Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Pet News’ Category

All the photos I said I’d upload yesterday… mostly no comments on them, figure it out for yourself what it is. FORGOT to photo the cantaloupe garden, but I have barn swallow photo to make up for that. :)

Finally, for those who need to see a copperhead snake, dead or not…
just a link to the gallery:

http://vyxxan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/deadsnake.jpg

Hugs,
Vyx

Had the day off today from my new job. A volunteer furlough, but I didn’t mind at all. Since I’d been working a 4 day week the past couple years I was almost starting to miss having Fridays off after starting at the new place. However, I am loving my new job a LOT. It’s just so nice to not have to get up at 4 AM and then not get home until after 5 PM. Everything seems to be working out just great at the new job and although it can be tedious, I still like it a lot better than the old job!

So, on to garden news and other stuffs… well, first of all BuddyMack almost killed Ron yesterday while Ron was mowing. Buddy is on a trolley and he went running back to his house while Ron was going by on the mower. Nearly took Ron OFF the mower when he got clotheslined by the chain. Ron’s face is cut up and he lost his glasses but found them again before they got stepped on or worse. I got home from work and Ron was in the house cleaning his ripped up face off. Poor Ron, his face is quite sore. BuddyMack on the other hand can probably be left off the trolley more often. He never goes running off any more… but we still live too close to that road, and I can’t be having my dog getting run over. The trolley is to keep BuddyMack safe. When Ron is mowing, though, might be a good time to let BuddyMack loose. (we let BuddyMack off when we are sitting out in the night and he’s perfectly fine, especially if we give him his own chair, lol)

Last week we had a copperhead snake in the garden, well, right up by the garden anyhow. Ron and I were walking down to look at things and nearly stepped on the snake, argh! I stopped Ron, as I saw it first, and then told him to head for his gun. He was sure it would be gone by the time he got back, but I stood there and watched the snake (and the snake watched me) and Ron was able to come back and shoot it. I don’t like killing snakes but venomous snakes in the yard are not cool at all, so they become dead. I’d rather have a dead snake than a snake bitten family member.

A few days after that I watched a mockingbird chase a nice sized black snake through the yard. I followed to see what was up, and then the snake got into a wood pile and coiled up safe from birds and nosey humans. :) Blacksnakes can climb trees and will eat baby birds, so I’m sure that’s why the mockingbird was after it, trying to keep it away from the nesting area. Those are the kind of snakes I like to see in the yard! (okay, well except for the baby birds thing)

Speaking of birds, so far all I have here at the feeders are male hummingbirds. I’m waiting for the main crowd when I’ll put up every available feeder (I have 6) and be filling them constantly. That’s when the big migration goes through… it only lasts a couple of weeks at the most, but when that’s going on I’ll have 30 to 50 birds hanging around drinking up the sugar water. Should be pretty soon.

I did take some photos to share, but I forgot to go in and resize them before starting this post, so it will have to wait. Probably no one wants to see a shot copperhead, but will want to see sunflowers that have started blooming. Oh, and I have volunteer petunias again… not a lot, but a few tough it out and come up every year. I got those seeds from Ron’s mother before she passed away… I wish I could make them thrive but my gardening is rather lazy. I’m happy if a few bloom every year. One year I had a big clump of them mixed in with weeds… and I sprayed them all with Roundup before I realized what they were.

As far as vegetables go this year, we’ve gotten to eat broccoli twice. I don’t think 4 plants was near enough. We planted twice that in cabbage, but no cabbage heads yet. What the heck I’m going to do with that much cabbage I dunno. Eat a lot of coleslaw, I guess! I’ve also been pulling up radishes. I got some German Giant radish seeds this year and boy, I love those. HUGE radishes, they go from seedling to golf ball sized in no time at all. I’ve had good crops of radishes before, but mostly NOT good. Radishes are really easy to grow, and quick, but the past couple years I haven’t gotten any to do well. Either I plant them too early, or too late, or don’t water them enough or something. I had a small crop that mostly didn’t do anything of ordinary radishes. Then I made a spot for the German Giants. I’m impressed. I’ll never grow another variety. Ron doesn’t like radishes, so I can’t plant too many, but me, I love em so I will plant a small row every spring.

I’m thinking I ought to have a farm stand this year. We did get a bit carried away with the veggie garden. Lots of potatoes didn’t come up, but what did… sheesh, that’s still more potatoes than we use in a year. Corn is always too much, but you gotta plant extra because of earworms and coons coming to steal it all away. I’ve got lots of green beans and cukes and squash, too. I forget how many tomato plants we have… too many, though. 14 I think. Even though I will freeze lots… it’s still too many. :) Along with all the grapes and blackberries… we’ll be filling the freezer up this year for sure.

Today we planted cantaloupe down in the spot below the blackberries… a triangular shaped yard between the berries and the barn. We got some 16 ft wide black plastic and laid that down about 2 weeks ago. Moved it and mowed again, and then today Ron dug up 4 spots in the middle. Then he ran some hoses and rings of soaker hose around those 4 spots and we put the plastic back over. I cut out plastic in the middles of the rings of soaker hose and planted seeds. The plastic will keep the weeds down and warm the soil up while also conserving moisture. I’d =like= to get the whole regular garden done like that, but we will see… :) Last time I grew cantaloupes there I got lots, right up until the coons found them.

Well, tomorrow I will add to this with some photos. I need to take a picture of the cantaloupe garden, anyhow, and the other stuff. Plus the new hanging basket I bought myself for Mothers Day. :)

Hugs,
Vyx

We got a mild frost a little while back.  I was surprised, actually… usually we are totally safe when they say we are going to get a frost.

Not this time, actual visible damage to the tomato plants.   We’d picked the only 2 tomatoes close to being ripe, just in case.  The plants got a little damage, but not a lot, and they’ve since recovered.  They are also covered with green tomatoes.  Dang it.  I doubt any of those will get ripe, but you never know, so we are leaving em out there.  I don’t have anything I want to do with green tomatoes, nothing at all.

Anyhow.  I sold my muscadine grapes.  Crazy, huh?  I offered them on Craigslist and someone snapped up the offer… come pick them for a dollar a pound.  I told them I was considering pulling the plant out… and they said they’d come back next year for grapes, too.  So, I may keep the vine.  We will see.   I know I spent more on water than I got for the grapes.  Wasn’t expecting the dang things to smell like diesel fuel when getting ripe.  Still, a pretty good harvest for a first year vine, altogether about 30 lbs!  Sold 18 lbs for the price of 15, gave away about 12 lbs but said it was 10.  Picked a pound or so and juiced em… gave that container to the folks that came and picked and paid for the ripe grapes.  Heck, maybe I should just dig up the vine and give it to them!

I also sold my citrus tree.  I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about it on the blog, but I grew it from a seed.  Every winter I haul it in the house and try to kill it, and every spring I haul it outside and neglect it some more.  I’d never got it to bloom, and it probably should.  I advertised it on Craigslist a while back, got a couple emails, no follow up.  This time I got someone local super interested… bam, she was at our house ready to take it home.  Funny, I think she lives just across the little valley from me, on the next ridge.  I asked that if she got it to bloom that could I please have a photo?  I was happy my tree was going to a good home… it was like trying to place a puppy almost.

The neighbor guy that likes to hunt has been walking through our yard.  We give him access to the woods.  As far as I know he’s never actually killed anything… hunting is just a hobby that gets him out of his house.  He always starts off with bow season, then switches to guns when he can.  I doubt that gun he’s carrying now is legal, but I doubt he actually shoots anything anyhow.  He’s got 6 kids… he probably just wants some peace and quiet in the evening.  He’ll go all winter, as long as hunting seasons last…  and when I walk my dogs at least one dog will haul off into the woods and find him every once in a while, hah!  Hey, he =knows= I walk the dogs off leash.  BuddyMack has come home with the guys gloves… go way damn dog, have a glove…   and then here comes Buddy so proud and happy with his glove he hunted.  :)

I bought a bunch of  fall  bulbs and planted them…  lots and lots  of pink tulips, some red oxblood lilies and some yellow species tulips and my favorite fall blooming spider lilies.  I still haven’t found the bag of narcissus that my friend Jan gave me a year or so ago…  it’s like it grew legs and walked off.  Wasn’t the right time to plant them right then…  poor bulbs are probably dead now, but I still can’t find the dang bag.  She’ll probably never give me anything like that again… what, you just go and lose it?  One thing about planting this year…  I did the major digging and getting the weeds/grass out…  but when it came time to put the bulbs in, Ron came to lift the dirt out so I could have trenches to plant in.   I have to not just plant stuff everywhere I feel like it…  Ron likes to mow stuff down.  He’s mowed down a bunch of my iris because the grass grew up…  I think I’m going to move those iris so he can keep mowing that bit next year.

Oh, and I bought concrete block edging for some flower beds.  Not like building blocks… decorative.  When they mark down the blocks is the time to buy them… if there are any left.  I found one I could live with at 1/2 price, so eventually I’ll have wider beds in front of the house and they will have concrete footing and edging and maybe I’ll be able to keep more of the bermuda  grass out.  Plus pile in more dirt for the plants to grow.  We have plenty of dirt for raised beds…  and I may just go the way my Mom does, and do building concrete block raised beds.  Plant enough flowers and you can’t see em, so what the heck…  it’s another we will see thing…   I can’t go piling a foot of dirt on some of my other flower beds unless I want to go dig up my pink stargazer lilies…. I doubt they will survive if I pile half a foot of dirt on em.

The trees are really beautiful this year, but of course I’m not posting a photo.  Yeah, they are pretty, but to me that’s a sad thing… going towards winter.  I don’t like winter.  Just get rid of the leaves and be done with it, without giving me pretty colors that won’t help.  Blargh, not looking forward to winter.  Never am.  Changing of seasons is nice, but see… I want to go from spring to summer to fall and back to spring.  Let someone else have winter, thank you very much.  :)

Still not smoking, health still giving me fits here and there.  It’s like, you do something good for your body and your body repays you by breaking down somewhere else.    Eventually it’ll be better…  I hope!

I guess I’m almost caught up now…

hugs,

Vyx

Gotta have a kitty photo once in a while.  Stubby likes to come in the house every so often, and because we know he won’t spray, we let him.  He tends to pester Rita a bit, but mostly he just wants to nap on something soft like carpet.  :)

I think he has really grown up to be a handsome cat.  Beautiful blue color, with a cream tinted chin.  For some reason he reminds me of an otter… I think it’s partly the short tail, and partly the teeth I can see when he’s sleeping.

We are finally out of the kitten business.  All the adult females are spayed, so we won’t be having any more kittens here.  Have one adult male to neuter, and 3 boy kittens.    The adult male is Tonic, who has to be one of the wimpiest male cats I’ve ever known… but from his point of view I’m sure it was just a survival tactic.  If your own momma runs you off, backed up by 3 other momma cats… I guess you run away and hide.  We have finally coaxed him back into the herd, and he actually comes up on the porch again.  Just don’t try to pick him up.  Gonna be hard to get him to the vet.

Finished my purse with the twill I dyed while on vacation.  All the sewing machine work was done before vacation was over… and when I got sick midweek and ended up staying home I did the hand sewing one afternoon when I was feeling slightly better.   Still don’t know what is wrong with me, but at least the doctor I saw on Wednesday didn’t say heartburn and not listen to me.   He gave me something else to take, and set up a ct scan for today.  Got to take my new purse out and about to be admired.  :)

I love how this fabric came out, and changed up the purse quite a bit for it…  no quilting, for one thing.  I put some sturdy fusible interfacing on the insides to give it a bit more stiffness,  plus made the outside pocket big enough to take over one whole side instead of that wimpy little pocket that the pattern has.  Oh, and longer handles.  It still has the whole lining with built in pockets…  I do like this purse pattern for the most part.  Takes quite a bit of work, for something that should be fairly simple.

Of course I didn’t realize when I enlarged that pocket so much just how much of the side it would be taking up…  and forgot to leave room for handles to be sewn on.  Plus, I covered up some really nice fabric, darn it!  It also isn’t sitting straight… but neither are the pockets on the inside.  I was lazy and not using a lot of pins.

But as you can see, that double pocket is quite useful now… deep enough for reading glasses and deep enough that stuff won’t fall out.  Not sure I need the whole side in pockets like that, but for sure it’s more useful than the previous version.  I mostly carry my little reading glasses in that case in the left pocket… but I have to dig in my purse for them.  Now they are out and handy.  Heck, I can carry a few pairs now…  in case I forget I’ve got some stuck in my shirt and need more.  :)

The pocketless side of the purse.  Click on that and look at it… isn’t that fabric absolutely lovely?  I never would have thought that those two colors went together if it wasn’t for my friend Rabbit.  She wanted a shirt with those 2 colors and one other… and I thought ugh, mud.  But it came out so lovely I actually did another for myself and then decided that I wouldn’t mind the purse in those colors, either.

Ron and I are both on day five of no smoking now.  I’m using the patch.  Ron is using nothing but will power.  He seems less bothered by not smoking than I feel… I get that 2 min craving but I don’t see Ron doing =anything=.  I’m sucking down lots of cinnamon and coffee candies… Ron isn’t even chewing nicotine gum.  Heck, even with the patch I want nicotine gum.  (but I know not to)  I think we’ll both be fine…    I know I needed him to quit because I am easily tempted if there are cigs around.  He knows he needs to quit because it’s a dang money drain he can’t afford.  Me, I’ve been wanting to quit again for years, so I just really needed Ron to get on board.  Together we can back each other up, and it’s working out well.  Yay for us!  (and thanks for all the encouragement from my friends!)

Got a bit of cooler weather again and rain today, so I got out my knitting.  Instead of finishing the fingerless glove I was working on and got tired of last winter….  (after making one pair) I decided that I needed to knit my grandbaby  a little hat.  So, that’s what I’m doing, a blueberry blue hat in acrylic yarn.   Just sort of winging it without a pattern, sort of like the last acrylic hat I did.  I cannot do ribbing any more for some reason.  That switching back and forth from knit to purl just makes me crazy with having to pull the yarn this way and that.  I’m sure part of that is that I totally forgot how to knit continental again… my hands just automatically do it the way I learned when I was 5 or so.   Having something to do with my hands is nice when I’m quitting smoking though…  so I’ll work through this hat and then probably go back to something simple where it won’t matter so much about the knitting/purling thing… because it will be felted.  Hmm, that’s a thought, maybe I should just knit the baby a big wool hat to felt up.   :)

Well, this is all the news I can think of now….

hugs,

Vyx

Libby had some kittens a while back… we don’t know where or how many. Instead of having them here at the house she goes somewhere where she feels safer. I don’t blame her, the last time she had kittens at the house one of our other momma cats took over Libby’s babies. Stole them from her, basically.

So, Libby has them and keeps them somewhere else. I suspect the barn, but Ron looked and looked in the barn for them and didn’t find them. But then… she brings them home. These have been home on the porch for about a week now. They are already old enough to be playing with each other and stuff like that, not too shy either, considering! (Ron says that Libby told them people are okay, lol)  I am guessing these kits are 4 or 5 weeks old.  They have teeth.  Tiny cute teeth.

Anyhow, on to the photos… and it’s HARD to take good photos of little kittens.  I put them into a chair instead of me laying on the cold concrete porch.

Cheddar colored ears! And fluffy grey ears!  They both have blue eyes at this point, don’t know if they will change or not.  All kittens seem to have blue eyes up until they start eating solid food, and then the eyes start changing color (although not usually the brilliant blue these kits have).

Photobombed by Frankie, lol!

We want down, this is no fun.

My hand, trying to get faces again.

Okay, this is the best way… hold em up in the air and get mad looks.  But look at that sweet face!  This guy has cheddar colored ears but a cheddar and ashes tail.  :)

My face needs washing.  Where is my Mom?  Kitten is more cafe au lait colored, where his bro is pure white except for points.

And finally… a photo of Libby with baby cheddar ears. His name is Snowball, Ron named him… I don’t usually name them until they are a bit older.

I didn’t put her up there… she got up herself after I’d put the kittens back down.  So I put one back up for one last photo.  :)

Enjoy….

hugs,
Vyx