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Interspecies dining.
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It’s a thing.
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Enough with the pickles.
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I swear all I have to do is type the word here and they show up everywhere.
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Blech!
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The recent wildfires in Canada gave us hazy skies and some eerie sunsets.
* Warning – the following image may cause nightmares. *
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That abomination must be destroyed.
😳
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I really need to separate this line of hostas next spring.
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The bloom is pretty and the bees love it…
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But they’re getting a tad out of control.
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Doing dishes the other morning I noticed movement on the farm across the street.
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A young buck had been startled and was running across the field in front of the not yet finished greenhouses.
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They sure do blend in this time of year.
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In other news I saw an advertisement for a product I certainly could have used back in the day.
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Not dying anymore is all you can ask for in a hangover cure…
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I spied someone on the deck railing recently, and as you can see… the royal feline was clueless.
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The someone was a juvenile Coopers Hawk.
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There’s good hunting under our bird feeders and this beauty was seriously interested.
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After ten minutes of me taking pictures and saying hey, there’s a big bird outside…
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His Lordship caught on.
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Hullo gawgeous!
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Raptors are fascinating creatures.
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And seeing one this close is a special experience.
❤️
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A buffet of carrots, green leaf lettuce and raspberries was laid this morning.
And before long there were two nibblers .
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Then there were three.
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And then things started to get interesting.
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Siblings.
Two legged or four, they rarely get along.
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Wild critters.
We love them, but damn.
This is our little kitchen porch, which is really just a covered landing.
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In the corner there’s a stand on which I place potted plants every year. It’s usually well balanced with one begonia on the top and one begonia on the bottom. Until the woodchucks discovered the bottom flower and started nibbling…
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Bottom flower was then moved to the middle shelf and middle shelf decorations were moved to the bottom.
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Which was fine…
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Until a chipmunk found the bird’s nest and decided he needed to deconstruct it.
And if that’s not bad enough?
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Something has started using our man cave/Barn Mahal porch as a toilet.
WTH?
😳
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We have a plethora of birds who visit our feeders.
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Flocks of starlings that devour suet and peanut nuggets in mere hours.
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We have cardinals and gold finches and rose breasted grosbeaks, orioles and sparrows and mourning doves.
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We also have a duck.
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A female mallard to be more precise, who comes early morning and late afternoon.
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I often wonder what the other birds think of her.
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And if they wonder why her bath is on the ground.
😉
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It was a relatively cool evening…. and even though I won’t be comfortably perspiration free until the mercury drops and the snow falls…. the husband and I headed out to the Barn Mahal porch for an adult beverage.
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I chose one of the local Wisconsin beers our neighbor brought back from her trip. And while the can was artfully decorated with birds in flight, the Central Waters brewing company’s mango wheat tasted nothing like mangoes and was a tad disappointing.
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But the baby chuckers were on the move and we enjoyed their evening antics.
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I believe there were five in this year’s litter…
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Though it could be six because they’re everywhere you look.
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With some of them head and shoulders above their siblings.
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😊
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Though we have not yet driven on our beautiful new driveway, we are walking on it.
Or rather, we humans are walking on it. Lord Dudley Mountcatten remains skeptical.
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Taking him out for a walk has meant strolling around the house on the grass and then watching him plant himself on the kitchen landing.
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Where he sits and stares.
Until yesterday…
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When he finally decided to investigate.
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Momma chuck was watching from the barn porch…
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As his Royal highness took to the tar.
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Not yet a fan of the new black expanse, His Lordship returned to the backyard and his favorite woodchuck burrow.
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This is a tunnel that runs under our bedroom bay window and I wish I was quicker with the camera because a baby chuck stuck his head out, spotted Dudley and let out a true whistle pig screech.
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As far as kitty entertainment goes, squealing woodchuck beats new driveway any old day.
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Because nonsense is everywhere I look.
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I have no desire to cuddle fake bread, but if that was real? Pass the butter baby!
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Fox and chucks are still munching happily together. Guess this is what happens when you lay out an ample backyard buffet.
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I’ve been getting hundreds of junk emails lately. Somehow, someone got my address and has been flooding me with spam. ‘Stuck poop’ is an interesting enough subject line but the fact that the word ‘solder’ is in the sender’s address?
Priceless.
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This is what’s left of the pretty yellow deer proof flower I planted out back. The deer may not like it, but clearly the woodchucks did .
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Ditto that for coneflower leaves.
🥴
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I had to dig up the phlox, lupine and mallow due to voracious woodchuck appetites….
So now they’re all crowding my deck table in pots.
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The neighbor I was cat sitting for returned from vacation and brought me a thank you gift from the Wisconsin Dells.
A bag of local beer! She knows I like sours and brought me a variety to try. Some of them are wonderfully bizarre. The lime green can? A pastry sour with peach, basil, graham cracker and vanilla.
Cheers!
🍺
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Our snow is gone and we’re beginning to see some green grass.
We’re also seeing a nightly herd of 10 who never get together for a group portrait.
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Young, old and the same harem master buck.
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They’re all kicking up their heels because spring is out there… somewhere.
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❤️
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River's world..... 