cheerfulmonk.com

Kaitlin sent me this email the other day:

Now we have a cheeky squirrel! I was weeding and this guy came out to tell me what’s what!

It was slowly walking towards her as she talked to it, but when she took the picture and it heard the click, it turned around and hopped away.

It wasn’t as cheeky as the chipmunk, but it was clearly used to people…and used to sharing their yards.

It reminds me of a rabbit up on the land a few years ago. Andy was walking on the path down to the old greenhouse area and the rabbit was sitting on the path. Andy looked at it, and it looked at Andy while Andy kept getting closer. Finally the rabbit decided Andy wasn’t going to go around it, so it hopped to the side, just off the path. When Andy came home that night he complained,

I don’t get any respect up there.

Yes, It is a bit disconcerting when you don’t even scare a rabbit.

August 9, 2020

I save way too many email messages. I’m not nearly ruthless enough in deleting them, but I’ve been working on it. The one quote that consoles me is Ashleigh Brilliant’s,

I feel so much better now that I have given up hope.

I’ll continue to try to delete more than the number that come in every day, but if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. Instead of asking myself,

How can I get this done and enjoy the process?

I’ll simply ask,

How can I enjoy the process?

It’s better than nothing.

August 8, 2020

I needed a new tea towel and the one with this image grabbed my attention. Yes, that was the one!

Am I the only one who has been enjoying staying home? I’m not even a die-hard introvert…I’ve taken the Myers Briggs Type Indicator three times and was always on the borderline between Introvert and Extravert. I was slightly more Introverted twice and was slightly more Extraverted once. Go figure.

Has anyone else been incredibly happy not having to go out?

August 7, 2020

About two weeks ago the Forest Service sent out a message entitled, The Fire You Never Heard Of:

On June 21, 2020, peak fire season on the Santa Fe National Forest (SFNF), firefighters were dispatched to a human-caused fire on the Jemez Ranger District…..

Temperatures were in the 90s with relative humidity at 9%. Fuel moisture levels were in single digits, and the energy release component (ERC), a technical calculation that gives fire managers a seven-day look at potential fire intensity, was in the 90th percentile. On top of that, prevailing winds in the drainage where the fire started increased its potential to spread.

But instead of it turning into a major fire, the fire fighters managed to confine it to 1.5 acres. Why? Because the Forest Service had done major thinning and prescribed burns in the area to reduce the fuel load. It made a huge difference.

And that’s why Beate, Tim, and Andy cleared all the dead trees from around the house. (Also see Beate’s pictures on Flickr.)

Since then Andy has been using his brush cutter to keep the bushes down. He says it took him nine hours the first time to clear the defensible space, but only six hours the second time. This is the picture Beate took from above:

There are never any guarantees in life, but if a fire comes all that work should help a lot.

August 6, 2020

gocomics.com/bc

I have to admit, I’m still a little kid at heart…my mind is simple and easily amused. It may not be impressive, but it’s a godsend in these stay-at-home times.

August 5, 2020

So how did the ground squirrel get inside the net?

There was a gap between the ends of the hardware cloth Andy had buried to protect the tree:

That problem is more easily fixed than some, thank goodness.

August 4, 2020

Ground Squirrel/Wikimedia

We’re sure the culprits who ate our apples in the orchard area were ground squirrels. Andy didn’t see them in the apple trees, but he saw one inside the net yesterday in our cherry tree…and yes, some of the cherries were already gone. Andy didn’t get a good look because when the ground squirrel saw him the squirrel scooted out of there.

If you want to make a ground squirrel happy and fill his belly, then just introduce him to a fruit tree. This of course can be particularly annoying if you are trying to grow these trees, as ground squirrels will munch on your fruit trees to their heart’s content and they will damage them as a result. They are known to take the fruit right off the trees. Fruit trees that they especially like include apple, apricot, prune, peach, and orange trees.
—What Do Ground Squirrels Eat?

You learn something new every day. We still don’t understand why we never had trouble with the apples before.

August 3, 2020

A month ago we had a lot of apples on the yellow transparent and Cortland apple trees.

June 28, 2020 Yellow Transparent Apples

June 28, 2020 Yellow Transparent Apples (zoomed)

June 28, 2020 Cortland Apples

June 28, 2020 Cortland Apples (zoomed)

Andy picked one of each to see how they were coming…still a bit green so we thought we would wait.

Notice there are no nets around the trees. We needed them around our cherry trees, but had never needed them around the apples.

There’s always a first time. Last week all the apples down there had disappeared. He now has a net around the yellow transparent apples in our greenhouse area.

August 2, 2020

I just read that some organizations are testing to see if dogs can be trained to sniff out COVID-19. If they can do it accurately, it would help a lot.

Fingers crossed it works. I think this has been mentioned on TV news programs (we don’t get TV), have you heard of it before?

August 1, 2020

DailyChoices

July 31, 2020