Saturday, March 9, 2019

New T.W. resident and other odds and ends!

So I got in trouble from my father after my last blog post because I did not include the important information regarding our newest Tangly Woods' resident! Dad put up an owl box quite some time ago and has been patiently waiting for an owl to make it their home. Upon Mom and Dad's arrival for their last stint here, he was looking out the bathroom window and saw a little Eastern Screech Owl poking its head out. I won't give all the details that he provided publicly on facebook, but I'll just say that I hope that he completed his bathroom activity prior to too many exclamations of excitement over the owl discovery! :) Since that time we have all enjoyed many owl sightings and the little owl seems to be getting more and more comfortable with us being around! This morning when Terah and I came traipsing back to the garage after morning chores, it was poking out of the box looking our way. We called the rest of the family for a good look and Terah and I slowly walked towards it. She was right under it before the owl finally decided to retreat back into the box. I hope we can continue to earn the owl's trust. It sure would be fun if it found a mate and raised babies there! Somehow it feels like an honor when a creature chooses to make it's home near us - that maybe we aren't so scary and destructive and unwelcoming... I hope it stays!

I can't say that I'm feeling warm fuzzies towards all owls currently. The other night, Kali went out to shut in her ducks and also shut in chickens for us. Her free rangers were not around so she left the door open and went to shut in the others. In the jaunt across our place, she forgot about going back and thus the free rangers were out all night. Two of the three survived but her male duck hasn't been seen since. We saw no signs of anything (no feather piles or other signs of an attack) so the most likely suspect is a Great Horned Owl. I know they need to eat too, but it's hard to have provided them a meal due to us not protecting our animals at night - kind of feels like we somehow didn't keep our end of the bargain!

So I'm kind of working backwards here. Today we woke to a winter wonderland. I felt like I was looking out at a picture in a storybook. Terah's cough kept me from sleeping well or much last night and my mind and emotions were churning from a compilation of things. It was nice to sit by the window for a bit before the girls woke and look out at the winter scene. Everything seemed calm and peaceful, in a pretty stark contrast to my heart. Getting out into the picture book scene gives a more up close experience of the mud and muck under the dusting of snow. Will it ever dry out enough for spring planting?

Ready or not, we are preparing for putting things in the ground. Our sweet potatoes, collards, eggplant, basil, cabbage and peppers are started. Tomatoes and flowers are up next. But we are not quite ready for the spring push in the gardens as we still have a number of winter projects we'd like to work on together before spring planting. The bulk of that work is related to taking down trees in a number of places around the property. It's great family work so hopefully we can find pockets of time to be outside together - since all of us seem to feel better on days when we get a good dose of fresh air! We kicked off our tree felling list by taking out the old apple from Terah's garden the other day before this most recent snow. Jason took out another smaller tree of heaven along the yard and topped out a walnut also near Terah's garden that was compromising Mom and Dad's view. So our next month's yard photo will look a bit different!
It won't take long before we will once again be overloaded with firewood. We are also accumulating brush for this winter's biochar burn and there will likely be fence posts and other "products" accumulated along the way. Maybe we'll all be good at working with loppers and wielding machetes by winter's end.

We are also trying to tie up various loose ends inside - fixing a few things that have been long term annoyances. We did a lot of that during last year's deep clean but now are at least attempting to keep up with it more in an ongoing way.

At the end of the Benner visit last weekend, Jason's sister asked about the story of one of our chairs. It did look like it came with a story. But it's a rather boring story.

Here goes: Jason's parents rescued said chair and another like it from the side of the road where someone was throwing them out. Over time the caning started breaking down. Middle daughter gets attached to chair and says it is beautiful and she loves it. Parents decide it's not worth the fight at that time. Time passes and caning continues to break down and shred all over the dining room floor. Mother feels annoyed every time she sweeps the floor. Parents hit limit of tolerance of chair when it feels like guest can no longer sit comfortably in it. Middle daughter puts up a weak fuss about the change and then gets into taking the caning off, hangs out with father in wood shop where Jason repairs chair. Middle daughter is still unwilling to admit that is a grand improvement.

There you have it! Not an exciting one but not a very uncommon one either - we are smack in the middle of Alida's "resistance to change" developmental phase. The good thing is we know we survived Kali going through it so we can do it again - and then we'll have two gals ready to offer some perspective to Terah when she hits it. Right now our littlest loves pointing out how much more reasonable she is than Alida. It's honestly rather cute!
Alida is pretty thrilled to now be the proud owner of two pet chickens and she has been diligently caring for them every morning. It was a very teary moment the other morning when she learned that Jason had taken care of her hens when he did chores before she woke up. I've been doing chores regularly and he hadn't gotten the run down that Alida was doing her chores without assistance. It is a great source of pride for her, especially when she collects her 1 or 2 eggs a day from the coop. It clearly gives her a sense of accomplishment and it was hard to have that taken from her that day. But we are all clear on the system going forward and we'll see how long she sticks to it without wavering. She definitely has Jason's eyes for distinguishing and remembering certain birds so I wouldn't be surprised if this sticks!

So I can't do a write up of this week without mentioning illness. It seems that family gatherings comes with all sorts of gifts of reconnection and sharing and sometimes that sharing is in the form of germs that we would rather not gift to each other. We used to count on getting sick about Tuesday on a week that we went to church Sunday. It's pretty similar with family gatherings. So along came Tuesday and Terah wilted! The rest of us have contended with a respiratory illness of varying degrees this week. Terah was pretty out of it for a day and was fevered and even threw up, though I don't think it was actually a stomach bug. The rest of us have had some combination of fever, sore throat, headaches, coughing and lots of snot. 

It meant various social engagements had to be postponed or cancelled. Our long anticipated fasnacht day celebration day with friends was cancelled first due to illness on their end but that was also the day that Terah was quite sick. So I only got as far as making mashed potatoes and then we ditched the idea of making donuts. Instead, we kicked off the first day of Lent by having our own little potato donut celebration just the 5 of us. I'll include below the video of our "donut eating off strings" contest. I should have taken a video of Terah giggling while I let her watch the video - she is already talking about when we can do it again! 

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