Woody’s pink spot has faded away and dogs are doing fine. Fine, considering they are very isolated and we were reminded of how jumpy they can be when recently the 4 of us were on a walk and we walked by a vehicle that was stopped on the road. It was actually two vehicles- some kind of camper thingy connected to a car. The driver was outside doing adjustments or something to the connector. So we are walking along and saying to the dogs calming things and they are doing just fine (not barking at the man) and as we are about past the vehicle, out of nowhere, a little furry head pops out of the driver’s side window and releases a bunch of loud barks. We all get a big surprise, and Woody is is now PULLING ME AHEAD and it is difficult to stop him. And the thing is Woody just won’t calm down. We walk a little more but Woody is TOTALLY FREAKING and his tail is down between his legs and he’s low to the ground and A MESS. Can’t even offer him treats he’s so scared. So it probably took another 10 minutes before he was halfway himself. JEEEEESH! And a couple days later he had some PTSD just seeing a car approach from behind us.

We have not been anywhere at all since the variants were in circulation- curbside grocery and no breweries.

I finally picked up a book or two. i think I was unable to read books during the Trump catastrophe.

I liked all these books. My favorite was An Absolutely Remarkable Thing which read almost like a kids’ book but had adult topics some of which were quite a lot parallel to some things we’ve seen in America this past year. Extraterrestrial was a surprisingly easy read, and I for one am convinced that the thing that went through our solar system was a non-”natural” thing, but I was kind of annoyed the author had to spend so much time telling readers to keep an open mind. People are so lame. Interior Chinatown had a crazy unique approach to its story, making it hard to tell when characters were “real” or “characters”. It was heavy-duty topic and basically depressing.

So far we have seen one or more instances of the following animals on trail cam: Coyote, fox, skunk, bobcat, raccoon, possum, and armadillo! I don’t mention bunnies and deer as that’s all the time. Too early to share any graphs. I put out a little water bowl and the deer drink from it sometimes.

Rob has updated his music playing equipment (long overdue) so he’s been catching up on listening to records when he gets a chance.

In an effort to keep the chickens away from our deck (they poop a lot on it and we plan to spend more time out there come spring), we moved the dog water bowl over to the grass. The chickens drink out of it too, preferring it to their chicken waterer in the coop. So anyway, being extra lazy, I observed that it’s a pain filling up the bowl all the way over in the grass (where there’s poop) and plus, I have to lean over! So we’ve been brainstorming fun ways to construct a water-refilling-system where you can pour into a funnel up on the deck somewhere, and the water is piped along in some roundabout manner to the dog bowl. Perhaps a branch of it goes off to a little water dish for perching birds? Perhaps part of it involves a waterfall? What’s always neat about tangents like this is it’s never just a dream; ROB CAN BUILD IT!!

I can see now that the perching-bird-bowl has to be in a different place or these birds will poop into dog bowl.

I noticed too that we have new fire ant mounds in the yard so I did a quick try at fire ant painting but the ants didn’t really walk through the paint. I tried to thin it out with a toothpick but it didn’t work out so I finally gave up and made an abstract painting with a toothpick.

Mealworms are thriving and I had to replace the oat bran substrate again recently. I finally bought a gigantic bag of this stuff at the local feed store for about 6 dollars. I’ve started to give our chickens a few living mealworms (not the dried ones I had purchased) every day.

We’re in the middle of a week-long cold streak which will break all kinds of records. We just hope the chickens get through OK, the plants around the house, the new fruit trees we planted, and our plumbing. We have taken some precautions, but I’m worried. WHAT A DRAG! We need to move somewhere warmer!

Oh and I recently received two awesome gifts from Raine & Paige. Raine sent me the most astonishing chicken earrings that she made herself! They have chickens and eggs alternately hanging on them!! And Paige sent a mushroom grow kit which grew practically instantly and soon we can harvest and eat them!

More pictures below, all of which were taken on our property.