Our first applesauce made totally from a tree in the orchard.
We went cruising in a cadillac convertible on a cold day.
Bundle up.
A friend of a friend gave our friend Lisa some home-grown pears.
Lisa gave some of them to Mary, and Mary put them in her car. And the next morning, one had been gnawed.
Mary’s had mice in her car before, so she knew what to do. She baited a trap with peanut butter and put it in the back seat.
And every day, for five days, I laid a dead mouse, its cranium crushed crosswise, at the base of a bush at the edge of the lawn. An offering to the Critter God.
And every day, for four days, yesterday’s dead mouse was gone without a trace.
And on the 6th day, when the traps were empty, I felt a little guilty, like I should be leaving something for the forest critters.
So I emptied the compost, and the critters were happy.
Say “Cheese”
Cheese!
Mary bought a bird feeder and 50 pounds of bird seed, and she wanted me to mount it where we could watch the birds.
I put it up in the garden, where you’d think the birds would be, but there were no birds at the feeder. At all. We gave up.
Fast forward a year, and Mary wants to mount it on the deck this time, where we could watch the birds. We hope.
We watched for birds for about a week before we saw one. And another couple days before we we saw another. Then one of them figured out it was food, told his buddies, and they went through 4 quarts of bird seed in 4 days.
It’s evolved into a little ecosystem.
The jays go right at it, and they drop as much as they eat.
The chickadees feed on the drops while they wait their turn, and the chipmunks scour the ground below. And they’re all tame enough to eat and watch me sanding boards not far away.
Good lookin’, too.
With dead reckoning and a tape measure, I located the property lines.
This corner is almost inline with the canoe and the log.
Baseboards. After all these years.