May 10, 2017 A Rockchuck, Cutting Wood & Another Trip Down There

Trillium that I picked
along our road.

The kindling mess I had
to re-stack.  Before. . .

. . . and after.

Monday 5/8. Shortly after getting up, feeding the dogs and chickens, and while still in my pajamas and bathrobe, I noticed that Dinga and Jesse had caught a fairly large animal.  I went racing outside, yelling at them and discovered it was a rockchuck (what a woodchuck is called west of the Rockies).  The poor animal was in shock, but I didn't see any blood, so I thought it might recover.  I got the dogs inside and threw on my clothes.  Back outside I saw that it was dragging itself by its front feet.  Its back was broken.  So I had to get the gun and shoot it.  Not a good start to any day.

Finally got a cup of coffee, although I was quite wide awake by then.  Washed the dishes, put the laundry in, then went back out and collected a couple bags of needles.  When the laundry was done I hung it outside.

After lunch, JB cut two cradle loads of wood and moved it all to the wood shed with the tractor.  I stacked it, and then worked on re-stacking the pile of kindling after having sorted out the larger pieces.

Just after dinner, the owner of the big black lab, Buster, who would come up to visit Jesse, drove up.  He had never been to our place before and wanted to see where his dog came to visit.  Turns out he had to have Buster put down today due to cancer.  He was pretty upset and, not wanting to be alone at such a time, stayed about three hours.

Other than the beginning and part of the ending, it was a pretty good day with a high of 59.

Tuesday 5/9. It was a warm 49 with clear skies this morning.  We were out bright and early to load up the trailer with all our recycle and take it Down There.  After driving down and unloading it all, we ran some errands and, since we had the trailer, bought some supplies for the girls: straw, shavings, scratch.  We also bought a couple bags of dog food.

The hills are almost solid gold with balsam root and now in many places there is the purple and pink of lupine and sweet peas.  There is nothing better than Spring in the mountains.  Mother Nature's garden is fabulous!  Trillium is blooming along our road, and I stopped to pick some for pressing.

It was very warm in town.  A great Spring day.  We were home by 1:00 pm and the dogs were thrilled to see us and get outside in the beautiful weather.  Our high for the day was 62.

After dinner I collected some more of the perfect, large pine cones that the trees are dropping.  Then I gathered two more bags of pine needles.  The huge dead tree is dropping its needles in clumps which makes it so much easier, and faster to gather them.

Wednesday 5/10. It is 47 with blue sky this morning, but rain is supposedly on its way for tonight and tomorrow.  Hope to get more splitting done today.

Thought for the day: Sometimes you're the bug, and sometimes you're the windshield.