The Oklahoma Snow Roller

 

And the Western NY Wild Wendigo.

 I walk them both, or most days each, every morning, as well as four or five times a day later on.

However, it's the early walk that makes the magic.

The Snow Roller came from Oklahoma and ended up here through a somewhat convoluted set of travels. Jilly hates the camera, as do all good Border Collies, but she loves the snow. When we are out there on business, hoping for deliberates, so we can avoid nasty accidents (there was a kennel somewhere in her previous life and she isn't as careful as she could be) she often prefers rolling to...erm, ahem...you know.

When there is snow, ALL bets are off. This morning, even with the Wendigo out with us, she rolled halfway down the hill before she remembered why we were out there.

The Wendigo was born in a hunting kennel out in the western part of the state. His parents helped hunting hounds do what they were bred for, and he came to us with all the instincts, spite, and spunk of same.

They are both nine years old and somewhat...only somewhat...mellowed.

On normal days, it's Mack out first because he feels the imperative most strongly, and Jill second. Both are leashed, Mack always, and Jill when it is dark. There are critters out there, from fishers to bears, with coyotes and bobcats between, and she is soft and sweet....and not always as obedient as she might be. Mack is an unrepentant death machine. He has taken on even a Shorthorn bull and terrified the poor thing, before I got him out of the pen.

However, on some days everyone is whining and moaning and crossing their legs at the door, so I put one on one long leash and the other on another and hope for the best...no dog fights, no wild things on the lawn, etc. etc.

This was one of those mornings. Out we went. All of us. Jill commenced to roll as soon as we got around the parked car. Mack was fascinated and wanted to run right over and interfere. His leash is just enough shorter that he failed in that endeavor. Thus he began to take care of bidness, as only a boy dog can. 

Waning gibbous over the back porch roof

There was fresh snow reflecting the faintest early light, and there were geese talking down on the river, an early morning contact murmur that could barely be heard. An sleepy White-throated Sparrow tried out a tentative chirp from a nearby bush, but subsided back to slumber a second later. The WTSPs and Northern Cardinals are generally the first birds up in winter, but it was still pretty dark.

Somehow...eventually... the rolling reached the saturation point and the dragon was entirely drained. No fighting, not too much leash tangling, and no tripping of the elderly. All in all, a successful morning excursion. For the rest of the day, now that the sun is up, they can go out separately, with Jill off leash and Mack less desperate. 

But I feel like a hearty...and hardy too....adventurer.

If You See this Guy

 Wish him a very happy birthday. He is a great dad and very special man all around. Happy Birthday, Scott, from all of us!

Dark

 Keeping farmer's hours, a lifelong habit that started when I was walking hots at Saratoga Race Track when I was 20, means we spend a lot of time in the dark. This morning the boss and I walked dogs at around 4:30 AM. The moon had set a long time before and it was dark!!!

Except, that is, for a sky full of stars so bright that they glittered like the creepy eyes of creatures out there in the night when you wish you were inside where it is light and warm. You could find as many constellations as you cared to, shining neon-bright, except for your freezing feet and hands.

And ice frost on all the grass, that glinted in the glow from our flashlights like a dragon's hoard of sparkly diamonds.

Sure was cold though.

Sure was cold.

Novemberish

Amish Smart Car

 

Impact

 The three of us, having chored and cleaned for hours, sat down the other day to have a few minutes peace and quiet (and maybe a snack). We were all engaged with our electronic devices, enjoying the downtime.

Wham! A big bang like a bomb, then a cascading jingle of falling glass.

Somewhere.

It sounded right next to us in the living room, but it wasn't. Kitchen and dining room windows were intact as well.

The boss checked the stair landing. There was no window there any more.

A big Cooper's Hawk, immature, and probably a female by the size, had evidently hit it in mid-swoop. Alas it perished.

The mess was incredible.

Both the flight of stairs leading up to the landing and the one climbing beyond it were bathed in glass fragments, from big pointy shards to sharp crumbs barely visible even under a bright light. There was glass in my bedroom, and glass in a downstairs bedroom that opens off the downstairs hallway. The hall was thoroughly dusted, mostly with micro-bits, as well.

Becky picked up the indoor pieces, and I the outdoor stuff-two boxes worth altogether.

I vacuumed behind her up the stairs and around the rest of the glass field, while Ralph horsed the big shop vac up the stairs behind me. Did I mention the indoors is carpeted and the outdoors weedy? Yeah, it was a beast of a job.

Not much else got done for several hours.

Fortunately he was also able to find a place that would repair the window immediately on an emergency basis. (We are having a nice fall, but not nice enough to leave a two by three foot window open.)

The new window is nice and clear, the old one having been deliberately left grubby to help prevent just such collisions. You can see above how we are dealing with that.

Dad

 

Happy Heavenly Birthday! I miss you...

Paprika

 

Not long ago Becky started using it in her cooking. Turns out we liked the result. She read up on producing your own and decided that we should give it a try. I was willing to attempt to grow the peppers involved, so she bought some seed.

They were slow to germinate and the resulting plants delicious to deer. I made protective structures of old grill grates and flower pots, but the nibbling was a tough setback.

Eventually though the plants outgrew the depredations and made some little white peppers, which grew into appealing orangy-red, somewhat flattened, globes. 

Yesterday we picked and prepped them and popped them in the dehydrator. The house smelled like peppers all day. Last night they were almost, but not quite done, so they are having another whirl this morning.

Thanks to the deer and germination factors we won't get much actual paprika this year. However, it has really been fun messing around with the project. I saved seeds, which we will give a germination test when they are dry. It they grow, we will use them. If not, we'll get more.

We are also thinking about growing some chili peppers and attempting chili powder next year.

Might be fun.

All photos by Becky (except the top one)

Odd

 

Is there anything cheekier than a Pied-billed Grebe?

This Fall has been. Warm, damp, warm, damp, rinse, repeat. Never have I ever encountered so many mosquitoes of the demon spawn variety. If you get into a swarm of them...and if you are outdoors you will...there are so many and they are so persistent that you will find yourself wiping them off your face and hands, leaving trails of legs and wings behind. I thought myself an intrepid birder, braving any weather that comes our way to go out on the hunt, every single day. They have sent me running...well, sorta, I don't exactly run these days...for the car, abandoning pretty good findings cuz I couldn't stand them. I am not of fan of first frost, but they are ridiculous.

Then there are the sneaky weasels slipping onto our land with illegal weapons and illegal agendas...through the magic of modern technology, we see you, you know. And if we don't know who you are, we have friends who do. Better be careful.

And flowers. First it was the single lilac bush in bloom along the front bank. It is beautiful and smells so nice. It has been in flower for a least a couple of weeks now and just keeps getting better. 

The other day I spotted a perfect iris up in Northville, so white it almost looked blue. So pretty.

Yesterday a single Bee Balm flower erupted on the back bank. No hummingbirds for you little friend, but kinda nice to see you. The Pineapple Sage Matt and Lisa gave me for my birthday, not to mention the one I bought myself, is covered with flowers of perfect cardinal red. I will grow it again next year if I can and hope it blooms before the hummers leave. They would love it.

The cutest asses I have ever seen. We bumbled down a dead end road the other day and they trotted out to see up.
Their braying was actually soft and sweet. I have a video. I need to upload it.

Meanwhile, where the heck are the ducks? If you use eBird you will know about orange and red dots to indicate how unusual a find is. No dots on normally rare ducks. The ducks, such as Redheads, that do not occur here in summer, should be coming by right now. Instead we rarely even see Mallards. We did find a single Green-winged Teal yesterday, and that cute Pied-billed Grebe is hanging around a marsh we visit, but waterfowl, even Canada Geese, are scarce.

I think they may be staying farther north while the weather stays stagnant like this.

Yesterday's fun...I grow cannas in pots in the garden pond each summer...cheap, easy water plants. No care at all once they are in the water. Each Fall I pull them out before frost, so they can drain, and I can store them in the pantry for the winter. Yesterday, the last and largest one seemed dry enough to haul up by the house so I did...lugging it clutched against me, because it was still very heavy. The leaves were looking ready to be chopped off so I did that.

There in the center of the pot was a befuddled Green Frog, staring up at me, as if thinking, "Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, lady, what are you doing?"

He found the energy to slip out of his torpor once I picked him up, I'll tell you. I put him back in the grass by the pond, so he can plan his winter's sojourn for himself. I don't think he would enjoy the warm, dry pantry very much.

You can tell a lot about summer just by the number of frogs in that little pond... a 300 gallon Rubbermaid watering trough with a fancy fountain Alan built me, and lots of rocks and plants. In a dry year it will be thronged with frogs, mostly lithobates clamatans. This year, with it raining every day or nearly so, we only had this one, and it didn't show up until almost Autumn. 

Meanwhile the birds miss bathing in the fountain, which I am draining and drying for winter, so I put an old gas grill grating from one of the subsurface rock structures up to the side of the pond, so they can get out once they get in. I watched a House Finch yesterday, fluttering around the edge of the pond, wanting to drink and bathe, and he reminded me of the need for same. Amazingly, last year, the goldfish and Rosy Minnows that Becky couldn't catch in the Fall wintered over, and thrived. The minnows even made lotsa little minnows, if you feel the need for a few pink pets.

And that, my dear friends, is why weeks go by with no blog posts, and not much on Facebook either. The outdoors, despite the insects, is so seductive. I have to be there. Winter will get here eventually, and when it does it will seem interminable. I have no trouble at all imagining the cold season during the summer. I look at all the green and know it will go and be gone a long, long time. However, in Winter, when all is grey and white and cold, stark blue, I cannot paint a picture of green in my mind. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have my green jungle wall of houseplants between me and the windows to keep me centered.

Btw, a couple of years ago, Ralph counted the houseplants. 75.

Lately though, I have been giving them away, or disciplining myself in new purchases and splits. Down to 40 now and I think I am enjoying them more. I put the annuals, like geraniums, upstairs, and the big, crazy jungle plants like Elephant Ears and the Split-leaved Philodendron, down here in the big windows. Much less cluttered. Easier to care for as well.

Hugs and good wishes to all from all of us here at Northview Farm.

Fog

 

To sit in the yard on these damp Fall mornings is to rest in a shell at the bottom of a deep grey sea. Sounds are muffled, air is dripping, the view is dimly muted, aswirl with suspended drops of water. Opaque. Quiet. Queer.

A leaf, letting go, bouncing branch to branch, is a warbler passing through, filling up on bugs and berries. 

A warbler is a leaf letting go.

Autumn is a mixture of brief hellos and long goodbyes, and beautiful for it.

If only there weren't so many mosquitoes. 

Snakes Alive

 

I trailed our boy up in the field yesterday, but decided discretion should be the better part of valor as far as slogging through the overgrown fields to his eventual destination. Thus I wandered down the hill, birding as I went, alone.

At midday like that, birds were scarce, but I saw more snakes than I have seen all summer.

They were all Eastern Garter Snakes, probably the commonest species we have, but all were in fresh, bright, skins and just beautiful.

They poured across the ground dark as molten chocolate, the richest lovely brown you could imagine, glittering like jewels poured from hand to hand in some mystic kingdom. I have never before seen them in such dark shiny colors.

I grabbed the photos, which don't begin to do justice to how gorgeous they were in the hot Autumn sun. More than made up for the silence of the birds.

Later the boss and I went out to Sara Lib Road quarry where the tiny migrants were busy in the swampy woods. Lots of both kinglets, chickadees, both nuthatches, and catbirds, calling and bustling around. That was nice too and I should have slept well after all that exercise.

However, the fat lady below sang all night and disturbed our peaceful slumbers.

Lion's Ear

BFFF (Big fat fluffy fellow)

 I'm a sucker for odd plants. Big plants. Hard to grow plants. Almost all plants. 

I found this one over at Sunny Crest early this past summer. it was along the back edge of the greenhouse where we choose our tomato plants each year, looking gangly and kinda scraggly, but utterly different from anything I'd ever seen.

It was labeled Lion's Ear. 

Seemed like a decent buy at around five bucks, so it came home with us.

Turns out it is a South African member of the mint family and is reportedly popular with hummingbirds. 

What a time I had getting it going. It is a BIG plant and it was rooted in a tiny pot. It was so root bound there was barely room for dirt. I planted it near the arbor where it would have some support for its lengthy stems and watered it and watered it and watered it, every single day. This btw was before the summer monsoons started and it rained seven times a day for weeks.

Anyhow, it struggled hard for a while and I just about gave up on it, but then as summer slowed to a crawl it took off. It is now taller than the arbor by at least a foot and still growing. However, the hummers pretty much ignored it until migration got serious. Now it is the hit of the neighborhood, with Ruby-throated Hummingbirds stabbing their beaks into the fuzzy flower tubes like knights jousting for nectar. It must be good stuff for them, as they look like tiny flying bowling balls, they are so fat. (Check out the waistline of the little guy above! He's gonna need suspenders to keep his pants up.)

I really liked it and will grow it again next year if I can get it. Worth every bit of the effort it took.

If you see this Guy Today

 

Wish him a Happy Birthday! He shares this day with one of our lovely granddaughters and one of my cousin's grandsons....whom we remember well dancing at Tawny's party when he was just a little guy. I hope they all have a great day and many happy returns of same!

Revenge of the Rain

 

And failure of the forecast.

You could read three weather forecasts daily...from three different sources...and they would all diverge wildly.

And they would all be wrong.

They might promise that the rain will let up around 4 PM so you plan to do some things that don't involve being wet...say maybe help park the kids' camper or pick tomatoes.

Not only will it not stop by 4PM, it will rain 3 inches between then and 4AM the next day.

On days when the cute little icon on the weather page is a bright fat sun with rays dispelling rainy gloom there will be a downpour every hour.

Ralph swears he saw 32 geese all carrying umbrellas down by the river this morning. He says some of them were downright fashionable too.

I think just about anybody you ask would happily cry, "Hold, enough!" and wish for even a few minutes of dry weather.

And you know how they always say, "It's a good day for ducks?" 

I have seen maybe a dozen ducks in the past three weeks, so I don't think they are happy either.

However I can attest that every day, all day, is a good day for mosquitos. There is a little tiny kind that goes straight for eyes, nose and ears. There are so many you can wipe them off your face!

I sure hope we get a couple of consecutive weeks of respite so farmers can get the corn in and then some more drytime later in the season for the beans.

Meanwhile, guess what???? It's raining.

Pretty much the only sun we will see today

Flashback

 

How often are you transported, whole, back to your early teens? To those years of insecurity, of finding out you were different from the kids you played with and the powers that be, of not knowing whether you were cool or not?

We moved to Broadalbin when I was in 6th grade and I found out all about different. I had been fine in Fonda...they were used to me and my quirkiness. That didn't fly up north. I consoled myself by lying on the dining room floor...cold, bare, empty, hardwood...after the dishes were done of course...and wearing out Dad's Kingston Trio albums. They had a little record player that sat on the floor there and I could play them all I wanted if I was quiet. My favorite was, and is,  From the Hungry i. (We still have the one with the grooves worn almost beyond redemption.)

Everyone else was listening to the Beatles. I didn't. (Until later when we got the band going but never with any great pleasure.) Did you know that the Beatles once opened for the Kingston Trio? Yep, I found that out last night.

See, Becky inherited my love for their music and wore out MY cassette tapes when she was about the same age as I was during the dining room years. They played locally during the years we were showing cows every summer, but due to one fair or another I couldn't take her.

 Fast Forward a few years....

Tickets went on sale for a show at the Universal Preservation Hall a couple of months ago and she got seats for the three of us. We searched out maps and parking and off we went in a snaky, slithering rain, with much trepidation.

I had watched videos online and liked what I heard, but had no idea what to expect from this extension of the original band. The founding members all left us long ago.

What can I say but, wow! Becky was one of the youngest people there, by at least a few decades, but they rocked that place and the crowd was downright dynamic. They played the best-known KT classics with a polish and fidelity to the past that was at once exciting, and yet comforting to this old fan. It was great to remember those dining room years from where I am now and realize that weird really isn't all that bad.

They played songs I had never heard before, having moved on to country and rock once our band got going and we needed to please others, so I missed some albums. They closed with one written, I believe, by John Stewart, about America's first moon walk that literally gave me cold chills. (BTW, for historical reference, along with my brother and friends, I belonged to two rock and roll/country bands, Hereafter and Stone Free. We always joked to the audience that we would probably be here after they walked out, and that although we didn't play stone free, we were certainly dirt cheap.)

The show was great rollicking fun. We laughed, sang along, clapped, and laughed some more. Even Ralph sang and amazingly well too. He is not exactly a music guy. At the end of the show the band mingled in the lobby, shaking hands and sharing memories with anyone brave enough to walk up to them. I am a sniveling coward at heart as it happens, but that didn't stop me one bit....nice guys and very approachable.

Among my favorite aspects was Buddy Woodward playing the conga drum. Such flash! What panache! However, it was all fun, from fan favorites to new territory.

Before we were home last night, having traversed the dreaded route down 29 in rain-lashed darkness, lit mostly by ill-placed reflections glaring from the watery road, Becky had found some of my new favorites, and placed them on my "3C Walking" playlist. (You know, threecollie...who is a walking fool.)

Thanks Beck for getting the tickets and coaxing us out there, Ralph for driving under such nasty conditions (at least it wasn't blinding snow like that one High Kings Concert at the Egg), Dad for giving me so much music in my kidhood, and the band for a great evening's entertainment. 

Hope they play here again and soon.

Back in the band days
upstairs at Sherman's Amusement Park
Loved that Framus guitar
and I believe that is the drum set Mike is sellin
if you are interested. It's a good un.