The O-Zone

I read an interesting article online the other day, which gave me an Idea.  Usually, when I say I have an Idea, Dan has learned to run.  This time, though, he is safe.

The Idea was on how to increase my daily exercise given that I mostly sit at a computer.  The article was about the health benefits of using an exercise ball for an office chair, and everything I found said that this would result in added calories used of 350 per day.  That equals 3 pounds a month, all things being equal.

Remodeling completed! I have a silly smile on my face because I am simply overly pleased with myself.

I’ve had this exercise ball for years and never really knew what to do with it, other than occasionally rolling it across the floor and creating a modicum of excitement among the parrots and the cat.  “It’s ALIVE!”

I put my computer on the end table next to the couch, so the height is perfect, and I’m sitting next to the wood stove, so the location is also perfect.

Mish isn’t so sure about this.  He keeps coming over and grabbing my arm to pull me off, so I snagged the little darlin’ and put him upside down in my lap.  This way he can help me work.

And the best thing of all is that I get to bounce all day without having to resort to extra caffeine, which has me bouncing off the ceiling if I have a bit too much.

Remodeling is fun!

Last night saw the first of the really nice fall sunsets, helped, no doubt, by the slash burning which is occurring around the area.

This one lasted for an hour and we finally got up enough energy to go take a picture.

Next week the forecast is estimating snow showers in the mountains.  Ummmm that means us!  It won’t last, no doubt, but it does make getting snow tires higher on the priority list of ‘things to do.’

We were sitting at our computers this morning, fiddling around with this, that, and the other, when a large white bird flew past the house heading north.  We don’t see gulls up here, and this was not an owl, though a Snowy Owl would be an absolutely wonderful bird to come visiting (we can wish!!).  It was gone too fast to get binoculars on it, and we chalked it up as a “mystery bird.”  Mystery birds can be anything from a pterodactyl to an LBJ (little brown job).

About an hour later, Dan's eagle eyes spotted the hawk soaring in the valley above the river, circling up on an updraft.

Even though the bird was a mile away as the crow flies (or anything else flies, for that matter), with binoculars we could see nary a spec of color, and the silhouette and flight patterns identified our mystery bird as an albino Red-tailed Hawk.  This is the first time we’ve ever seen a pure white Red-tailed.  So, even though it WASN’T a Snowy Owl, it was still uniquely beautiful Buteo.

Speaking of beautiful birds, the Great Gray Owl is still around, making an appearance at dusk before the night is too dark to see anything outside the windows, perching on our solar panels.  We hope he isn’t scratching the glass but it is still so cool to have that bird perching on the panels.  The sun is setting behind the hills before 6 pm now.  The longer nights and cold clear air out of the north are having a definite effect on overnight temperatures.  It has been in the low 20’s the last few days (23F this morning).

The woodstove in the living room is busy these days, getting the house warm.  The days are getting up near 50F for the high temperatures, and that means we don’t keep the stove going all day.  We have to build another fire in the evening.

My latest obsession is making bead necklaces.  Deb gave me some beads before she passed away and mostly I just play with them and remember her, until recently when I decided to use some of the turquoise to make a necklace.

Smooth round turquoise beads paired with polished natural stones, silver beads and sterling silver spacers.

Then I had some Rose Quartz beads to pair with some Garnet beads Deb gave me, and some larger Garnet beads I’ve had for several years.

Natural Rose Quartz paired with Garnet.

I made this for a friend's birthday, and it got me thinking about beads in general, and making some new necklaces in particular.

Fun!

This is our fifth fall up on the mountain, and the intense colors when they are at their peak still impresses us.

Shadows cast by the pine trees stretch towards the house. Once again our wood rack sitting on the porch has split pieces of wood, waiting to warm the house.

Behind the house the grove of aspen trees is in full fall colors.

Brilliant gold leaves against a cloud darkened sky, and stark white trees.

These colors always make me feel like knitting something.

Just another foliage picture. These leaves won't stay for long. The first good stiff wind and the air will be full of swirling gold, dancing on the currents.

It almost makes me wish for a wind.

The shadow from the house nears the satellite dishes which connect us to the internet and our television.

Shawdows and light.

Fall skies compliment fall colors on trees and brush.

No snow yet on the mountain range around us, but the next wet weather will most likely change that aspect of our views.

The only constant is the green of the conifers. Everything else changes and shifts.

At the top of the dark hillside, larches are turning golden as well. When they lose their needles, they carpet the ground with gold.

It was one of those Indian Summer days.  Fall colors are starting and we finally did something we’ve been talking about doing since we moved here.  We went to the hillside across from our house and took pictures of our house from across the way.

Our house and garage are in the bottom third of this picture, to the right of the aspen grove. They are just starting to turn golden, and the grass down the hillside of our house is all brown.

Same picture. Our house blends in the surroundings.

This shows how far down the hillside we are from the top of the mountains. What I love best about this picture is there are no other houses visible but ours.

Near the top of the mountain, Larch trees are starting to turn into their fall color of burnished gold. This is by far my favorite time of year!  These pictures show how far out in the middle of nowhere we are.

The small Black Bear was hanging around under the apple tree for a few days.

Mishkin showing the bear what he'd do if only he was outside and could get at 'em.

Grrrrrrrr, I'll bite you, and shred you.... grrrrrrrrrrr.

Then, after the bear is vanquished, it's time for a snooze in his blankie. After all, what better place to dream of victory! Only a paw peeks out. Snug as a bug in a rug. This is why we call him Bug about half the time.

This last weekend we had company and besides eating too much, we went for a nice long walk in the mountains.   We moved the table from the kitchen to the sun room.

It was a comfortable room for dining, but I missed having the table in the kitchen, and we moved it back.

This morning I sat in the kitchen, cookstove was heating the room nicely, while I was working on my laptop computer, telecommuting to work over satellite internet.  I love technology!  It was 38F, and that means we get to have a fire in the mornings.  It is hard to believe but in about six weeks from now it will be snowing again, and shortly thereafter the world will be completely white again, and our wood stoves will be working all day and night.

That same small chocolate colored Black Bear has been hanging around the corner of the sun room, harvesting apples from the Crabapple tree. Usually Terry is the first one to see the bear and Mishkin is upstairs so fast that he never sees a thing.

Well, today was different. The bear came up the hillside by the solar panels and sat beneath the apple tree, re-enacting Newton’s great discovery, and then eating the evidence.

"This fell down, and it explains how things work. I should tell everybody! Should I? No, I'll just eat instead and tell them later, if I remember."

They disappear in the grass, unless you know what you’re looking for or they move, you can miss seeing one nearby, very closely nearby.  Usually a bear will hear you coming long before you get anywhere near and they leave.

Last years' cub, most likely, out on its own. It's serious business, finding enough to eat in the fall.

When you're this small, it pays to listen carefully to all sounds. Perky ears tell the tail.

So, the bear shows up, and Dan sees it first.

And then Mishkin saw it.

Hair standing on end, a ridge up his back, and a very deep growl, he was very intent on trying to figure out what that was in the grass. All he was sure was, it needed to be growled at.

The bear decided it was all just too scary and left. Mishkin wins!

He’s been prowling around the house, looking out of windows, and defending his turf.  Good watch-cat!

He missed the Bobcat that was here last evening.  I imagine at some point he’ll see one of those and there won’t be any doubt in his mind that it is something very frightening, since the Bobcat is at least three times Mishkin’s size and with much bigger teeth and claws to go with it.

Chapter 3: Our First Taste of Alders

“Good morning! Wake up, little Susie! Are you planning on spending the whole day in there?”

Dan peered in at me from the front of the tent the next morning. I had been sleeping so soundly that I never even heard him getting up. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and then it hit me. I was really in the Bush! Getting dressed and out of the tent took a minute flat, since I simply got dressed in the same clothes I’d been wearing the previous day. I couldn’t wait to get on with whatever it was we decided to do with our first full day.

Dan had already fixed tea and handed me a cup as I walked over to the fire. I looked around through the combined steam of my breath and my hot cup of black tea. It wasn’t quite a frosty morning, but the air was brisk and had a lingering bite to it. Both of us had sore muscles from all our moving of boxes the prior day. I had used muscles I didn’t know I had. Dan was in much better shape, a good thing since we had hard work ahead of us that day.

We walked over to the edge of the lake to see the wide open sky. And we munched on Pilot Bread with peanut butter for breakfast, since it was readily available in the “First Day” box. Several cups of tea were needed to restore energy. While I had been sleeping, Dan had improved our campsite, dragging in a couple of large logs for use as chairs and a table. He suspended a tarp over the logs in the campsite to create a dry sheltered space. The camp was very messy looking, with trampled grass and mud.

More work was needed to completely organize things. Ultimately, we would have to get our boxes into more secure quarters for the next several months, especially as we had no intention of staying in camp full time, to keep an eye on things, but this didn’t seem to be an immediate need to be met.

Messy and disorganized, home sweet home nonetheless.

But first things first, and first on our agenda was a little look around the neighborhood. After attending to brushing hair and teeth, and washing hands and face, we both felt ready to face the day. We gathered some food together into a small backpack, each put a holstered pistol on our belt, and Dan took a rifle.  We set off towards the east and a higher elevation to see if we could get a better look at our location. We set as our goal to reach the frozen lake we’d flown over the previous day, approximately a mile away.

Everything was brown, except the Black Spruce trees and some small pink flowers called Pixie Eyes. Near the outlet creek we noticed a line of duck and goose feathers which seemed to mark a high water line, several feet higher than the current level of the water in the lake and creek. It was very fortunate we had arrived when the water level was lower.

In among the feathers were a lot of fresh water snail shells, which surprised us merely because we had not known they were in this part of Alaska.

Once out of the very narrow margin of trees around the lake, the ground was deep wet moss, tussocks of grass supporting Dwarf Arctic Birch, scrubby Willows, wild Blueberry plants (we were very happy to see those), and Alders. Some places were even wetter, grassy bogs too wet to wade through. We discovered that a couple of days later, when Dan almost lost his hipwader falling through the grassy mat over hidden water. There were also open sinkholes, one eight feet across and several feet deep. Because of these obstacles, our path up to the ridge was convoluted, winding around and doubling back as we attempted to reach higher ground.

Another plant was abundant, Labrador Tea, Rhododendron tomentosum (former Ledum palustre). This member of the Heath family has a fragrance unlike anything else we’ve ever been around, and the smell of the plant combined with the crystal clean air of the Bush was fragrant, sweeter and more pleasant than any perfume. More than any other smell, I miss Labrador Tea.

Labrador Tea

Kamchatka Rhododendron, about two inches tall.

A light rain was falling as we finally made it to the base of the ridge and started to climb. The whole ridge turned out to be covered with a dense tangle of Alders, downed trees and a few live spruce. Every low area was wet and boggy. We spooked a White-crowned Sparrow from her nest when we got too close. Her babies had not yet hatched, and her nest was well hidden in low brush near our trail. A Northern Three-toed Woodpecker knocked on a long standing dead tree, drumming to mark its territory.

Dan estimated the snow had been gone off our lake no more than two weeks at most, and the ground was still saturated with melt water. It was extremely difficult to move through the Alder branches and for the first time, but not the last, I wondered aloud how bears and moose managed to get through the heavy branches with such apparent ease.

“They go through this stuff like it is nothing,” said Dan (referring to bears). “Same with moose, it doesn’t faze them at all.”

“Why don’t they build trails then? Help out us lesser species.” I said, and wished for a wide trail in front of us.

Dan laughed at me and suggested we keep going for another hour before stopping for a bite to eat.

“How far do you think we’ll get in an hour?” I panted as I almost tripped over yet another Alder branch.

“At this rate, 100 yards.” Dan replied as the Alder branches he was trying to wade through caught on his rifle and backpack. He bent down, and backed up, to look for a different path through the branches.

“That doesn’t make me feel very secure while I’m being pinned to the ground by these branches, like I’m a bug.” I looked through the branches surrounding me, thick and tangled, and no sign of green. “What is it like when there are leaves on them? You won’t see a bear until you step on it!”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Dan replied. “Usually they hear you coming and they leave long before you get to where they are, unless they are on a kill or something. Any bears we see here probably won’t have seen a human before, so there’s really no telling what they’ll do.”

After that inspirational comment I was only too ready to stop right then and have something eat. I was still pretty wiped out from the prior days’ activity. Dan took pity on me, and we stopped for a break.

We struggled through heavy brush and skirted swamps for a couple hours after our lunch, but ultimately we gave up our quest to reach the top of the ridge. Less than a mile from our camp, in a direct line, it was not reachable in several hours of walking. Interesting lesson. We turned around and began our trek back to the base camp.

On our way back to our camp, a Willow Ptarmigan startled us when it exploded out of the brush only a few feet from where we walked. It made a short flight before dropping back down into the bushes, and disappeared from view, entirely. Their plumage was an amazing camouflage in leafless bushes.

Retracing our steps took almost as long as getting through it the first time. Half way to camp we heard a small noise behind us, through the heavy brush. I immediately thought, “Bear!!” I had bears on my mind after having been trapped in the Alder thickets for several hours.

It was no bear, however. A small brown head was peeking around the trunk of a tree, about eight feet off the ground. It was a Marten. It growled at us, fiercely, not sure what we were, and then apparently decided we were scary as it disappeared quickly. This was a highlight of the day for me, I’d never seen a Marten before.

Back at camp, we fixed a more leisurely dinner, rice and lentils in a single pot. It was the first time I’d made that particular combination of spices and it is still one of our favorite thick soups, easily cooked over an open fire.

Lentil Soup

¾ cup of washed lentils

¾ cup of long grain brown rice

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

1 ½ teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 bay leaf

2 Tablespoons olive oil

¼ teaspoon onion powder

4 cups of water

Bring to a boil, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for an hour. Add more water if it gets too thick. This makes its own gravy and is wonderful with fresh bread of any description.

We had a great division of labor. I would put things together in a pot for dinner, and Dan would tend the fire and make sure it got cooked the way I wanted.

When dinner was finished, and everything was washed and put back into the boxes, we reviewed our topographic maps, attempting to reconcile what we had seen from walking around on the ground with the map.

It didn’t take long to realize we had not landed where we had wanted to land. Our best guess was that we were approximately 18 miles from where we had wanted to be dropped off and on an entirely different lake. If we could find solid ground for a trail, it might only take a few days of hard walking to get that far. We were such optimists.

Both lakes (the one we wanted to land on, and the one we managed to land on), were unnamed on any of the topographic maps we brought with us, and we christened it that day. “Wrong Lake.”

A Long-tailed Jaeger flew past our camp, and peeps (sandpipers) were foraging in the brush at the end of the lake, The Jaeger was another new life species for us. Least Sandpiper, Western Sandpiper, and Gray-cheeked Thrush we all singing around us. More bird songs were filling the air. The local birds had already become accustomed to our presence and were no longer keeping quiet.

Chapter 2: Setting up Camp

The pilot asked where on the lake we wanted him to drop us off, and we directed him towards the outlet creek where trees were closest to the edge of the water. We would need the trees for shelter, and most importantly, for firewood. Edging the plane as close to the bank as possible, we put on our hip waders, and got to work unloading everything, tossing boxes and containers while standing on the floats to the shore. Packing everything into small boxes had an unexpected benefit we recognized immediately when we started tossing them from the plane and catching them, one we had not anticipated in town but much appreciated on the shores of the lake.

It took us less than an hour to transfer all our belongings from the plane to the shore of the lake. What had taken us six months to plan and over an hour to pack into the plane while we were in town made a very small pile on the shore, especially when we considered that we were completely on our own now for the next three months.

We pushed the plane away from the bank as far as possible, and then stood back to watch as the pilot taxied his aircraft away to the far side of the lake for a take off. With a roar, the plane took off over our heads and circled once, gaining altitude rapidly, before heading east, back towards the tall mountains and through the pass.

We were completely alone, standing by side of lake in the middle of a minimum of ten thousand square miles of uninhabited wilderness. In no time at all silence returned to the lake and our work for the afternoon had begun. We had to get things organized before it was time for bed. Fortunately, the long northern spring, almost summer, days afforded us many hours left before sunset.

Taking off from the water and heading back to the city, a momentary intrusion of machine into the wilderness is over.

A call came from across the lake, “Hellooooooooooooooo, hellooooooooooooooo!” We froze and looked at each other in momentary shock. How could there possibly be other people on our wilderness lake? Relief flooded through our bodies when we realized it was an Arctic Loon welcoming us to the neighborhood. We laughed with the sheer joy of being alive and in the wilderness.

Arctic Loons were a new life species for us. Dan has been watching birds since he was ten years old and had introduced me to the joy of bird watching when we met. It was thrilling to add a new species to our list within minutes of arriving at the lake, and we were on their breeding grounds. The pair of loons was preening, bathing, and calling. It was somewhat surprising that they were on such a small lake and we took it as a very good omen.

If you haven’t experienced spring in the far north, you will be hard pressed to appreciate how suddenly summer arrives on the heels of the spring thaw. One day the skies are cold and gray, the world is all sepia brown tones, and it feels like you are living in an old photograph. The next day the transformation is intense, brilliant green color that almost makes you want to put on sunglasses. Even cold and gray skies cannot tone down the explosion of color.

Ice had just left our new home, probably within the past week or two at most. As we flew over this lake initially, we had noticed the lake immediately to the east of us was still mostly covered in ice.

Our first order of business was going to be sorting our belongings and locating the box I had labled “First Day.” Inside that box were matches, tea making supplies, and an instant dinner in the form of crackers and cheese for quick energy with the least amount of effort. We were going to need that on our first evening. While I was sorting the boxes, Dan walked over to inspect the outlet creek of the lake.

Dan yelled at me to come to where he was staring down into the clear water flowing out of the lake. He wanted me to stop looking for the “First Day” box and find fishing gear instead.

Arctic Char with bright stripes down their sides were paying more attention to each than to the hungry Grayling who were swimming in their midst.

Arctic Char were spawning in the absolutely clear water flowing out of the lake, and Arctic Grayling were helping. In the outlet creek, about five feet across and perhaps six feet deep, were at least a hundred fish. The water was so clear the fish appeared to be suspended in air. We stood for several minutes, watching the fish swirl and dance around each other. The only sound we heard was wind in the trees and dry grasses, and the loons. We were in another world, far removed from the big city we’d left several hours/ages ago. It felt like we had gone to another planet.

Fishing equipment was easily located, and Dan asked me to bring the camera as nobody would believe us if we described what we were seeing, without a photograph to prove it.

Picture taken, now it was time to try out the fishing equipment. I handed Dan his six-piece backpacking fishing pole and a lure.  He fit the pieces of the fishing pole together, picked out a lure and tied to the end of the fishing line, and he tossed it into the water and pulled out a fish. It took less time to catch that fish than it took to write that sentence. Obviously instead of crackers and cheese, dinner was going to have fish as the main course.

We tore ourselves away from the creek and all those lovely fish. The loons continued their eerie calls, flirting with each other.

We looked for solid ground on which to pile our boxes and finally found a place where they wouldn’t sink out of sight from their weight. There is one notable thing about Black Spruce trees; they tend to grow in Black Spruce Bogs, and the ground surrounding the lake met that particular description.

We located the roll of plastic we had included in our supplies, and placed a sheet of it on the ground, and then moved our boxes for the fourth time that day. Walking around the camp site quickly transformed the grassy shoreline into mud. We could see that we were going to have to continue wearing our hip waders for the foreseable future, not the most comfortable footwear but completely necessary. Protecting our belongings from rain was the most pressing need as the sky was threatening showers, and we covered the boxes with another sheet of plastic and weighed it down with short but stout pieces of wood that had been lying on the ground nearby.

Our tent, sleeping bags and pads, and bags with things we would be keeping with us in the tent went into another pile. I also separated out the cooking utensils, tea pot, and a metal grate for cooking over the fire, and set those by the “First Day” box.

We set the axe aside as we worked; we would need that for our next project. Slightly farther from the edge of the lake we found a dryer patch of ground, relatively speaking. Dan used the axe to cut green branches thickly covered with needles from the nearby spruce trees; we would put those branches under the ground cloth. This would keep the ground cloth underneath the tent floor out of moisture. The boughs would provide softness and level out the ground for our bed, and also keep water from running through the tent.

We erected the tent and staked it out as well as we could in the soft ground, and we tossed in the bedding, bags, and our box of books. We’d organize the inside of the tent later.

While he was cutting branches to place under our tent, Dan was also collecting firewood. After the tent was squared away, Dan got a fire started. Hours had flown by as we worked on setting up our base camp.

He used the small folding shovel we had brought with us to clear dry and flammable grass from a level space near some trees, in as dry a spot of ground as we had available. I opened the “First Day” box and found a small log to drag over by the fire to act as a seat and table. The snap of the fire, and the smell of wood smoke was very welcome to both of us.

Ten feet from the outlet creek, Dan had located a spring of cold fresh water. He brought a kettle full of water and set it on the grate set up over the fire. Tea was in our immediate future. He cleaned the fish he’d caught and soon they were cooking in the cast iron skillet, over the open fire.

Since we had landed, we had worked hard to care of these necessary chores, with no real chance to sit and absorb our surroundings. One of the most remarkable things about the Alaskan bush is the silence. It took us some time to fully appreciate the how quiet it was. Everything was so still. The lake was a mirror, reflecting the sky and the mountains across the lake. We were very quiet ourselves, caught by the mood of the falling night.

The mountains across the lake were deep midnight blue, slashed by stark white snow that lingered in folds on the upper hillsides. The only hint of green anywhere near us, apart from the very dark green of the spruce trees, was in the areas around our camping site where trampled dry grass exposed the tips of new grass, peeking up out of the ground.

All shades of blue, for the sky, water, and mountains.

By the time we had cooked and eaten dinner, it was getting dark, probably near 11 pm, and we went to bed very tired and very happy. We were guessing on the time but with only two weeks left until the Summer Solstice, the days were extremely long. We had no clock with us. As Dan was taking things out of his pockets, he came across folded paper money and a set of keys. We stared at the bills in his hand, and it struck us just how completely useless both those items were in our current circumstances; the only possible use the money had would be starting a fire in an emergency. He tucked both items away in a box, out of sight and out of mind for the next few months.

Despite being so tired from an exhausting day, it was very hard to get to sleep, from excitement and nervousness resulting from being in such a different place. Every tiny sound I heard outside the tent woke me up with a start. Bears were very much on my mind, though we had seen no signs of them during the day. And then it began to rain softly. The sound of the drops hitting the tent was soothing, masking all other sounds of the night. I fell fast asleep.

Friday morning, Mishkin had a mouse cornered in the exercise room.  It had managed to get hidden in the elliptical walker out of reach, and so poor kitty had a long day of hanging out with Oro and Opal, and keeping close to the exercise equipment.  He even took his cat naps up there with the parrots, which is not very restful when they decide to start yelling as they are known to do.  He would come out of the room and meow at us, “Make them stop!!”

Finally, mid afternoon he called it quits and came out to take a much longer cat nap in Dan’s computer chair which he co-opted for that purpose.

Evening rolls around, and he staggers out of the chair, stretches, and heads up the exercise/bird room, to see what was what.

And returns with a mouse in his mouth, tail held high, and looking very pleased with himself.  Time for play!

He trotted into the sunroom and dropped his little playmate – let the chase commence!

Dan grabbed his leather gloves and went into the sunroom and shut the doors. I got a camera.

Come out, come out, wherever you are...

Mish and Dan circled around the furniture, alternating taking turns flushing the mouse from hiding, and then Mish would gleefully get in front of Dan and interfere with potential capture.

Tail in the air, Mishkin was having a wonderful time. Dan... not so much. Mish is staring straight at the mouse and waiting for Dan to flush it out into the open.

In the center of the chair is the lively and uncooperative mouse. Mish could fit his little paws and face into this space, but he much preferred Dan do the heavy lifting.

I was enjoying the documentary aspects of the chase, and Terry thought it was funny as well.  She kept chuckling.  Dan was of the opinion I should stop taking pictures and come be useful.  Where’s the fun in that?

Once again eluding capture. Can you spot the mouse?

Ah ha! This mouse looked like a shifty character indeed, caught in the act of resisting arrest.

At this point I put the camera away and got my own leather gloves and went to help the boys.  With two of us humans in the room, we successfully flushed the mouse from hiding, and so Dan succeeded in the capture of the mouse.  And Mish missed that whole capture thing.  I picked him up and told him what a clever and good cat he was for having caught the mouse, while Dan tossed it out the door.

Fortunately for us, he hasn’t figured out that we won’t toss the live ones across the floor so it can be caught again, or he may stop sharing the chase with us.  To him, live or stuff toy mice, it’s all the same.

I’m not sure why putting half the normal tint for a reddish brown exterior paint color would give us a pink colored primer for the first coat, but there ya’ go.  Or there we go.  Somebody is always going somewhere!

The first coat is on, for the siding and around the windows. I got some of that paint which is a primer/final coat in one for around the windows. It seems to cover well but will need a second coat. And we will probably need two coats of finish paint to eradicate all the pinkness.

That is the famous deck where the squirrel/cone standoff occurred yesterday.  That same squirrel was bombing everybody who got close to the large Ponderosa Pine today, with heavy cones.  And then he’d yell at us if he missed.  Attitude!

We had to remove the light fixture by the door on the outside of the building, so that painting around it could occur properly.  The light fixture itself is now on the floor inside the sunroom, waiting to go back up, and the nuts which hold it to the wall were laying inside of the light box cover attached to the light fixture.

That is, they were until Mishkin found them.  He’s very good at nosing around things that are new to his environment.  When he started picking them up with his teeth (a bad thing on several levels), I moved them to one of the containers under the end table.

"Hmmmm. Could it be in this one?"

You know that shell game with a pea?  Well, this is hiding nuts from a pea brain.  Very similar to your shell game in most respects.