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This 2nd picture is of Skeeter when she first came to us 1 1/2 years ago. She looks like a poor little malnourished kitten. Malnourished she definitely was, but no kitten. Our vet says she was a year old! Poor baby!And the first is Skeeter now, well loved and fed, but destined to be a nervous little cat with ADD, we suspect, possibly from malnutrition in her youth. She has a very hard time settling. But, she is much treasured and loved not just by us, but by Bandy too, who actually first brought her to the house. I find her very hard to photograph not only because she is a cat and not wont to cooperate but also because she is so very dark in many lights. I would say she is an orange cat brushed with black but there'd be a good argument that she is just the reverse.Good eating and raw eggs have brightened her coat considerably.
The signs of spring, lest you feel I've been leading you on - two wasps in the slider window. I'm not sure where they come from or how but this time of year they start appearing. If we can keep the population down at this end of the year there should be less at the end of summer when they begin to believe they own the farm!
This has been a sad and thoughtful day. This time of year a herd of elk makes a daily migration: at dusk, down from the 80 acres of woodlands at the back of our place through the neighbour's fields and across the road to the river and in the morning just as it is coming light they reverse their trek. This morning James spotted a full grown adult with most likely a broken front leg. It could only hobble 3 paces, and then rest and then start out again. It was a painful sight.
I called the game warden who couldn't come right out and unless it is fairly close to the road they can't do anything as it would be a mile of deep frozen snow. If he can come out and harvest it the meat would go to the food bank. I would like to see it out of its misery. Nature is not always kind, in fact it's pretty brutal. We don't know if it was hit by a car or injured some other way..
Here are Bandy and James communing. There's something about a nice warm cat in winter.
I finally think I'll live. First James got the nasty cold/flu and then I did and it sure takes its time to shake off.
Skeeter is such a nice round little cat, so very different from when she came to us, all scrawny and emaciated. Mind you, she is spoiled rotten! but such a good little hunter. She has been regularly bringing great big voles up to eat on the deck, or under it. She may be getting them under the chicken houses. She'd like to bring them inside but we draw the line at that!
Yesterday was lovely and sunny and so bright with the frozen snow. On a bright sunny day there actually is a lot of colour to be found. My big rose bush is quite attractive with its red arching vines.
A friend was bemoaning her lack of snowdrops yesterday. Obviously she's on another timetable than winter in the Kootenays. We can hope for them in March, I fear, this year as they are under that heavy frozen berm of snow where James shoveled off the porch roof.
But summer will come and in the next 2 weeks I need to make up and get the forms for ArtWalk printed and then we'll have a big day addressing envelopes to mail out the entries. Time also to mail out funding requests.
There was good news on the morning news! Another coffee study has found non-smoking nurses who drink 4 or more cups of coffee a day have a 43% lower risk of stroke. That's a good enough figure one could take it up, if they weren't already a coffee drinker!
I'm thawing a flat zip lock bag of tomato sauce from last summer's tomatoes. I find the flat bags more space efficient and if you have a large freezer, which we do, freezing tomatoes as they ripen, and then, at your leisure thawing and making them into sauce (to freeze again) is an easy way to go.
This morning on Martha Stewart she and her guests were talking about what one should have in one's pantry. Well, maybe city people live with nothing on hand but I can't imagine not having their list of foods on hand and then some! It was obvious things like pasta and rice and chick peas and canned tomatoes, mustard and olive olive oil and bread crumbs: the kind of things one needs every day if one cooks, but then many people don't cook from "scratch" or at all, so this is the new money saving tip - cook!
I've still been knitting touques on the round loom (more pictures next time) and this weekend and next am taking a class on "real" knitting.
by James McDowell
Spring will come! Spring will come!
What a hard winter this has seemed. We have not had extreme temperatures but it has stayed stubbornly below freezing for very long periods and it has snowed, and snowed, and snowed. Finally about a week ago there was a change. The sun is high enough in the sky to melt a little each day even though it still is freezing at night. The driveway is one long ice rink but we have 4 wheel drive and James likes the challenge of plunging up it in 2 wheel drive.Everything is still covered in hard frozen heaps of snow which the cats can walk on handily, but we live in hope.
Spring will come.
Yesterday morning I stuck my head out the door at 7:00 am and heard the first chickadee singing his spring song. Today my winter bird came. Every January or February a logger head shrike comes and sits on the power line. He's very handsome in his formal attire, but I believe the chickadee. "Springs coming...."
This evening there is a wonderful lunar eclipse and the moon hangs like a ripe peach, suspended over the Skimmerhorn. I keep running out so as not to miss anything, but it is brilliantly clear and just as brilliantly cold; too cold to stay out.
This 2nd picture is of Skeeter when she first came to us 1 1/2 years ago. She looks like a poor little malnourished kitten. Malnourished she definitely was, but no kitten. Our vet says she was a year old! Poor baby!
