and the sunlight was looking lovely.  And when I was out there puttering in the flowerbed with my camera, it felt good and I think I felt some stress melt away. 

The past couple days have been hot, while the nights are cooler and I think there is a very early feeling of that season to come.  August here means homegrown tomatoes, pesto making, backyard bouquets, happy pollinators on the native plants that only come into their own this month, Red-tailed hawks circling and screaming overhead during the heat of the day, good book reading in the afternoons (well that is anytime of the year actually), and cooling baths for the horses.  I've been filling up various containers of water around the yard every morning for the birds and insects, along with the large containers for the ducks.  I feel slightly guilty when I have as much water available as I want, when so many in the world have to hope for theirs.

I'm thankful for what I have.

Spring Musings

Little round balls the size of marbles, what do you hold inside?

I hold a gem, a little round ball as black as obsidian.

After a while I burst and I am a tadpole!

Soon I will lose my tail and grow legs and I will be a frog and have eggs of my own!

~P, age 9

Is Spring a thing you can see?  I saw a Wood frog hop away from me.

Is Spring a thing you can hear?  I heard the Robin singing with cheer.

Is Spring a thing you can feel?  I touched a slimy slug and it made me squeal!

Spring is near, Spring is here! I'm glad it comes back every year.

~Katie, age whatever

 

It's Starting

 The brown and yellow fields are just starting to get a haze of green if you look at them in the right light.  Along the streams and drainage ditches, the green is already solid.  It is always amazing how quickly it shoots up, snow one day, photosynthesis in progress the next!  

Sorry for the awful quality of the frog photo, but it was the first sighting!  We also spotted the first turtle in the same pond, slowly swimming down on the muddy bottom.  The nature center where we do a lot of our exploring created three new ponds last Fall.  They are beside a stream and near the large lake.  The ponds are shallow and allow water to flow from one into the next.  Already the ponds are filled with tadpoles and perhaps the turtle we saw over-wintered there.  Amazing how quickly nature can make itself at home if we provide the right conditions.  Build it and they will come!  The photo above shows the work of beavers.  The small stream flowed directly into the lake, but in the middle of the photo, you can see the line of the beaver dam.  The stream has been backing up behind it and the bridge we normally cross only had an inch of clearance yesterday!

I feel that my wanderings in the woods over the past month have been tinged with an almost feeling of guilt.  I read the news and look at the photographs in the mornings and feel such a sadness for the people of Ukraine.  That less than a month ago they were living their lives just like I was - waking up in a warm house, tending to their children's needs, getting ready for school and work, caring for pets.  Now, I am waking up under blue skies, the Earth waking up and showing signs of rebirth, new life, while they are hiding in concrete bunkers fearing for their lives or struggling in a foreign country and not knowing if they will ever return home.  So, I tell myself while I cannot do anything to directly make their lives better, I can be thankful for mine.  So, we head out to enjoy the world around us.

Also in order to feel that I am doing something to help, my daughter and I came up with the idea to hold a raffle drawing.  Her embroidery skills have been improving, so she decided to embroider a small hoop with a big message.  For $5, you get one "ticket in the hat".  We are accepting donations until Saturday morning, 3/19.  We will be sending them through Google.org's matching campaign for Ukraine relief efforts, so your $5 magically becomes $10.  Donations can be sent via PayPal:  [email protected]  Photos can be seen on my Life With the Crew FB page (scroll to bottom of page for link).  For some reason, I could not upload photos from my phone today.

 

 

 

 

A Winter's Day

A Winter's day, perhaps the last real one, as the temps sound like they'll be a little more mild in the coming month of March.  And judging by the large flocks of robins we've been seeing, Spring is definitely on the way.  On this gray snowy day, we spotted a Brown Creeper busily looking for lunch on a Tulip Poplar and two Bald Eagles swirling around each other in the overcast sky.  With snowflakes lazily drifting down, we slipped our way over the ice through the field and wood.

With the upheaval in the world today, people's lives being threatened and destroyed by greed and power, I do not take these moments for granted.  These moments of peace and calmness with my daughter.  We admire the world around us, ask questions, notice details, and soak up the quiet.  And hope that some of it sticks with us as we go about our days.

February Beginnings

February started with the slight tease of Spring, and after frigid single digits, I felt guilty still feeling cold at "just freezing".  But then the rain changed to ice and the season meter was pushed firmly back to "Winter".  

I'm okay with that.  There are still audiobooks to listen to ("King of the Wind" by Marguerite Henry), books to read (The  Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson), and knitting projects.  My sidekick has been knitting a pink blanket for her kitten.  She first tried knitting when she was 8, which is an age that I had heard kids could pick it up.  She learned the knitting motion and was able to make several small squares, but only this winter (age 9), did it really click.  She has been knitting for an hour a day and asked to learn how to purl also.  I love seeing her sitting by the fire, listening to an audio, and knitting away on this blanket for her beloved Tiny Tim.  (And he had better appreciate all the hours and love she is putting into it!)

We have been hearing Great Horned owls calling in the early evening, as early as 6pm.  In Winters past, I have heard them in the middle of the night while my daughter was sleeping, so it was nice to be able to share it with her now.  This is the time period when they are choosing mates, so I've often heard one voice calling and then another answer from farther away.  I'm so glad that even in the suburbs, wildlife has figured out how to thrive around us.

On the knitting front, this wonderfully soft wool shawl with a lace pattern along the bottom is listed in my shop.  I just LOVE the color and would like it to find a home so I am not tempted to wear it!

In the Deep Midwinter

While the dark days of December may seem like the height of Winter, we're only approaching midwinter now.  Luckily the bitter dark nights are offset by the slightly less frigid days of bright sunshine, its strong rays calling to us to come outside and play despite the coldness we know is there waiting.  And because the lure of that golden sun on crisp white snow is strong and because one can only knit so much before her finger joints start to ache and because a wild child is always easier to deal with after she has breathed fresh air into her lungs and mind - we venture out.

One of our favorite places, icy cold and quiet in January, with just the chattering Chickadees and the moaning ice to keep us company.  Lake side cattails serve as a winter replacement for milk weed pods.  Beauty is all around, all the time.