Fun in ice

 My wayward son and his girlfriend came to visit on Friday. Of course Emily's little girl Amari was the highlight. I'm just a sucker for little ones...no matter what!

They call her Mari. And pronounce it Mar-eee. For whatever reason, Mari decided I was okay and made her intentions always clear with her hands with the universal 'kid' sign of UP! UP!

Come on, who cannot have their heart melted by a little one like this!

To be sure, she was also fascinated by my Skunk Hat. 

The trail was beaten down into pure ice and we all wore ice cleats except the little one. We took turns carrying her or steering her by her hood. It involved a lot of 2 year old gibberish and sometimes yelling by Mari. I told mom and son to let her holler all she wanted, we were in the 'wild' woods and it didn't bother me at all. 

After all, she has immense energy. Cold fresh air and a hike would be great for her after a 4 hour car ride.

To get into the ice caves/shelters is not easy on a good day. This day it was all ice from the recent rains. Mari has no fear at all. Here is a pre slide check. Emily is down the icy path ready for catching her daughter. Mari loved it.

Here Mari decides to run to me across the slippery ice.

Group shot. I set my little pocket camera on a mini tripod and set the delay for 30 seconds. I slid down the ice formation to the others and scrambled to get in the shot. My son was like: BE Careful Mom! And we all laughed when I slid past them to the dirt.

We ended out trek at Weister Creek's ice formations and headed back to the car.

My youngest, Mari, and I:

and Weister Creek:

I have to admit I had fun. It was a difficult hike with a little one and we did it. 

Next time I told them we'd take an easy trail that we could take a stroller on. Yeah...maybe! 

One little clump of Fungi

 

This little pretty clump grew on the log next to where I have one of my trail cameras. It was really small maybe an 1.5 inches across the top. I just grabbed a quick shot for a possible ID later. 
One of the books says it was a grey oyster mushroom. Though seriously? I'm not picking and eating things I don't know enough about.

I can forage quite a few wild plants, but the fungi/mushroom world is still a work in progress for me.

Day two...They are starting to look ragged and breaking down. Tiny insects were all over them. Small enough to be 'flea' sized!

The didn't smell bad but a flurry of tiny bugs flew up when I poked the fungi.

Day three, a bit more ragged! But very beautiful in the heat and oppressive humidity.

Okay....

Well, it may be a type of oyster fungi. And I DID get back there while checking fences and it just looked like a mess of slimly blob stuff.

And then...

it was gone as if it never was.

And this it is with fungi. It is there and then gone. 

I find it so incredibly fascinating.

Fungi, lichen, moss, all those little things in the woods that keep things interesting.

The Woods and New Tool

For me
the door to the woods
is the door to the temple. ~Mary Oliver, Upstream

Now that the big gun deer season is over I can pretty much wander again freely. I had no idea how cooped up I was feeling until I was able to get out again.

This morning the ice was collecting on the grass next to the creek and there was a fairly heavy frost on the plants above it.

One just has to have a love/hate relationship with Multiflora Rose. The red rose 'hips' are quite beautiful as are the leaves with frost.

The thorns however are nasty!

By yesterday afternoon the temperatures rose up into the 40's.

I burned my small buckthorn piles.

This area was choked with dead buckthorn trees that I simply tipped over and stacked them. The area was so dense with dead branches that it was almost impossible to walk through. 

Normally I don't do intensive labor in the pasture, but this area is pretty unique.

It is a rock formation. Below is the view from the top of the rock outcrop. So far I have cleaned the area of all the nasty weeds and deadfalls. The dead tree that my coat is hanging on will get chopped up when someone with a chainsaw comes along. Perhaps I can just push it down eventually too.

My burn piles are very small and very controlled. I don't burn with any winds and this week we had 3 days of calm.

This isn't far from the house, yet it feels isolated. I can sit here on a log and read if I want. I can sit and just listen and watch the woods too. 

In the black dirt I'm hoping to plant shade grass and see if I can't get some ferns to grow too.

I have a lot of fun and imagined plans for this spot. 

[Wouldn't a little movable shelter be nice there??? Bird watching? How about putting out a feeder and sitting there photographing them? Sitting and reading?...ahhh so many possibilities.]

Look at it this way. It is keeping me off the streets!

For the old larger Buckthorn trees, I gird them with my machete. I peel the bark from around the limbs and trunk. They should die and stop spreading. Well, that is my hope. Once the roots die back I'll be able to tip them over and chop them up.

I ordered a new tool to help me with cutting down the smaller trees.

I don't use a chain saw for obvious reasons...I'd cut my legs off. I generally use a handsaw and it gives me great satisfaction to saw a 5" tree down. But it is tiring. Thank goodness the Buckthorn never get to be as big as oak trees!

New Tool. 

This will mostly be used on 3 to 6" Buckthorn Trees. I will saw them down and dab the stump with a Herbicide or cover it in a plastic bag to kill off the roots. I could use soup cans too to smother them. 

This tool was husband approved. We had a lengthy discussion about my cutting abilities and dis-abilities. 

Watch out multiflora rose and buckthorn! I am on a mission!

Decoration---ing & Fence Dancing!

This is one half of my house, literally. This is the view from our added on bedroom doorway---of the living room. It looks out towards the porch on the south side of our house. I was considering putting up a Christmas Chair again this year. 

Hubby watches TV from the folding chair. There is our drying rack next to the cabin heater. Charlie sits in sunlight. To the left is the loveseat. That is it. We can't social distance in our house. If I got sick, I'd have to quarantine outside somehow. That means using the horse trailer with a plug in for heat [let's say it would be colder than a witch's you-know-what and using the outhouse while prepping meals and doing chores?]....Yes our house is that little that we would breath the same air no matter what.

Anyway, that aside...

This is the other half of the house. Photo taken from the fridge. The oven and sink are to the left out of sight.

There is a half story upstairs but that is only used for storage or when we have company. And we haven't had company since February 2020. I keep my ever growing supply of toys, baskets, tea cups, and other items used for Still Life Photography in one of the rooms. Sometimes the items are neatly stored away and other times it appears as if a tornado has hit the room.

I don't know if I will do the Chair/Tree this year or not. Last year it was boxes that I decorated. You know, wooden dynamite boxes, sulfuric acid box, a nuts and bolts box, and an ancient nesting box that my MIL had. I am not conventional at all. Things just sort of start coming together. I put things in place and then tear it apart and start again.

I gather sticks and weeds to make winter bouquets. I even found some dead birch branches to do 'something' with. I'm not sure yet. But I am looking for some pine boughs to make something with too. 

I explained this nonsensical method to my 30 something nephew. I get an idea in my head and then I just go into some sort of zone. I grab things together and don't think too much of what I am doing. I rearrange, mess around, rearrange some more and then there it is. Sometimes it is a disaster and sometimes it works. My mind gets into some kind of otherworld Zone and it keeps moving along. I can't stop it until I make a creation of some sort.

So I picked up sticks in the yard. There are always branches falling from the trees. Sometimes I just chuck them into the burn pile. Today I gathered the more interesting ones and stuck them in my now much faded and dead looking flower garden. I thought, hmmmmmmmm....they could hold a string of lights!

Honest, it will look much nicer with a fresh snowfall on it. But I am very pleased with my outdoor lighting effort. There is only one other household that could possibly even see it.
The neighbors at the top of the ridge.

Below is a reindeer metal thingy that a lady gave me years ago. It is creepy in a way and it is supposed to be a Christmas Card Holder. I've repurposed it to be a yard 'decorate'. No problem. I am odd I will admit it.

The head nods up and down and back and forth, it had a tendency to tip over startle my husband and old Jack Russell Terrier....so for years it was remanded to the shed in purgatory. I brought it back out to add to my flower garden, I had a friend drill holes in the base so I can use spikes to hold the 'Moose/Deer' in place.

He/she is still a bit on the creepy side, but people often ask me what the hell is that supposed to be?

Hey, why not? Even the UPS guy was like...what the heck? Yeah. If it gets a reaction like that, it is worth keeping around!

Do you...

Recall the Fence Feud? I went out and rearranged all the ghosts and the Stick People. I made sure that my movements were not within camera range from the other side of the fence.

So to my surprise, the dude on the other side moved the camera to point onto my property. I suppose to see what I was doing. I wandered there just after sunrise on Friday morning.

So I thought for a moment and then decided to give them a show. Really I thought about pulling off my old patched coveralls and peeing right there so he could see my butt. However I decided to have a bit more fun.

I slowly put my camera down and then began to sway back and forth with my arms raised. Then I turned and slowly waved my arms up and down. I kneeled on the ground [facing away from the camera] and raised my head and arms as if in prayer to some unseen god of the forest. Then fell flat on the forest floor and writhed as if possessed.

When I got up I Cursed their side of The Woods. Angry Face, throwing invisible and voiceless curses in the direction of the camera. I really don't know how to make a curse, but I had to make it look good!

I am giggling here. His camera was pointing into the morning sun so the photos this person will get will be silhouettes. 

Hunting season ends tomorrow at sundown. 

This Spring, I am fixing the fence and attaching No Hunting signs to it. 

I don't think this person knows how much entertainment he has provided this old lady with during the Pandemic.

 

Bear Poop, Tide Detergent, Moth Balls

Well there it was... Friday the 13th!

We had 19 degrees in the morning and it felt a bit cold. I took a walk to the creek just after sunrise to see if there was any ice formations or tiny ice crystals on the rocks and grass.

I found one spot where the splashing water caught on a plant and formed a beautiful little ice formation!

The morning light in the creek was really quite beautiful and I took my time exploring. I'm glad I did. 

I found this:

Do Bears Poop in the woods?

Of course they do!

And they do it in the middle of a creek too!

I'm pretty sure this could be the same bear I saw while picking berries this summer. Generally the bears move on from our area to look for a mate. 

Black Bears are seen around here once in a while but generally it is a rare sighting, unless the population up north forces more bears south.

Anyway. The bear has stopped here more than once. There were a few piles on these rocks...well unless another bear decided to use this spot a toilet too? The under layer which is older is corn, the top layer is apples. There was another pile, but I didn't think you needed to see that.

Interesting! I thought it was a pretty cool find. 

I woke up early with a start in the middle of the night and for some odd reason I thought of Moth Balls. 

I'd used Moth Balls to deter the Ground Hogs from infesting my shed last year. They were making nests under a pile of old lumber. I had tossed Moth Balls under the lumber and dumped ammonia on top of the lumber and around their holes. They abandoned my shed within a few days. 

It smelled awful too, so I opened the doors and turned the exhaust fan on to keep it from being overwhelming.

So what about Moth Balls? 

It is a perfect critter deterrent. I use a few moth balls around the engine of the riding lawnmower's engine to keep the mice from chewing on the wires. 

How would Moth Balls work on deer? 

Rich said scented detergent would repel deer too. 

So being sly, and not wanting to deal with the guy who wants to shoot deer as they come up the trail out of my woods and towards where he parked his stand..........

I took some Tide Soap powder and spread it on the logs in the 'shoot' zone. Since we had a skiff of snow, it looks exactly like snow!

I added Moth Balls to the area, placing them here and there. I didn't need many and the smell was nasty. 

I had some old Tide detergent I'd purchased by mistake. Someone told me to use the powder in my machine. One, it doesn't work well, and two, I bought scented Tide. We don't use any scented soaps or softners at all. 

I can smell someone who uses scented laundry soap 20 to 30 feet away now. 

Being the Good Neighbor, I will call my 3 neighbors and let them know that the Bear is still hanging around.

I doubt he/she is a big concern. But I can't wait for some snow to hit the ground so I can do some tracking. I think I enjoy working out the stories that tracks of animals leave in the snow.

I would love to 'hunt' with my camera and get this fella in a nice shot I could frame.

It's Bear-y Time!

Oh wait!

Hot. July.

Berry Briers.

Sweat.

Pokey things.

When I was a little kid and I probably wrote about this before...my mom and Grandma Pearl would get us up on a god awful hot humid and sticky morning.

We'd walk or mom would drive us in the 1965 station wagon to some deep dark woods.

We'd get sprayed with OFF and have to wear long pants, long sleeve shirts, and bandanas over our heads to ward off the horrid deer flies and skeeters...to

pick 

blackcaps.

I think my brother detested these excursions.

I don't know if I disliked them as much as he did. We were given pint paint cans with twine string to use as straps across our shoulders so we could pick with both hands.

We were expected to fill our pints before it got too hot.

I think we worked mostly in silence except for the buzzing of monstrous mosquitoes and deer flies.

At some point in time on one of these trips, I recall having to leave before we filled our pints. Grandma tapped me on the shoulder and pointed.

There was a bear not far off looking at us. Grandma just had us turn slowly and walk away.

At the time I thought it was a pretty cool thing. I'm not sure Grandma did.

So fast forward to 2020. 

There is a patch on my neighbor's land that used to have yellow raspberries, or as my Grandfather called them Golden Raspberries.

Rich and I found them in 2008 and filled a 5 gallon bucket with them. We filled another bucket with blackcaps that year. Back then we could actually drive his truck into the area and pick to our delight.

We came back a third day to pick and found the area decimated. It looked as though a tornado had gone through the patches.

Later on we found out that a wandering bear had come through.

Well I went on Saturday afternoon. To tell you the truth, I like just wandering around the forest and picking berries, or searching for morels. It sort of gives me a purpose to gather food while aimlessly wandering.

So I set out to seek out the yellow raspberries. I hadn't been there in quite a few years so I was curious to see if they were still around. I picked my way down our ridge road and then crossed the fence to the neighbor's untended land.

It was hot  and I knew that I'd be walking through tall grasses so I left Charlie at home. I was really surprise at the amount of wild parsnip that had overgrown the old pastures. Enough so that I had to walk carefully while following a faint trail. I kept thinking to myself ... make yourself tiny!

I was delighted to find my effort rewarded me with some nice patches of blackcaps. I picked and dropped the berries into the ice cream pail with a hole cut in the lid. I had an old leash attached to the handle of the bucket to toss over my shoulders. Not much had changed since I was a little kid. Though instead of going before dawn, I was going midday.

There's a spot where an old oak used to stand over the pasture. It has since crumbled and fallen yet it is like an island of shade. I followed the trails around the edge of it, stepping into the shade to cool off once in a while.

I thought to myself that if I were a kid, this would be the spot that I'd make a fort!

Then I found the spot. After many years, it was overgrown but still there!

I was delighted!

I put my stick down and started to pick.

I heard the UTV's revving up in the valley below and thought to myself that they were loud enough to wake the dead. 

While picking, I'm always aware of my surroundings. Well, I try to be. I looked up as I stepped back out of the bramble.

What?

A black fuzzy pony? No. Wait.

A calf?

No, no cattle in this area any more.

Wait. That.

A black bear Butt!

It trotted off.

At first I thought I had been seeing things. So I followed the trail looking for tracks. I found bear scat.

Hello Bear!

I decided I'd probably picked enough and headed in the opposite direction.

I found more bear scat. I found a patch where the bear had been picking berries too.

Well then.

The Bear could have his patch. 

I walked back [making myself thin as a rail] through the parsnip and golden rod to the snowmobile trail and headed home.

Maybe I'll stick to our woods with the company of the Brat Pack.

Progress!

So, I got the 4 wheeler going. But now I understand that it needs more than just my help.
I sat down yesterday morning and read the manual and Troubleshooting Guide for this machine. Really, I do like this 4 wheeler, and I think with a tune up and spark plug change, it could run for me all winter long, but other than hauling things with the cart, I don't use it much in the winter.

So at CrossFit we were sitting around after working out and someone made a suggestion that was actually a great idea.

This:

Yeah. A Polaris Ranger with a snow plow. These newer UTV's are for working and have engine block heaters and electronic fuel injection and all sorts of gizmo thingies to run in the winter or summer and the cheaper version can haul 800lbs of 'stuff'.
Oh my heart be still.
Yes, it is expensive, but I think I could easily sell the skid steer and get one of these which would be sooooo much more useful!

I'm thinking of how to approach Rich. It may take a year or so, but I think I have found a solution.
Yesterday I 'aired' up the truck tire and moved it to a level spot so if it goes flat again I can take the tire off.
One of the reasons I haven't sold the truck is that we had a conversation about it last year. Rich said that truck was to last as long as he lived. Huh. Do I need to say more?

So on to the fun stuff.

Yesterday morning ... going out for chores....

The dawn was delightful.
The temperatures were mild and dry!

So later in the day I thought I'd take a short walk with Charlie. I took a bagful of stuff for ... well, here it is:

I'm always searching for a fun way to use the woods as a backdrop for some still life photography.
Can you guess which camera I used to take this photo? Hint [the little Tough Camera!]

Or this?

Charlie was not amused at this intervention of his job to smell and search out squirrels. However he did sit still for me. Just would NOT look at me directly. I'll have to try this again with some dog treats!

Lighted vase in between two mossy rocks...

An Elf...

Grumpy Gnome...

Cowboy snowman...

All sorts of fun in the woods!

And then an incredible sunset....

Let the Winter Solstice celebration begin!