The wood ducks were passing through last weekend.
It was difficult to count them because they kept doing this and disappearing under the water.
I spotted this today. For a second I thought it was a maze in the woods.
Then I figured it out. Those are piped maple trees, and that little wooden
building might be the cook shack. Maple syrup season is probably over this week,
according to the chatter I heard on Tuesday.
Speaking of (the first) Tuesday (in April), spring brings certain local elections --
village and town boards, school referenda, a supreme court justice.
These were three of my fellow election judges.
The fifth election judge monitored the single voting machine.
I'm pretty sure that voter is one of the volunteer fireman that pulled Smokey and I
out of the lake a couple weeks ago. Small towns: you see the same people over and over.
She and I occupied ourselves in the same manner during the down times.
(no photo)
When I got home that night I heard the loons crying. It made me very happy.
Today brought the traditional April snowfall.
::sob::
It's Woody Woodpecker!
We have lots of downy woodpeckers and hairy woodpeckers and red-bellied woodpeckers and the occasional red-headed woodpecker or northern flicker here, but seeing a pileated woodpecker is cause for a stealthy photo. We have seen one on our property only three or four times in 25 years, but I think they are more common elsewhere in the county.
The wild geraniums are blooming along the roadsides here.
A closer look.
The hardy geraniums in my garden. Notice how well they are blooming. Not.
My hardy geraniums and their neighbors, labeled. You know how you never notice
the wonky stitch until you photograph your objet d'knit? Same with the weeds.
* * * * *
To keep you from being too impressed with my camera skills.
The view from the iPod/Phone holder on my dashboard.
Do not ask why I have a photo of it. I know not.
* * * * *
As long as we are looking at things that are green, let me show you another. I have been knitting a gift from some Black Bunny Fibers suri alpaca/merino fingering weight yarn I won from Webs back in...
:::much searching of blog and Ravelry:::
The long delay in using it was due solely to my thinking it not suitable for socks but not having another idea for it. Luscious stuff, but I don't have enough green in my wardrobe (yet!) to justify a scarf or cowl for myself. So it was with great joy that I chose it for this particular project, the recipient of which specified blues or greens.
I am not going to give you a full viewing of the FO today, though; you will only get to see my yarn-carrying hand.
Need to give that FO a good vinegar bath before gifting it.
* I am so damned clever with searching out the html.
But I thought I would share this photo with you. It was taken across the lake from us, exactly one mile away. Not by me, though.
Bear cubs. There are a mama bear and three cubs hanging around the lake this spring.
As usual, first you get the mutterings.
* * * * *
As you may remember, earlier this week we got a foot (12"! 30cm!) of snow. Today the temp is 70℉ (21℃). Ah, spring in The North. Will we get another dump of snow? I say no. Let's hope I am right.
photo credit: Bill Gracey via photopin cc
On Friday I saw two wood ducks on the lake. In all my life I don't think I have ever seen one in the wild, although I have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of wood duck houses erected by hopeful bird enthusiasts. They are a beautiful bird, as you can see in the photo. Sadly, this pair seemed to be transiting on their way north, gone the next day.
Beside the wood ducks, there have been Canada geese (many, many) and trumpeter swans (two) (the ones in the photo below may not be trumpeters because Wikipedia informs me that the latter generally swim with a straight neck; a lake neighbor more knowledgeable than I identified the ones on our lake as trumpeters),
photo credit: Peter aka anemoneprojectors - camera busted! via photopin cc
and coots (aka mud hens).
photo credit: TexasEagle via photopin cc
No loons yet.
* * * * *
Remember the 600 stitches I cast on for the linen stitch scarf, then ripped out because the colors did not have enough contrast? And re-cast on 600 stitches with completely different yarns? I knat and knat upon them for a couple weeks, but last night I screwed up an entire row. The thought of tinking that row set me back a bit; upon further reflection -- and realizing just how long that scarf was going to be, somewhere between nine and eleven feet (2.7 and 3.3 meters), just as a commenter remarked a few posts ago -- I decided the best thing to do would be to frog it and start over again with fewer stitches.
While I was at it, I rewound the three yarns into new cakes. I love doing that. I will rewind center-pull balls/skeins into cakes just because I like them. We takes our fun where we finds it.
Today I re-cast on, 420 stitches this time, and I am halfway through the first row. My knitterly friends have rescheduled our linen stitch scarf tutorial for next Friday. I should have an inch or two of progress to show by then.
Netflix has provided me with some excellent knitting viewing: The Inexplicable Universe with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Because the presentation is 95% NDT talking, with very few visuals, it is perfect for knitting. The subject matter so far, astrophysics and cosmology and relativity and quantum physics and string theory, has always fascinated me, even though it is beyond my understanding*. I love this stuff the same way Smokey loves the Sunday morning talking heads shows and the PBS nightly news hour.
* In the words of John von Neumann, "In mathematics** you don't understand things. You just get used to them." So true.***
** And quantum physics.
*** While googling to be sure I had that quotation correct, I found this. (Scroll down to the Foot Shooting Agreement.)
Mutterings.
* * * * *
I was singing Sunday, Sunday as I began this post.
What a disappointment to remember the correct song title.
* * * * *
We did some tree trimming and forest maintenence last weekend.
Kiera The Teenaged Helper womaned the weed wrench and uprooted unwanted saplings.
Younger Son handled the electric chain saw and did the actual pruning.
Percy took care of the sticks.
Sorry, no video of Percy and a branch. You will have to be satisfied with this still.
Stories from the life of The Kat™, part 1.
Here in the woods there are a lot of species of wildlife under an inch long.*
This is the story of one of them.
Back in the mid-90s when we were here only in the summer and weekends, I decided to prune the dead branches out of the spreading junipers in the front yard. Junipers are prickly suckers, so I wore heavy gloves and tried not to touch them any more than necessary. To this last end, I threw all the pruned branches onto a large sheet of cardboard so I could drag them away all at once.
After pruning for awhile, I stopped to rest and to admire my pile of branches. It was at this point that I noticed a good-sized spider (about 1" long) with an astonishingly hairy abdomen walking across the cardboard. I looked closer and poked it with my pruners.
Imagine my amazement when the hairiness of her abdomen turned out to be about a hundred baby spiders, which jumped off and ran in all directions. I immediately summoned the family to witness this wonder of nature.
Googling today taught me that this was a wolf spider, the only spider in the world that carries its babies in that manner.
This is pretty much what I saw, but in focus, without the smoosh, and without the reflections of the babies eyes.
A number of years later, I took this photo, which is probably the most stunning image I have ever captured.
Wolf spiders are also the only ones that carry their unborn/unhatched babies around in an egg sac. Like all spiders, they are venomous, but not unduly so, plus they will only bite if continually provoked. They are generally considered to be beneficial because they eat other arachnids.
And that is all you ever wanted to know about wolf spiders.
* More on this in another post.
First, the mutterings.
* * * * *
Our Scott The Teenage Helper went off to college a couple weeks ago. But not to despair, his younger sister Kiara is now The Teenage Helper. If she works out -- and it looks like she will, what a worker! -- she will be here a long time; she is only 15. Yay for energetic teens (who need to pay their own phone bill)!
* * * * *
The neighbors got a second kayak, I think. Photo taken last weekend when it was hot.
* * * * *
I finished my super-sekrit project last night. Today, the felting. Once the SSP is in the hands of the recipient all will be revealed.
* * * * *
From Twitter (thanks, Amy!); even though these temps are in St Paul, the weirdness is true here as well, just subtract 5˚:
As I knat upon the deck on Sunday, I gazed at the 50+ foot white pine in our front yard.
That tree is testimony to not listening to your wife, also to Smokey's incredible and persistent optimism.
When we bought this place, the area between the house and the lake was clear except for one rather spindly maple and a multi-trunk birch near the water. Original owner had cut down everything except the birch when he built the house. Maple was probably planted later. While we had a good view of the lake, everyone else also had a good view of us. We immediately started thinking about planting a few trees to screen the house a bit.
Fast forward a couple few years. One spring. Smokey asked me multiple times whether I -- the designated gardener in the family -- thought that we could successfully transplant some small white pines from our woods into the front yard. Every time, I told him that the way to do it was to drive a shovel into the ground in a circle around each tree we chose for transplant, about two feet out from the trunk. That would sever the farthest roots and force the trees to develop new roots within that circle. Then, the next year we could transplant them and their newly developed and dense root balls.
Like I said, he asked me that question multiple times and every time I gave him the same answer.
Lo and behold, one weekend in May when I was putzing around in the front yard, he came out of the woods trundling a wheelbarrow with a little pine tree in it. Little = a couple feet tall. After I chastised him slightly for not listening to me, I helped him plant it -- and about a half-a-dozen others -- in the front yard. The biggest one was 23 feet tall.
More than one person subsequently told him, "You cannot bare-root a 23-foot pine tree!"
We watered and fertilized the trees fairly regularly and most of them survived. A couple didn't, and we replaced them with others from the woods on our property.
What you see pictured above is the 23-foot white pine my optimistic husband bare-rooted in the front yard. Which just goes to show that sometimes, not listening to your wife is the right thing to do.
Our nasty heat wave broke on Friday. It's very pleasant now. Whew.
When Younger Son is here, Ser Percival The Energetic is here, too. Here he is modeling his new Float Coat.
Ser P is so heavy and solidly built that he cannot swim easily; mostly he just sinks while frantically dog-paddling. The float coat solves that problem. This was its first tryout. Once he realized that he no longer needed to panic, he loved it.
He also loves sticks.
See the remains of that pontoon boat on the hill? It is in the process of being dismantled before going to the recyclers. The pontoons have leaks that are too hard to repair (welding aluminum is possible but not easy). Once it is gone we can put the dock back into the lake and retrieve the new-to-us pontoon boat we bought two years ago. Being semi-disabled has really hindered progress around here the past few years.
YS continues working on the future dog run. Scotty The Wonder Teenager started this project last summer and has continued to work on it, but he is laid up right now with a bad arm, so YS has taken over. The project looks promising to be ready before winter.
:: fist pump!::
Back in 2008 when I had a broken ankle Smokey enclosed a poop yard at the bottom of the deck stairs so I would be able to let the dogs in and out.
The advantage of this system was we didn't need to go outside, down the stairs, put the dog(s) on their tie-outs, then do it all in reverse when they were done. We just had to let them onto the deck -- they knew to go down to the grassy (snowy in winter) fenced-in area.
The disadvantage was that we could not use the deck stairs.
The new dog run will have all the advantages of the poop yard but none of the disadvantages.
This is on the uphill side of the house, an area we never use. Construction requires setting landscape timbers in the ground and attaching the fence panels to them; if you look closely you can see the trenches for the timbers. But the ground slopes downhill toward the camers, hence, the buildup at this end.
The run will be 5'x20'.
But how will the dogs get in there? you ask.
Look carefully at spot on the deck railing indicated by the arrow. The railing between that notch and the house will be eliminated and a ramp from the deck to the ground installed. Once the dog run is completely finished, Smokey -- or more likely, Scotty or YS -- will install a gate at the top of the deck stairs. The dogs will then have only one place to go, down the ramp to their new area. There will be gates at each end of the new run for additional access.
This is a big deal to me. As much as I appreciated being able to let the dogs in and out without having to use the stairs, I also missed access to the front yard from the deck. The construction has been complicated by the mechanics of the slope. Thank FSM for strong young helpers!
Here is a view of the deck you have never seen.
The deck stairs and poop yard are just to the right of the picture; the new dog run is 90˚ to the left.
News flash! YS just emailed me a progress photo!
He reports that from now on the job will be much more straightforward. No more fighting with tree roots and rocks and rocks entwined in tree roots.
If you have made it this far I have a treat for you. If you ever see this brand of pie in the freezer case at your grocers, BUY IT IMMEDIATELY!
We have had three of the blueberry pies in the past few weeks, and they are the best pies I have ever eaten, even better than my mother's (she baked excellent pies but used canned blueberry filling). Thin flaky crust, fresh blueberries, just enough sugar to sweeten the pie but not so much as to overwhelm the blueberry-ness. If we ever get past that flavor -- blueberry pie is my favorite kind -- we will try the apple and cherry. The Village Piemaker's products are Teh Awesome!
* * * * *
Other items OTN.
A couple summers ago I bought some worsted weight sock yarn when we were on the North Shore.
The person at the yarn store told me that one skein was not quite enough for a pair of socks, but that I could get two pairs out of three skeins. Hence, my choices.
During tax season I had decided that, when I had free time again, I was going to focus on knitting down my stash. Lots of good yarn there; time to use it. My priority would be to knit up the yarn that didn't fit into my Rubbermaid bins. Although I had planned exactly what I was going to knit first -- and it was not this sock yarn -- when the day actually came to pick up my pointy sticks, this is what I chose.
Sock The First:
It may not be apparent, but this sock is like armor. I knitted the foot and ankle on a US#2 and the leg on a US#3. Result: very dense fabric. The sock is also a little big on me; I am hoping a hot bath will correct that.
Heather, before you ask, here is the inside:
In other news, Younger Son was here yesterday to work on his car with Smokey. Did I ever show you the car they found for him to replace the 14-yo Chevy Metro he had been driving?
Someone had donated it to a tech school in St Paul, which sold it for very, very cheap, like <$2k cheap. YS is thrilled with it -- sunroof, turbo, heated seats, power everything, plus it all works (except for the speedometer, they are still working on that; he uses the GPS in his phone to gauge his speed).
Anyway, while he was here he installed a new external hard drive for me. My Mac Mini has a 160GB hard drive that is nearly full -- it has been nagging me for several months to delete stuff. I had done that, but it was a stopgap measure at best.
This external drive was one that had been sitting around where he works for a couple years; since his firm went to network storage they had no need for individual backup drives. It may not look impressive, but there are two 1TB hard drives in there. He set it up so that one mirrors the other -- automatic backup!
The copying/migration process, which kinda scared me, but to him was just click click, all in a day's work:
* * * * *
The official ice-out day on our lake was yesterday, May 5, the latest anyone can remember. Transiting geese and ducks and loons and maybe even some swans have been sighted and heard. The trees are still completely bare except that I saw that the swamp maple opposite our kitchen window was blooming. Maybe spring/summer really will come.
* * * * *
Well, there you have it: the minutiae of my recent life. Knitting has been on my mind constantly -- well, except for when I was fretting about the surgery -- and I hope to have more projects to show soon.
This was the winter that wouldn't quit. We had snowfalls and blizzards right up until the third week of April.
A few mementos:
"We blew the snow-plowing budget back in the third week of
February. This sh!t's just gonna have to melt."
The parking lot of a shopping center in Bloomington. This was last Thursday,
when the temperature was 70 degrees.
On Sunday afternoon I sat on the deck and knit for the first time this year. It was glorious! Temperature of 75˚, slightly hazy, perfect.
Except for the noisy flock of Canada geese on the lake.
At this stage of late winter the ice at the edge of the ice pack is broken into little pieces. When the wind blows the water ripples,
and the ripples spread right through the edge of the ice pack.
* * * * *
Later that afternoon we had a brief thunderstorm, just enough that Smokey and I had to run out to put up the top on his convertible. Later I glanced out the window and saw this. Wherever there was ice on the lake, it was obscured by a cloud of fog.
And of course, this.
That same weekend that Scottie murdered all the icicles, we got rain that quickly froze into a coating of ice. Over everything.
On that Saturday evening we went out for dinner, parking Smokey's white Subaru on the driveway in front of my red minivan when re returned home.
Sunday morning we found this.
The Subaru, even though parked at least eight feet away from the van, had slid gently downhill overnight and had come to rest kissing the bumper of my car. It all happened so gently that neither car sustained any damage.
Now THAT is icy.
Our sky was slightly overcast today but it was a beautiful day nevertheless -- perfect temp, light breeze. Heavenly, especially after the heat and humidity we suffered for several weeks.
I knit on the deck for a good while this afternoon, then came in to take care of a few things. Later I was at the computer and chanced to look out the window... and grabbed my camera.
The light was stunning.
Of course, I had help.
As I sat at the computer reading my email this morning I noticed that the sky was getting dark. It kept getting darker. Then the wind started to blow and the black sky started spitting rain. I closed the windows on the windward side of the house and retrieved Lucy The Wonder Dog from her chain outside.
Soon the rain was coming down in bucket and sheets and the wind was blowing at, I estimate, about 300 mph. The oak trees were leaning and tossing and I could not see the lake 75 feet away. Pretty darned impressive. The electricity flickered very slightly a couple of times and I thought I should shut down the computer, but I didn't.
Eventually I went to check that there was no rain coming in on the leeward side -- none, the wide overhanging eaves prevent that -- and noticed that there was a breeze coming in from the 3-season porch. Where there should NOT be a breeze.
You perhaps cannot tell, but there is a window missing there.
This the second time a window has blown out in that porch. I guess combination windows that big are meant to be used with inner sash windows; they are not strong enough by themselves to withstand sustained 50 mph winds. And we thought we were being so clever and economical back in 2001, using just the storms to create a 3-season porch.
Smokey has a lot of Lionel and other model trains neatly stacked on the ping-pong table just visible in the upper left of the second photo. I moved as much as I could out of the reach of the rain, but some of the boxes definitely got damp. Hard to believe, but sometimes the boxes are worth as much to a collector as the train car that came in it. Damn.
This weekend is the county fair. I am glad I am working there tomorrow and not today. I can only imagine how the tents and booths fared in this storm. Same exact thing happened last year, also on the day before I worked. I guess in some strange way I am lucky...
On a more cheerful note, I found this Shopped photo last week, the image manipulation done by #2 Son when he was in high school. (haslp was the screen name he used then, a combination of Half Life, a video game, and Slipknot, a heavy metal group.)
I forgot one.
The rose-breasted grosbeak was one of my favorites back in my coloring book days. Such fun to color that bright pink triangle on the white breast!
I forgot this one because we don't see them around here, even though we are smack in the midst of their range (right). I suppose this one is transiting to greener forest farther north. Too bad, I'd love to have him and his mate -- wherever and whoever she is -- hang around our feeders. We have the right habitat, too:
HABITAT:
Open woodlands near water, thick brush, large trees near open areas, marsh borders, overgrown pastures, dense growth of small trees, woodland edges, gardens, parks.
"Open woodland near water"? That's our front yard!
This guy was really, really, really persistent, too. I first noticed him as he attempted to perch on top of that thermometer attached to the window. He seemed to be trying to come into my office -- maybe he needed to check his email.
When he couldn't get into my office he tried getting into the porch.
(Photo taken through screened window, obviously. Sorry)
He was completely unafraid of the person (me) moving around in my office, getting out my camera, walking around trying to get good shots. He hung around for probably five minutes.
(Another screen-ed shot. As unafraid as he was, I doubt he would
have hung around while I rattled the screen out of the window frame.)
Perhaps it was the attraction of the feeder, or perhaps he is into interspecies homosexual relationships and was enamored of this male goldfinch.
Whatever. I hope he comes back.
Beautiful sunny 60˚ish day here today. I carried some stuff in from the car and left the front door open for the next load... and forgot about it.
Several hours later we realized that Lucy The Wonder Dog was nowhere in the house. She had found the magical open door. When she returned she had obviously been wading in the lake.
The upside of the winter fish kill in the lake is the eagles that have been feeding on them since March.
The downside is a dog reeking of dead fish.
Smokey keeps a can of Febreze next to the bed for just these times. He toweled her down and Febrezed her, and she was once again welcome. On his side of the bed only.
* * * * *
Nice day, open window.
Cats.
Sit, sit, sit. Watch, watch, watch. Sniff, sniff, sniff.
Omigod, what was that!?!?
Sit, sit, sit. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Watch, watch, watch.
::lather, rinse, repeat::
Sitting in the window makes a cat filthy. Filthy, I tell you!
::asynchronous licking begins::
