Drought!

This is a picture I took from the front deck this time last year. Snow. Lots of snow. Not skiing snow but plenty enuf to make a snowman and to keep us shoveling. And, occasionally to keep us housebound when the road is too deep for one or another of us living out here to break a path. This year, right now all I see is the beginnings of green grass! The chickens are out doing their usual spring weeding. Except it isn't spring.

And, no rain. Scary when you take into account the number of fires we had last year from lightning strikes and the well over 100,000 acres that burned around us and at the north end of the valley.

If we don't get rain or snow soon, there won't be much of a garden this year. Everyone cross their fingers!

Time To Meet The Other Furbabies

Once upon a time we didn't have a ground squirrel problem but then the neighbor decided to use the pair of fox for target practice and pretty soon we were over-run with ground squirrels. The blasted evil beasts even came up on the deck and ate all my herbs down to the dirt! They went through the garden faster than locust. The only thing they didn't eat was the hot peppers! Tomatoes -- gone. Corn -- gone. Peas -- gone. Beans -- gone.

And, I'm here to tell you that poison doesn't work. They can eat it by the gallon and the bottomline is they multiple faster than the amount of poison one can afford to buy kills them off.

So, we had choices. Go broke buying poison. Give up on the garden, which was not an option. Or find another way to fight the squirrels.

Voila! Cats! Off we went to pick up a cat, Debbie, and her kitten from Freecycle. I mean, who in the world names a Siamese cat Debbie? Ah, no one! So, we acquired the newly named Kahlua. She is a torti-point and quite different looking. She's a major pain in the assets but she's a hunter supreme. Her kitten was a total flake and took up biting, so she went down the road.

Then September 12, 2007, hubby looked out the kitchen window and thought he saw some fox kits. Obviously, before he puts his contacts in There were four kittens that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to dump on our back deck. And I mean a lot of trouble. We are 2.5 miles off the highway and up a dirt road and the house sits 150' off the dirt road.

We kept the largest male kitten. His name is Smokey and doesn't look like he'd get out of his own way but Kahlua took him under her paw and taught him to hunt. He works diligently to keep both the ground squirrel and cottontail population under control. He's grown quite a bit since this picture and weighs in at over 25 pounds.

Well, before we could get Kahlua in to have her spayed, she presented us with a litter of kittens. Youngest wanted to keep the blue point long haired kitten but he turned out to be another nutcase, so he found a new home. I kept the tiny black-pointed tortoiseshell and named her Precious. She's a little goofy but not mean. Scared of the world, so she has become our house cat. Not a mouse to be seen. Works for me. She also thinks Cali is her own personal dog. If they are laying together in front of the woodstove, you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

Now, I thought I had it timed but Kahlua managed to sneak in another litter. We kept the three boys, Pickles (don't ask), Mr. Snuggles and Lil' Harry Houdini.

Pickles is a long-haired orange marmalade cat. He's not going to have the super long hair that Smokey has. He's a funny character. He's been neutered and had his rabies shots, so he's now out following mom around. We'll see if he becomes as good a hunter as mom and Smokey.

Mr. Snuggles is hard to get a good picture of. In real life, he doesn't look like a real cat. He looks like a stuffed animal. He's a seal-point Siamese. He's also a klutz! He tries to leap from counter to counter and belly-flops! He lays down on the sofa and rolls off the edge. We don't have much hope for him as a hunter! Well, he's a big horse of a cat, perhaps if he falls on his prey

And then we have Lil' Harry Houdini. He's a flame-point Siamese and about half the size of the other two. He thinks he's the great hunter. He was the runt and Kahlua would routinely dump him out of the box they were in. Usually straight on his head. He was the first one to walk. Well, more like a little mechanical toy trying to run. Funniest thing you ever saw. He and Precious are best buds. He'll probably stay in the house with Precious. The local hawks would probably mistake him for a bunny-sized meal. He's totally fearless and wouldn't run from the approaching hawk, so that would spell disaster.

Kahlua is now spayed. The boys are all neutered. Precious is spayed. The cat population will remain static. Hopefully no one else will decide we need a midnight visit with a basketload of kittens. The squirrel population is under control. My herbs are again growing in profusion on the deck. We had an excellent crop of peas, beans, corn, tomatoes, peppers, beets, strawberries, raspberries, marionberries, onions, lettuce, radishes, carrots and I don't remember what and all else this last year. Even with the extremely early frost that got my tomatoes. But that's a story for another day.

The Weather

I don't usually write about the weather. However, in this instance I'll make an exception. Whatever the heck is going on needs to stop! I can handle winter o.k. Not to say I'm a big fan. Sure don't like the big winds. I mean, if you had been standing where a 120' tall Doug Fir fell, not 5 minutes before it fell, would you be a fan of high winds? I didn't think so!

So, now we have "spring" in January. O.K., so the nights are still FA REE ZING! They say 29 tonight. But, give me a break. The days are in the 50s. That is spring. The grass is coming up. My fingers are itching. I've been to the mudroom at least a dozen times to get down the box of seeds. This is cruel and unusual punishment.

I mean, you know as well as I do that the very minute I put seed to ground the weather will return to winter. We'll have a foot of snow and the daytime highs will be in the 30s.

And, to add insult to injury, over the last two weeks over a dozen seed catalogs have arrived. Ah, thank you Baker Creek but I could have done with out all the pretty pictures.

~~sigh~~ Excuse me while I go back to marking days off on the calendar and staring with glazed eyes out the window waiting, NOT patiently, for the real spring to arrive.

What I Miss

about no longer living at the coast is spending time in Sequoia Park. Sequoia Park is in the middle of the city of Eureka in Humboldt County, California. It is over 100 acres of redwood trees. My old home, and where my heart is. This is a picture of one of our favorite trails in the park.

With an ambient temperature of between 60-70 degrees year round, we spent a lot of time at The Cove on Humboldt Bay. The kids loved playing in the water and it was a really safe place for them to be. As calm and serene as this looks, it would be hard for most people to believe that less than a 1/4 of a mile down the road is one of the most dangerous inlets in the world. And, about a 10 minute walk behind us is the Pacific Ocean.

But, the thing I miss the most is the trees. *Real* trees, as I call them. Ancient giants of the tree world. And this one would be my favorite. I played beneath it as a child and have watched the bronze plaque on it rise over the years from just above my head to well beyond my reach as an adult. Sitting beneath these trees is so peaceful and serene that one must experience it as words don't do it justice. If you ever have occasion to take a trip up Hwy. 101 to Humboldt County, don't miss Sequoia Park.

Meet the Girls

As promised, here are the name sakes for our little corner of the world. Top dog is Tuff-Enuf Mugwump. She's a Pitcur Hound, hounds raised to hunt bear and mountain lion.

Son #3 is a pet magnet. Someone brought a bunch of puppies around to where he worked and told him they were pit bulls, that they were 8 weeks old and that if they didn't find them homes they were going to be euthanized. Of course he brought home a puppy. As it turns out, she came from a drug house where the mother of the pups had been fed speed and was at the vets about dead. The pups were only 4 weeks old and they had also been fed speed. How she survived is any one's guess but survive she did. All grown up she has the face of an angel and the disposition of an alligator with PMS. However, as you can see, all grown up she does manage to tolerate playing dress-up.

Tuff-E's trusty sidekick is Hurricane Cali. Cali is another one of Son #3's rescues. She's a purebred AmStaff, aka American Staffordshire Terrier and sometimes referred to as a Pit bull(http://www.akc.org/breeds/american_staffordshire_terrier/index.cfm). This picture was taken when she was 4 months old and recovering from getting run over by two cars. Not hit, literally run over. Broken leg, smashed pelvis, head trauma and lung problems.

However, you can't keep a good dog down and Cali is also all grown up. ADHD and plagued by problems from coming from a backyard breeder, she also suffers from an identity crisis. She thinks she's a hound. If you've never heard an AmStaff try to howl, you're missing one of the funniest events in dogdom! She also tries to follow a trail. If Tuff-E does it, Cali tries to do it.

And, as you can see, Cali also does dress-up. However, unlike Tuff-E who merely tolerates it, Cali likes to play dress-up. So much for the evil pit bull.

New Year, New Blog

My blogging up until now has consisted of politics and irritants. With a new year the time seemed appripo for setting hands to keyboard to venture down a new road. So, this blog will be about the journey of home and hearth.

Each morning, as I stand at the kitchen sink gazing out the window, I'm greeted by a delight to the senses. No houses, no telephone lines, no people. The fog trailing through trees -- the all akilter Gray pine, tall majestic Doug fir, stately black oak, ancient white oak and a few surviving Ponderosa pines. This is the time of day that the wild turkeys like to wander across from the uncleared brush next door. In the spring I watch them scurry down our road to the lower three acres, poults in tow. We have a young jay who has learned to mimic a hawk. I think he has a wicked sense of humor as the only time he seems to use this talent is when the turkey hen is supervising her young. He cries and the poults rush for cover. I'm sure I've seen him laughing.

Just beyond the pine in the center of the picture are our two creeks whose names would seem to have been predestined -- Barker Creek and Little Barker Creek. Of course, the irony of it all would escape those who have never owned a hound. Or, for that matter, an AmStaff with an identity crisis who thinks she's a hound. An introduction to "the girls" will have to wait for another day.