Wordless Wednesday

This ‘n That Friday

Yes – I felt the earthquake Wednesday! I was at work, standing by my table/desk working on the computer. It felt like someone had bumped the table/desk pretty hard… when I looked up, there wasn’t anyone near enough to have bumped it. And then I saw the parts rack next to me shaking like crazy. I wasn’t sure if it was an earthquake or not at the time and figured that I would look it up when I got home – but someone had heard on the radio that it was for sure an earthquake. Pretty cool! I was just disappointed when I heard that they downgraded it’s intensity from a 5.5 to a 5.0. To those of you who live in earthquake areas, this probably isn’t a big deal at all, but something that ‘big’ is rare around here. And I can say it was cool because there was no damage and no one was hurt

I am confident that I have finally evicted the Evil Baby Bunny #3 from my garden. The trap didn’t work, as I suspected it wouldn’t, but I managed to chase it out and I haven’t seen signs of it being back so far And while on the subject of the garden, here’s a picture of how things are doing…

OK – how do you gracefully get out of this one? Say you run into someone you haven’t seen for quite a while. After the exchange of greetings, the usual catching-up talk begins…

Me: “So, how are things going? What’s new?”

Person Not Seen In a While: “Good! My daughter will be having a baby this Friday!”

Me: “Wow - Congratulations! When did she get married?”

Person Not Seen In a While: “She didn’t.”

Ouch. Open mouth, insert foot.

It looks like I have a broody chicken… Starting yesterday, Cocoa has decided that she wants to hatch some eggs. So far she hasn’t been nasty at all and lets me throw her out of the nesting box without her pecking at me. If she stays broody, she may start to get nasty. We’ll see how it goes – if she snaps out of it on her own, great. If not, I’ll have to ‘take measures’. There are a few cures for broodiness, but I’ll wait and see what happens over the next few days first…

As I’ve mentioned before, I love love love the Firefox browser… I love that it is so customizable, I love the bookmarks toolbar, I love all the add-ons available, I love that everything always looks good it in – I love everything about it. Except for one thing. A few updates ago, they got rid of the last tab close button – it was the close-out ‘X’ that was on the very last tab sitting in the browser. It bugged me that I had to open up another tab in order to get the ‘X’ to close out a website. Such a small thing, but it still bugged me. I should have known better than to think that I would be stuck with that missing detail forever. If I had bothered to look, I would have found that there was an add-on to take care of that Now I love love love LOVE my Firefox

Wordless Wednesday

Good News, Bad News

The Jillmobile is due for inspection next month…

The bad news is that it needs new tires and an alignment and the Check Engine light won’t go out.

The good news is that I planned ahead to get the tires and alignment taken care of today.

The bad news is when I went in for my appointment, they said that my tires weren’t in.

The good news is that because of that, they did my alignment for free!  (and my bank account really appreciated that!)

The bad news is that I have to go back tomorrow after work to get the tires put on.

The good news is… well, there is no more good news.  I still have to figure out the Check Engine light thing… maybe I’ll take a ride down to AutoZone and let them run a scan and see what comes up.  I know it’s not the gas cap – I just bought a new one… 

I wish I had a money tree or two in my yard!

Father’s Day

This is my second Father’s Day without my Dad.

It was strange not running around the past week trying to decide what to get Dad for His day.

It was hard seeing all the Father’s Day sale ads in the paper and on TV all week.

It’s been only a little over a year since he passed away.

Happy Father’s Day Dad – I miss  you.

There Ought to Be a Law

No one should have to listen to someone else “singing” and growling to whatever it is they are listening to on their iPod. 

All day.

At work where there is no escape.

Or anywhere, for that matter.

R.I.P.

No Wordless Wednesday today.

This evening, on my way to lock up The Ladies for the evening, I wanted to check the trap in the garden to see if by chance I managed to catch Baby Bunny #3.  I was stopped short in my tracks when I saw Banana lying on the ground.  Dead.

My stomach dropped to the ground.

I was just watching her running around the yard with the others only an hour or two earlier.

I picked her up and looked her over – she was whole.  There were no signs of chewing or cuts or other signs of mauling.

The only conclusion I can come to is that possibly she ate something poisonous and it killed her.

I wrapped her in a tarp.  Tomorrow I will bury her.

Rest in Peace Banana – you were a good chicken.

This ‘n That Tuesday

When I was working in the garden after work today (replanting some beets ) I spied Baby Bunny #3 - inside my garden fence. Evidently he never got out yesterday with Mama Bunny. Or he did and got back in again… I tried to catch it, but missed just as he escaped into my perennial bed

So knowing that BB3 cannot live inside my garden fence, I put Plan B into effect (Plan A being trying to catch it and put it outside the fence)… I dug out a live animal trap that I had bought years ago to help take care of a woodchuck problem I had at my old house. I’m thinking that there is a slim chance of this working because I don’t think that BB3 weighs enough to set off the trigger, but we’ll see – nothing ventured, nothing gained. Stayed tuned

So starting last week, I’ve been finding tons of cherry pits on top of the bin where I keep The Ladies’ feed. Using my brilliant skills of deduction (and a small mirror), I can confirm that Mama Robin has two more eggs in her nest (which is right above The Ladies’ feed bin). Obviously, robins who have their nest all set and are just waiting around for their eggs to hatch don’t sit in front of the TV eating bon bons. Nope – they sit on their nest eating cherries.

I must have a cherry tree on my property that I don’t know about. I never see Mama Robin fly very far away and it’s always towards my back forty. I’ll have to check it out one of these days…

It looks like there is going to be some kind of construction or something happening on my street soon – they have those car-counter strips across the road in a couple of spots. Ugh.

I just realized that my scrolling blog list doesn’t work right when someone looks at my blog using IE. Do people really use IE anymore? Should I worry about it?

You know when you donate to places and then they send you stuff in the hopes of getting you to keep donating? A few of the places I donate to like to send me calendars. It seems like every year they send them earlier and earlier. I think this year is the earliest I’ve gotten one so far. Last week I received my first calendar for 2011

Just When You Thought Things Were Going OK…

So I came home from work today, and as my normal routine, I let The Ladies out, collected my eggs and cleaned out the coop.  Then I went to the garden to see what needed watering...   My heart sank when I saw this:

 

All the leaves you see at the top of the bed are just that – leaves.  As in not connected to anything rooted in the dirt.

If you remember, the bed was supposed to look like this:

 

 

A deer had hopped my fence and ate most of my beets   

They left me a couple 

You can’t see it in the picture, but there are huge clod-hopping deer tracks going all through the bed. It (they?) even ate a pepper plant and stomped over one of the new seedlings    I was soooooo looking forward to making more Harvard beets this year, too…

Here are where most of the tracks are

 

My corn and cucumber bed was visited too, but fortunately aside from losing a few corn plants, it was relatively unscathed…

 

And THEN, to top it off  - as I was doing some fixing and watering, you’ll never guess what I saw inside my garden fence.  Go ahead guess.

Yep.   You got it.

A baby bunny.

Yeah. 

So I picked it up and put it outside the fence. 

That was the first time I’ve ever heard a rabbit scream.  I wasn’t doing anything to it – I was just holding it.  I guess it was just freaked out and screamed.  It was weird.

So anyway, as I was continuing my fixing and watering, guess what else I saw inside my garden fence.  Yeah.  Another baby bunny.

So I picked it up to put outside the fence - it screamed too.  It’s amazing how loud such a little thing can be 

So I went about my business and of course a third baby bunny shows up.  So I picked it up.  (This one didn’t scream).  I had this bunny in one hand and went to get my camera to get a picture of it and of course it got a away.  I’m sure it hid in my holding bed that is way over-crammed with perennials, and I couldn’t find it again.

Flash forward to later in evening when I got home from a meeting.  I went to check on the garden and guess what I saw inside my garden fence.  Yeah – Mama Bunny (I’m assuming).  So I chased her and saw her go through the hole she chewed through the fence.  Just like Sapphire01 warned me about. 

OK, so they’ve all probably all been inside my garden fence for a while now – but they really haven’t caused any damage.  So far. (Unless they’ve been the ones eating my strawberries instead of the birds)  I definitely give them points for that    But there’s no point in taking any chances, so I put wire fencing along the bottom of plastic fencing – at least most of it (I ran out of the extra stuff I had lying around) .

There’s not much I can do about the deer unless I go to a higher fence (not going to happen – at least not too much higher) or an electric fence.   I really didn’t want to mess with an electric fence, but I may not have a choice.  I guess I’ll have to see what happens…

Better

Well I couldn’t get my old blog template to work again.  I think it had something to do with the creator of it – it looks like any old demos weren’t working either.  There was a newer version, but I couldn’t get that one to work either.  I guess when something is free, you get what you pay for     

I decided to go with one of the new Blogger designer templates and I’m pretty happy with it.  The only thing that I’m not happy with is the fact that I’m suppose to be able to have tabs at the top of the page, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to see them/activate them/use them.  Maybe someday when I’m bored, I will mess around with the HTML and get them in that way.

But what I have will work for now 

What Is It?

When my Dad was alive, every Saturday we would all watch This Old House.  My Dad liked the show a lot and I know that I picked up a lot of good tips from it.  My favorite part of the show was at the end when they would show us some strange-looking object and we would have to guess “What is it?”.  I was actually pretty good at it – I either knew or could guess about 75% of the things they showed.

I now have my own What Is It?

I was looking at my pictures from my morning on the canal and I noticed something really strange in one of them that I posted.  And then I saw it in a few others.  I never noticed it when I took the pictures and I have no clue as to what it is.  It looks too weird to be a worm or bug…

Here is the original picture I posted followed by all the other ones I have with the Thing in it.  I didn’t resize them, so if you double click on the picture you can see them in their original resolution.  If anyone knows what the heck it is, please let me know!