Tag Archives: wildlife

Full Moon May

The garden is mostly in. The poppys are popping.. the sage is blooming and the wild lilac. We have had a dry spring with mild temps until the last several days of HIGH HEAT (100’s). Watching the clover yard dry up. The deer coming around less as there is less to eat. Haven’t seen the bambies yet, although we had a pregnant doe here for weeks.

Russel’s Aikido teacher from the bay area is here this weekend for a retreat. The potluck was last night and good food was had by all.
He is wrapping up the schools classes. In 3 weeks he will go to Aikido summer camp in the south bay for a week. I hope to have a lot of energy and maybe some money to do some interior work on this house.

The Michigan trip is booked for June 25 -July 11. Dad does have even more cancer. The melanoma keeps spreading, there are spots on his lungs which nothing can be done about, and a lump in his neck that is some kind of squamous, but not skin cancer kind. There is at least one more surgery ahead, if he chooses to do it. Probably just before we get there.

I have started to speak it out loud, that he may die soon… or not .. as he is a tough old guy (86) going on 60. But I need to prepare myself. This one will be hard to let go of.

My friends T and Ter from Florida are actually saying they may come visit this way this summer. I am so hoping that they do. I need them too. I need to see T… just feels like it must happen.

Not a lot of photos to brag about. Haven’t been using my camera much. Got this one in april through the hazy kitchen window:

turkey
 

I have been working a lot.

And Bruce Cockburn, www.cockburnproject.net is out on a short tour which is being recorded and filmed for a new LIVE-Solo CD and DVD. Wish he was doing some shows on the west coast for this, but he’s not.

There is also a lot going on locally. Too much to really go into here, but here is a link to a local blog who keeps everyone informed at least to what is going on with code enforcement, diesel concerns, 2nd district elections and Reggae wars, to name a few. I use it only as a means to being alerted and seeing what some (few) people are thinking about these issues. I do not generally agree with a lot that is posted over there as opinion.

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Winter

The holiday season brought with it winter weather. From freezing temps and water lines to snow to hurricane force wind and rain back to freezing again. There has been some sun in there as well, but weather is dominate this year.

snow
 

A murder of crows:

Crows
 

With so many gray dark days I haven’t had as much power as I would of liked. But mostly the big storm was just a windy event that took out our internet satellite tria.. the dish was ok.. and that took a few days to get replaced. We had a few small water leaks where it shouldn’t be issues too. Still have a couple of those.

Solar Power is wonderful to have though. So many people here and across the state were without power for days on end. We were warm (wood) and had lights and phone and internet and directv most of the time 🙂 Being off the grid does have its advantages.

Dad is not going to get full range of motion back into his left shoulder. The pain is getting less and they are planning a vacation to white sandy beach for a week here soon. So that is good. Meanwhile, I really need to plan the Michigan trip for the summer now. With all the news of airline mergers and prices going up, I don’t know whether to wait or book soon??

I have been archiving and jacketing dozens of live Bruce Cockburn shows that have been sitting here waiting for that for a couple of years!

I also got the Ion Cassette Tape to PC and the Ion turntable to PC. I have only used the cassette to PC so far.. finding out that many of the cassettes I wanted to get onto cd are just too far gone to be worth the time. I fear how the albums may sound!? But it’s a project that I have wanted to deal with for many years.
Hopefully by spring it will be done and new space will appear in this small house 🙂 [not done yet!]
Then I will tackle the vhs to dvd tapes that I want to keep and get rid of or store somewhere out of the house the rest.

Went to Eureka last week and we saw Cloverfield. A monster movie.
Doesn’t really live up to all the hype and yes it has all been done one way or another before…yet it was gripping edge of your seat 90 minutes of ..”What is that!?” Great monster.. 🙂

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And life moves on…

So after 2 weeks of being totally down, I could finally do a little work, not much.

The site I had been working on really wanted to go live by June 3 and we made that date! There is still much work to do on the site, but it was together enough for her to start telling people at the annual Summer Arts and Music Festival.

Go visit Seinensilk.com and see what I have been up too! (check out her gallery!)
This is Margriet at Summer Arts Fair:

Margriet Seinen booth at Summer Arts
 

As part of the moving from the town house to the land full time, it meant selling my 1971 VW bus. Well, selling is the wrong word, I practically gave this one away to another lover the VW bus world:

71 VW bus pulling away to a new life
 

It was a end to an era, sort of sad. I used to live in my bus, travel, go places …but once I got here, that life style seem to end for me. Even leaving the town house after 16 years was also an end… lots of new beginnings though, and no regrets.

flowers garden in town
 

I will miss the town garden though, it takes care of itself now, and I can’t really have that type of planting here. All we have going now is the veggie garden with a few poppies and a few plants in pots I brought out. The sun here is like a blast furnace lots of days, so lush we won’t ever be, especially with having to pump our own water.

everything needs to find a home
 

So this is where we are now.. made all the dead lines we had, and now we are unpacking, sorting, storing, and moving stuff from the shed to the house and back to the shed.. lots going to thrift store. Many things have been packed for many years, and we need to make room in the stoage shed for the stuff from town that we want to keep.

I have a feeling this type of thing will be on-going all summer, making this place really home. Getting some art up and textiles on the walls. We will get satellite TV soon and satellite internet by fall. I am still overwhelmed, not fully healed, and antsy to be done with it all, but hey living in paradise makes up for it.

Buck just outside our bathroom window. He had his whole crew with him that day..5 of ’em just laying around chewing their cuds. 🙂

buck
 
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Busy Busy Busy ..

Very little time at the town house with my computer and often that time is very tired time. I am starting to miss my more tech-self, I am yearning to learn new software programs like maybe redo my CreationsDreams.net site in www.drupal.org? I need to redo this blog as well and am debating with myself just which way to go.

Many of my web-friends are using pmachinePro, now that it is free, many have also gone to EE, www.expressionengine.com, which is not free. WP, www.wordpress.org, is very popular, but some how I don’t think I will go that way. [many years later and I did!]
Gallery 2 is now out, I started using Gallery 1 on my little EyeSee gallery, but never took it where I wanted it to go. I think I may turn this blog in to more of a photo gallery with commentary, don’t really know yet. Feels like I want to redo all my sites though, just need to start the process.

It would be good to feel passionate about this web stuff again, after the last years lull and focus on homesteading and home development, there’s less heaving lifting with web development 🙂

I just uninstalled an old Norton AntiVirus from the old W98 machine. I installed AVG Anti-virus and right now I am downloading the large virus definitions file. Then when my newer XP machine comes to the land with me, we will still be able to use the W98 for internet here in town. We haven’t connected with that machine for close to 2 years cuz of no protection.

I have had right hand thumb problems ever since I wood filled the plywood sub floor before we painted. It’s as if the extendor ligament is stretched to the limit (at night laying down trying to sleep, and really bad in the morning), I have to use my other hand to get it moving and then it is a bit stiff all day and sort of ‘popping’ out of its track, or so it seems. I started going to a chiropractor, knowing full well that I needed a full adjustment as it has been years since the last one, So she did all that and most felt better, but the thumb thing isn’t getting better, and its my typing / mouse thumb … yikes!

So Monday I go see a PT who every one raves about, and hopefully he will be able to tell me if this is fixable, or arthritis starting (oh I hope not!) This has been the other reason I haven’t spent the time I should at the computer this summer.

Once the moving of machines start, I will probably be ‘offline’ for a while. I pray our phone lines at the land aren’t as slow as many folks say. Just doesn’t seem like we can take on satellite internet just yet. I have been looking for an alternative to DirecWay, found Wild Blue, but they have no installers locally at all, and price seems to be the same. So what surfing I do will even be slower than here in town on dial up (44kbps). Guess I will add to the list of wants, needs, desires!! (along with Tivo, a pda, home theater surround sound, ipod or other mp3 player, good stereo speakers ……).

Oh, and yes, the house isn’t even near ‘done’ and there is no landscaping, outbuildings need to be created, water system needs major work.. and on and on it goes.

For my birthday though, this year, we bought a cd player for my new (10 year old) 4 Runner… a very nice Alpine which plays mp3s and wma files, and is set up to receive ipod or satellite radio. So it can grow with me. I was really getting tired of listening to old cassettes, although I found some keepers that I want to burn to cd, just need to find a cassette player and get the cords so I can transfer to this machine and clean up and burn.

Painted ‘Teresa’s Tan’ subfloor:

painted sub floor
 

Many rounds of wood:

firewood
 

Some of the cords:

firewood
 

Faun, from the pregnant doe, Doey, who lives close by:

faun
 
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Baby Bear

Last weekend late at night Russel heard a sound coming from the garden fence, using a big Mag Light he spotted a baby bear! I was so jealous that I wasn’t there to see it too… well look who strolled through our yard on Thursday:

Bear baby
 
Bear baby
 
Bear baby
 

We haven’t seen Mama Bear yet, but she must be close by. These were taken through the window, so they are not as clear as I had hoped.

We do live in the wilderness, it truly is a nature preserve 🙂

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Living in the hills

It seems this has become a monthly blog of mostly pictures. I hope to some time soon update my gallery, EyeSee with more of them.

Not any real ‘news’ just juggling ‘town office’ and land home, trying to keep both stocked and clean in itself is a struggle.

We have started the process of putting in our solar-battery array-generator power system. Will have the first onsite consultation within a couple of weeks.

Here’s who’s been visiting lately:

deer-we call him Spike
 
deer
 
baby squirrel
 

All of these were taken through windows, so some contrasting and levels were used. I can’t seem to get a good picture of the raven pair — they are just to flightly, but I keep trying. There are about 3 more deer in this herd, who weren’t present. But there are always shots that got away…

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Early Spring ’05

We have had beautiful (60-70’s) and sunny weather most of the last month. Not necessarily a good thing, but lovely just the same.
No real news.. just working on getting more settled at the land. It’s a long and rough road.

We do live in a beautiful paradise.

Quite a big woodpecker is tearing up our log!

Pilated Woodpecker
 

This was taken through the kitchen window…I adjusted contrast a bit much.

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