Departure from the Dreaded Donkey Diet

So I relented and Rupert now gets a small handful of hay in the evening. He's doing fine foraging, and has even lost an ounce or two. We're giving the boys a little hay from a broken bale before dark...it keeps them happy and sociable.

Warming Up

This afternoon I lit the woodstove for the first time since April. It's downright chilly inside today. Just one log though...don't want to get too warm.

Ch-ch-changes

Mike works close to 70 hours a week driving a truck. It's something he loves doing. Eight-hours-per-day trucking jobs are non-existant in this corner of the world, so he does what he has to do. As a company driver, someone else benefits from all those long hours that he's putting in. We've decided that if he's working that hard for that long, that it should be us coming out a little further ahead financially...so we're in the process of setting up a company and buying a truck ...details to unfold later.

Various and sundry to report...the front of the shop is underway. It's been cold and wet for the last few days. All creatures great and small are well. We've been pulling roots from next year's garden site. I've put away the hummingbird feeder for the year. I tossed the zucchini plant into the compost this afternoon. There's a total lunar eclipse happening in the wee hours of tomorrow morning that I won't be staying up for, although I may peek out the window if I wake in the night. The laundry is put away in it's entirety, and the dishwasher is empty. Wonders never cease around here!

Molly

Enjoying a bed of clover.

Gillis

Best dog ever. Gilly uses his mild deafness and newly acquired slight addled-ness to get away with things he'd never have thought of doing before.

Unforgiven

The gold dog with the black heart (still unforgiven for eating all the carrots), and the black dog with the heart of gold (who in her younger years was worse than gold dog)

Seasons Change

One of the simplest yet greatest pleasures of my life is taking note of the small changes that announce that one season is beginning to morph into the next. Summer seems to be giving way to fall early in the South Cariboo.

A few aspens are already beginning to turn to gold. The small wetland I drive by is now shrouded each morning in an ethereal mist. Buck is shedding the finest hairs of his beautiful sleek summer coat. And I've seen a few Canada geese flying in formation, preparing for their eventual migration south.

Summer's not quite done, but autumn is just around the corner here.

Carrot Carnage

We had our first (and sadly our last) carrots from the garden for dinner Friday. They were young, tender, sweet, perfectly formed and very delicious. When the carrots sprouted in early June, I didn't do much of a job of thinning them. So I was pleased that when I began to pull them that in spite of crowding, they were doing well, and I reasoned that the remaining ones would have more space to continue growing.

Mike and I spent the day doing business in Vernon yesterday. We noticed nothing amiss when we came home yesterday, but first thing this morning when I looked out of the kitchen window as I filled the kettle for tea, in the garden where there once were two healthy rows of carrots there was...nothing. A few carrot tops were strewn around, and there was a large gaping crater.

Mike leapt out of bed to see what was wrong when he heard my shrieks... I pulled on my wellies, threw on a work shirt over my nightgown, and marched out into the morning rain to investigate. An evil, wicked, very bad golden retriever, who shall remain nameless had yesterday merrily dug out and eaten every remaining carrot in my garden.


Here's the culprit:

Catching Up

Dawn on Saturday morning

Sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging, which is probably a very good thing.

Things are settling back to our usual state of being. Jen came up Friday for a quick last visit before returning to Korea. We took the Subaru to Kamloops Saturday morning to get the air conditioning repaired, but the part hadn't arrived. We amused ourselves at White Spot (breaky), Costco, test driving big Volvo trucks, and eating sushi before heading home. Sunday we did a quick peruse of the South Cariboo Garlic Festival and then toodled off up behind 150 Mile and McLeese Lake for the afternoon



Rupert is back with Buck and is all better. We won't be feeding him any hay until probably November in efforts to get some weight off of him. He'll have to make do with foraging a little.


Our last week's frost didn't do any damage to the garden. We had another frost the night before last.I'm not sure why lettuce can handle a bit of frost in the ground, but if it gets frozen in the fridge it turns to instant slime. The potato tops wilted, so I began pulling up potatoes; we have quite a healthy spud crop.


From the garden this week:

A Little Chilly...

We had our first frost of the season last night. It's -0.5 degrees right now, and got down to -1.8 overnight. I'll have to check out how the garden fared, but in the meantime, I'd better get ready for work.

Feeling Better

Mon petit donkey gris is feeling a little more comfy today. He's bearing a more weight on his sore foot, and getting around better. He's utterly unimpressed about his confinement, and with his limited rations. I gave him his medication in a very small bran mash, which he enjoyed immensely.

Buck wanders away to graze, but comes back frequently to hang out near Rupert. They're quite attached to each other, even though they put on a display of pretending otherwise.

I'm going to Lac la Hache this evening with Sam, our neighbour, who knows someone who is selling their horse trailer. It's old, and cheap, and if it's any good I'll probably buy it (once Mike gets a chance to see it). We don't need a trailer for routine use, but it would be a good thing to have in the event we needed to evacuate the boys due to a forest fire. We have a LOT of forest around us that could go up in flames at any time.

Skyscapes from the Porch

Approaching Storm

Last Light on Saturday Night

Poor Old Rupert...

Rupert has a hoof abscess again (he had one last September too). He's sore on his right foreleg and has a marked limp. Gord came this afternoon to try to drain it, but it's too deep in the heel to reach...so we have to wait for it to resolve on its own. I'll pick up some bute tomorrow for comfort, and we'll do epsom salt soaks. In the meantime, he's confined to his pen, and has been told to lose weight.



Things are quiet here now after lots of company on and off for the past six or seven weeks. We had eight friends from the coast up for the long weekend, and we sat up far, far too late around the campfire on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. I'm paying for it today, and will be early to bed.



There's a thunderstorm started up since I started writing this, and 90 lb Lucy is doing her best to climb into my lap to be saved from the dreaded thunder!

My Greatest Talent

I don't consider that I have many special talents. I make good lasagne. I've managed to keep a blog fairly up to date for almost two years, which is somewhat of a record, as most literary projects fizzle quite quickly. I drive a stick shift quite well. I haven't hit the house with the tractor for several months.

The area where I really excell is in spotting four-leaf clovers. I can be standing outside having a nice conversation with someone and suddenly bend down and pluck a mutant stem of clover. Find me a clover patch, and I'll find you a four-leaf clover lickety split. There are testaments to my clover finding talents in several of my large heavy books. I used to press them. I'm not very superstitious, but when it comes to luck, I'd like it on my side. My paternal grandmother was intensely superstitious, according to my dad. One quarter of my genes also belonged to her, so maybe it did rub off just a little.

Here are two specimens, picked fresh today.