The O-Zone

Clouds moved in night before last and sealed in the heat from the day, which made for restless sleep.  It rained off and on all day yesterday, short brief showers which were enough to drop the high temperature over twenty degrees from one day to the next.  It felt wonderful!

Late in the day the clouds dissolved and we were treated to a very pretty sunset that lasted virtually no time at all.

My favorite sort of sunset is like this where the clouds are underlit by the sun and intensely bright.

On the Packrat eradication front, we have gone two days in a row now without catching one.  There are two possibilities:  We have cleaned out the neighborhood; or they have gotten smarter.  We are optimistically hoping for the first possibility.

The bunnies are thick today around the house.  In the flower bed next to the house one full grown bunny who is showing very white feet was harvesting grass and leaves from the Serviceberry bushes.

Blissfully munching away, these little critters are living in a salad bowl full of yummy things to eat....

... completely unaware of the deadly predator lurking less than five feet away.

He’s been very entertained today as a direct result of the multitudes of bunnies frolicking in the grass.

Today we have lots of Bermuda Bowl to watch on vugraph, and clear skies will charge the batteries enabling me to do a bunch of baking.  It is shaping up to be a very nice day indeed, though it is going to be a lot warmer today than yesterday.  Summer is definitely winding to a close and the hot weather, if it comes, is brief.

The black bear who has been hanging around near our house harvesting this, that, and the other, paid a visit to the front of our house last night, as dusk settled in.  Rather than opening the door and saying “shoo!” (bears REALLY hate that word), I tapped on the window glass while Dan went for his trusty weapon, a BB-gun, and headed for the sliding glass doors.

I could see the bears thinking process, “OMG, it’s the woman who says Shoo!” and he turned tail and ran down the hill as fast as his four-wheel drive paws would drive him.  Poor Dan.  Didn’t get a shot off.  Poor Mishkin, he slept through a close encounter of the bear kind.  Poor Opal, she saw a bear! (She’s the one who told us it was there).  Poor Terry, she didn’t see the bear.  Yeah us!  Terry didn’t see the bear.

Much excitement ensued, albeit briefly.  Caught a packrat too last night.  We love living in the wilderness.

We headed south to bring home a kitten who had been rescued from a paper sack which had been dumped in front of a convenience store.  It was a very long day indeed, five hours drive each way.  Meet our little flea-lion….

We named him Prince Mishkin from one of our favorite novels, "The Idiot"

He was four months old and the first thing he did upon arriving home was to chase his tail until he became dizzy enough to fall over; his name was well derived.  Here he is that day, with his favorite baby toy sent home with him by his foster mom; it has a small bell inside so it rings when whacked.  He doesn’t play with this toy anymore, but it is not abandoned.  He tucked it into the carrier in which he rode home with us, and his treasure shares that favorite sleeping spot each day.

He loved this squeaky mouse toy that runs in circles when pushed vigorously with a paw.

His auntie sent him his toy and it resides in his bedroom.  He gives it a whack every once in a while just to see it squeak.  He much prefers the real live mice which venture into our house for a short-lived excursion.  His reflexes are finely developed and he is very fast!

This is his favorite toy, a stuffed lion which was half his size when we first brought it home.

He still carries this toy lion around the house in his mouth, and he pretends frequently that it is ready to pounce on him.  He wraps his front paws around it and hugs it fiercely, biting it on the neck and hitting it with his back feet.  He drags it all over the house, especially if he had no mice to play with overnight.

This was his reaction the first time we set the toy lion on the floor.

He does this Halloween Cat pose in the mornings when I first come out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.  He hops across the floor showing how fierce he is, then smooths down as he reaches me and asks politely to be fed and picked up for a cuddle.  It’s hilarious and always makes me smile first thing every day.

From the moment we brought him home, he loved to dive under this little rug in front of the sliding glass doors.

At first it was a small lump under the rug, and no kitten was visible.  Now the lump is considerably larger, and bits of large cat are completely visible. like his tail and back end, for instance.  He hasn’t figured out that he doesn’t fit and isn’t hidden.  Sometimes he dives in from the glass side of the rug and green eyes gleam from the dark shadows.

His uncle sent him a box of stuffed toy mice. And he surprised us yet again with his favorite game to this day - fetch!

Several times a week he will bring a toy mouse to us, set it down by our feet or shoes and then look up, very expectantly, asking for the games to begin.  We throw his mouse as far as we can, in different directions, and he joyously retrieves it and brings it back for another toss.  Sometimes he pretends the mouse is hiding in our slippers and he will push the toy and our shoes all over the floor.

When not chasing our slippers around the house, he parks both feet into one and claims rights of ownership.

He exhibits one catly behaviour, sitting and staring into space at nothing in particular.

Looking for trouble in all the right places.

The "rodent channel" on Kitty-TV is a favorite. And lord knows he has lots of varieties to watch!

Here he is watching another station…

The "deer channel."

This morning he was engaged in a stare-down with a large doe who was eating leaves off bushes next to the bedroom windows.  She looked at Mishkin intently with her ears upright and quivering, trying to catch the least little sound.  She had Mish’s undivided attention as well.  And for once he emerged victorious as she couldn’t take the pressure anymore and bounced off down the hill and away from the deadly predator.  He was elated, “Respect!!!”

He claims possession of chairs, livingroom and computer... whichever one he thinks will be most in demand by the human servants.

When we return home from any excursion to the outside world, we are greeted by Mishkin at the front door.  He rolls around on the floor, looking for a belly rub to be followed immediately by a wrestling match with whoever is brave enough to donate a hand to the cause.

He acts tough, but he's really just a pussy cat.

Over the course of this past year he went from a four pound baby cat to a fifteen pound tomcat.  He claimed his rightful place in our home and in our hearts.

Happy Anniversary, Mishkin!

The days are noticeably shorter, less than a month away from the autumnal equinox.  The sunset last night was beautiful as a direct result of smoke in the air from forest fires to the south and west of us.

Not a cloud in the sky as far as our eyes can see.

The nights are cooler; this morning our low temperature was 41F (6C).  It is so much easier to get a good nights’ sleep in these cooler temperatures.  Fall colors are starting to appear in some of the lowest underbrush in the woods.  In less than five weeks the trees will begin to turn.  So exciting, my favorite season of the year is approaching.

The hummingbirds are gone now and we have taken the feeders down and cleaned them.  Flocks of small birds fly past the house, in and around the bushes and over the tops of nearby trees in the forest.  Goldfinch are feasting on grasses heavy with seeds, golden and waving in the breeze, joined by sparrows.  In the evening, bats speed through the air around our front porch, harvesting moths and other flying insects drawn to the lights from our windows.

We caught another packrat on the front deck last night.  Mishkin was wild when we got up this morning.  He could hear the packrat attempting to escape from the cage but he was unable to see the sound of the noise.  He took his wildness out on his stuffed toy lion, and has been running full tilt around the house for a couple of hours.  When Dan moved the trap to the edge of the front deck, Opal could see the packrat and she shrieked, letting us know we had caught something; she is really good at stating the obvious.  Terry, on the other hand, was unimpressed; it wasn’t a bear.  Evidently anything smaller than a Bobcat doesn’t count with that bird.  We wonder how many millions of packrats there are on this mountain, and we have come to the realization that we are going to have to continue trapping.

I’m baking a rice pudding this morning, the good old fashioned kind with raisins and lemon juice and cinnamon.  It just went into the oven and it will be a half an hour before it begins to perfume the air.  Anticipation of the smell that emanates from the oven is half the fun in baking, and an excellent reason to indulge in such behavior, in and of itself.

After the pudding comes out of the oven, we are going to go down by the river and take a nice long walk.  Mosquitos are history for the year.

A new experiment using my gluten free baking cookbook – hamburger buns and we will have them tomorrow for dinner after we get home from the dentist office.  We will need something good to compensate for having been at the dentist all afternoon. and the long drive both ways.  This is a new dentist, and hopefully will be an improvement on our last encounter with that species.

These buns are the proper size for our veggie hamburgers, and are supposed to stay soft and fresh for a few days.

The calories for this bread aren’t bad either, the equivalent of two pieces of the bread I’ve been making.  It will be a slightly different taste which is a good thing.  Variety!

We have had a black bear hanging around the past couple of days.  Terry doesn’t approve and she is very loud with her opinion!  Mishkin still hasn’t seen a bear; he leaves the downstairs and heads for higher ground.  He was being such a nut this morning, playing chase the cat with Dan, and growling at several deer that were hanging around the front of the house.  They don’t pay any attention to him at all and what is worse is neither do the chipmunks.

There is a lot of smoke in the air right now from fires to the southwest of us.  It will be so nice when fall rains return to extinguish the fires and clean up the air.

We are thinking about getting some of our projects underway again.  No rest for the wicked, or weary.  It will mean more pictures though, so it must be worth something.

Yeah!!! We’re on the board!  We declared war on these little creatures, and bought a new live trap which seemed like a much more successful type of contraption.  And it worked in just over 36 hours; our first capture.

Does the phrase "Trapped like a rat" ring any bells?

This one was happily building a nest in the crawl space under our house.

They are sort of pretty little animals but they have no manners whatsoever, and as neighbors go they are awful.  One of our human neighbors down the hill has caught 9 of them so far this summer and he recommended this sort of live trap.  We hate killing things but these guys are now on the exception list.  The live trap is now back in place and we will work on cleaning out the crawl space and after we’re sure all those are gone, we will move the trap to the deck and start removing them from the immediate vicinity.  Since we don’t have a dog or cat outside to keep them away, we will have to make this our job on an ongoing basis.

Summer has returned, with record high temperatures forecast for today and perhaps into the weekend.  Last weeks’ rainy and cool weather really spoiled us quickly.  This morning Dan was watching a helicopter with what appeared to be a bucket slung underneath; it was flying around back and forth for a while.  Hopefully they were merely practicing and not actually dumping water on a fire anywhere.  No smell of smoke in the air and the sky is very clear so far today.  The sunset last night was quite amazing looking but alas I was too lazy to go outside and take a picture of it.  The smoke in the air to the west intensified the color to dark red.  If it does that again this evening, will take a picture.

I made another batch of the lemon/coconut/dried blueberry muffins.  Most yummy.  We don’t even bother freezing this kind as they get eaten quickly.

You would never guess these are gluten free and dairy free.

For lunch today I’ll be fixing more of the Amy’s gluten free veggie burgers.  It will be too warm to cook this evening, so we’ll just have some ice cold watermelon instead.  Obviously we are enduring great hardship and suffering out here in the middle of nowhere.

We tried a new veggie burger called Amy’s Bistro Burger, which is both gluten free and dairy free.  AND it is the best veggie burger I’ve ever tried!  I toasted some of the gluten free Sesame Seed Bean Bread I’ve been making, and the taste combination of the toasted bread and veggie burger was amazing.  I’m just such a happy camper today!!!  What a find!!!

This past week we had four days of rainy and cool weather.  It felt like fall had arrived early, with forest fire season ending precipitation!  Most likely this isn’t really the case and a few weeks of hot temperatures and low humidity will put us right back where we were at the start of last week.   Warm weather is on our immediate horizon; the coolness was a wonderful break.

Fall migration is in full swing here.  We saw a flock of Canada Goose on the river, and a larger flock foraging in the grass stubble left behind after harvesting hay.  Groups of Mountain Bluebirds chase flying insects and each other along the roadsides, joined by Western Kingbirds.  The Mourning Doves are congregating on telephone wires, looking at each other and waiting for somebody to decide to leave.  With their tiny little heads, and subsequent lack of brain size limiting any thinking ability, it takes them quite a while for anybody to come to any conclusion, and the flock grows in size.  Hummingbirds have mostly all gone; we have four birds left, a Black-chinned, a couple of Rufous, and one Calliope.  Next week will be four full months of hummingbirds on our porch feeders.

I love fall.

Beginning of their fall molt into completely white fur. They look a little ragged this time of year.

A few days ago we saw a Short-tailed Weasel dragging a young bunny across the front lawn; their prey was at least as heavy as the weasel and it was hard going moving it across the grass.  Last night a large owl was crossing back and forth across the front yard of our house, looking for more bunnies.   We figure we may be down to only 1,499,987 bunnies left after recent successful hunts by various predators.

Breaks in the cloud cover to the west provides for nice sunsets. Last night was no exception.

Fall colors in the sky.

We are thinking about this coming winter and all the things we need to do to get prepared, such as stocking the pantry and stacking firewood in the woodshed.  It is so much fun accomplishing those chores when the weather is cool, such a feeling of accomplishment to see things getting done.  We are planning on completing our interior remodeling projects as well this fall.  And we got the gasket part to repair the generator installed on Friday.  The generator now runs again – hurray, but it isn’t talking to the inverter and at this point we don’t know why that is happening.  It’s a good thing Dan is an electrician!!

Possession is 9/10ths of the law. This concept appears to be hard-wired into felines on an instinctive basis.

Mish looks very contented, having successfully occupied my chair.  As soon as either one of us leaves a chair, he hops in and makes himself comfortable.  He has the squeakiest voice for complaining about eviction when we return and attempt to reclaim his chair.

I made some lemon coconut muffins today, and added some dried blueberries just for effect.

These just came out of the oven and they smell heavenly.

As soon as they cool off a bit we can eat them 🙂

Yesterday we went for a walk by the river, before the heat of the day took hold of everything and slowed our energy levels to a snail pace.  It was an amazingly lovely temperature  for a walk, around 70F with a slight breeze.  The sky looks white because of all the smoke in the air.  Today is even smokier.

A wide deep bend in the river.

An errant breeze ruffled the water and obscured the tree reflection.

Peering through tree branches, the rocks along the shore are visible in the clear water.

It is very peaceful along the river when the sky is clear and the sun is warm.

Today we took care of some small outside chores, and fiddled with the generator enough to figure out which tool we need to buy the next time we go to town.  We need to get this generator running at some point in the not-too-distant future.  But when the weather is so hot and the sky is so clear, it’s easy to say tomorrow.