Under cover

I scrubbed my running shoes the other day - they were a mess after a summer's worth of dust and dirt - and when I was done I turned them upside down on the veranda steps to drain and dry.

And who was hiding underneath when I retrieved them the next morning?

This little fellow.

Nest

Look what we found in the orchard yesterday, on the ground in the orchard, tucked into the edge of the strawberry bed. It's a miracle it survived the marauding chickens.



And the best part, beside that fact it's impossibly sweet? It has Frankie hair woven through.

It's hard work licking out the bowl

But he sure had fun doing it.

The cost of a holiday

Sure, we had fun on our recent trip to New Orleans, but Frankie and Petunia didn't enjoy the experience too much.

Petunia, for whom the phrase scaredy-cat was invented, spent the entire week hiding in the house. Both neighbourhood families who came in to check on things spent a lot of time scouring the house for her, but no way was she coming out. It's a good thing food was disappearing from her bowl with extreme regularity (there's nothing wrong with Petunia in the appetite department) or our good neighbours might have thought Petunia was a figment of our imagination.

Don't feel too bad for her, though. She got her own when we came back. I think we opened the door for her "let-me-in, no, let-me-out" dance about 57 times within our first hour home.

And Frankie. Poor Frankie. Poor sensitive, dear, sweet Frankie. You can feel sorry for him. We knew our going away was going to be rough on him, so we did our very best to find a good place for him to be. Friends are pretty much out of the question, since Frankie can't be left at home alone. We have good friends, but that's a lot to ask. And we didn't want to leave him in a cage in a kennel on a cold cement floor.

So we called around, and talked to a lot of people, and finally decided on a local kennel run by a couple who were willing to bring him into their home with a few other senior and special needs dogs, rather than have him with the general doggy population. We brought Frankie for a visit, checked them out, and decided it was the best of our choices.

He was safe, and well cared for, but really stressed. How do we know? When we picked him up he had his stressed out Cujo buggy dog eyes, and had licked one of his front paws raw. We know those symptoms well, from the days when we were first confronted with his separation anxiety.

It breaks our hearts. If only there was some way to be sure our pets know we will be coming home.

Now, after a few days of his regular routine, Frankie's eyes are his own again, and we have our sweet boy back. But his healing paw is driving him nuts, and he won't leave it alone. We tried a sock, we tried a velcro-fastened bootie. But Frankie is a dog who made a hobby of escaping from crates and closed rooms. Do you think a bootie would stand in his way?

So today we resorted to The Cone. Frankie is being a good sport about it, but he's having a hard time adjusting to his changed dimensions. Kim had to carry him up the stairs because when he looked down as he tried to climb up the cone would catch on the edge of the treads. Our champion athlete who could catch any ball thrown keeps bumping into walls and cupboards. And he keeps looking at us with those beautiful sweet eyes, and we know he's thinking "It's bad enough you left me, now you have to subject me to this indignity?"

That's the cost of our holiday: psychological trauma inflicted on our beloved pets.

It's making us think twice - no, forty-seven times - about our next holiday.

Everything I learned about napping I learned from my cat

I don`t think I need to say any more.

Big snow. Big melt. Big mess.

We got our first significant snow last night, just in time for me to drive home over the Malahat from an afternoon concert in Victoria. Dark, fog, blizzard, winding mountain highway, very slippery roads. I thought it was just the Malahat, which has its own personal weather microclimate, but the heavy snow continued right into Duncan. But I had good company to keep me calm, and good tires on the car, and I made it home safely. Then I counted my blessings.

This being Lotus Land, the day after a Big Snow means a Big Melt. And a Big Clean Up. We had some tree and shrub casualties because of the weight of the wet snow. One pretty-small tree came down entirely, considerately falling right across the road instead of on an outbuilding. The largest rhododendron lost two large branches, and one big euonymous split right down the middle and will have to come down.



If you have been reading this blog for a while you may remember I have a love/hate relationship with our many euonymous shrubs. First came the hate part: they look like insects. Then came the love part: they are glorious in the fall and have pretty berries. Today we're back to the hate part: every time I shook a weighed-down branch to clear it of snow it would snap back and hit me in the face with its many twiggy frozen bits. First I tried standing in a better position and I still got whacked. Then I stood really far back and used a good kick to clear the snow and I still got whacked. Its going to take some mighty pretty berries to coax me back to loving...

With the sun out the snow is melting like crazy, falling in drops and wet clumps from all the branches overhead. Which can make for an unpleasant surprise if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's quite meditative, watching it fall in the pond - the pond almost seems animated, or stocked with really adventurous fish.

The chickens were understandably hesitant to venture out into the world this morning. The old girls because they know better, and the youngsters because they've never seen snow before. Every few minutes one would wander over to the door, peer down at the white stuff, look to the left to see if there was snow in that direction, look to the right in case it was different weather over there, and then wander back into the warmth and safety of the coop

Kim stood outside the chicken door trying to coax them out with a "Where are my brave little chickie-chickies?" and finally she just shouted at them "What are ya, chicken?"

Assistant

Frankie loves Kim. She is his main mama, whereas I am clearly the okay-but-not-the-real-thing mama. He loves Kim and he loves being a chicken farmer's assistant.

Every morning when Kim wakes up she gets dressed and - even before coffee, which to me is inexplicable - she heads out to let the chickens out of the coops and see to their food and water for the day. This is the moment Frankie lives for. He waits for her whistle and her "Want to help me with the chickie-chickies?" and then he's off like a shot with her out the door.

He isn't usually allowed past The Great Divide - not because he's bad with the chickens, but because like most farm dogs he has a taste for poo. Yuck. So Kim makes him wait on the other side of the gate while she does her chicken duties.

He waits patiently for her to finish, then he escorts her back into the house where he gets to perform his second duty of the day: licking out the scrambled egg bowl.

It's a rough life, being a chicken farmer's assistant.

Old dog, first snow

Frankie may be a little too stiff to go bounding through the first snow of the year the way he used to, and the flakes may blend a little more into his ears-turned-grey. But this morning's brief snowfall was still reason for our aging guard dog to assume his favourite position on the verandah steps to keep watch over the weather.

Our sweet boy is now on anti-inflammatories, which are helping what was troubling him in his lower back, but he is showing his age in other ways: he is quite deaf now, and sleeps much of the day. The time has come when I need to be sure I'm not letting worry over what lies ahead for him interfere with the joy that is still to be had every day.

Our dude. Our handsome boy.

Singing in the rain

Kim and Frankie at Spray Lakes.

We're just back from a road trip to meet my parents in Canmore for the Canmore Folk Music Festival. I think you always learn something about yourself when you go on a road trip, and this journey was no exception. I learned that, compared to my parents, I am a wimp.

On the last evening of the festival it was me, Mom and Dad all sitting in a row in our little camp chairs, listening to wonderful musicians work their magic surrounded by the mountains and trees and blue sky. Only it wasn't blue sky: after a blistering hot weekend the clouds had rolled in and the wind had picked up. I was just thinking that maybe I should have brought my rain jacket when the first stray drops hit my bare head. Then the stray drops turned into light rain, and the crowd around me began to move as people lazily reached for sweaters and jackets. Then the wind became a little more persistent and people hunkered down a little more. Then the light rain turned into official rain, then heavy rain, and the crowd started to scramble, zipping up jackets and flipping up hoods, huddling under the tarps they had been sitting on, opening umbrellas. I had just suggested to my parents that maybe it was time to reconsider our priorities when the sky really opened and the rain began pelting down. I hung onto the rain poncho my mom fished out of her bag for me, doing my best to keep it closed while the wind did its best to whip it open.

And then it began to hail.

That was it for me. No more trying to be a good sport. I leaned forward to shout through the din that maybe we should call it quits (my parents' townhouse being a convenient half-block away from the festival grounds) and the forward movement let a big puddle of water that had been accumulating in a dip in the poncho slide right down my back, soaking my butt. But Mom and Dad just looked at me in bemusement, politely wondering how a daughter they had raised could let a little rain get to her. I ran. They stayed, for the whole rest of the evening, through rain and hail and  distant lightning that lit up the night sky, while I warmed up, dried off, and ate chocolate at home.

I am a wimp.


Frankie the Travellin' Dog asleep in the car.

I learned something else: Frankie the Farm Dog likes hotels. We've had this trip planned for a while, and of course we booked Frankie into a kennel. But in the last six months or so he has begun to show his age, and we started to feel awful about leaving him behind. So we did something we've never done before: we brought him with us.

Since it would take two days of driving to get to Canmore, this would mean finding a pet friendly hotel along the way. I was more than a little worried about how Frankie would do, since he's a creature of habit and routine and any changes in his environment make him anxious, but much to our surprise it turns out Frankie quite likes hotel life. He likes elevators, and long hallways, and drinking from hotel toilets. He was a butt-wiggling happy dog in the hotel on the way to Canmore, and a butt-wiggling happy (though somewhat tired) dog in the hotel on the way back home. Go figure.

Ick

So there I was, sitting with Kim in a lovely park in downtown Duncan, watching a 100 mile hot dog eating contest.

(I feel a need to digress for a moment to explain that we didn't set out to watch a 100 mile hot dog eating contest - we were in the neighbourhood having lunch and were drawn in by the fun everyone seemed to be having.)

(I should also pause for a moment to explain that a 100 mile hot dog eating contest is one in which the hot dogs and buns are grown and made within a 100 mile radius. Yes, people do grow wheat on Vancouver Island, and make hot dog buns out of it.)

(I should also clarify that no claim was made as to the condiments on said hot dogs.)

Back to the story. There I was, on a lovely sunny afternoon, watching four grown men gamely chowing down on tasty hot dogs but apparently very dry buns, when all of a sudden something hit me in the chest.

(I need to explain that if I had had my camera with me at the time, I would certainly have taken a picture. But since I didn't, and because I don't want to violate anyone's copyright by using their photo in my blog, I have decided to provide you with a handy link to an excellent picture of what hit me in the chest. For the sake of dramatic impact, it is very important that you click on this link.)

(In case you didn't read the fine print accompanying that photo, I would like to inform you that the object that landed on my chest was about an inch-and-a-half long. That's the body. The antennae were at least another couple of inches. Are you understanding the title of this post yet?)

So there I was, no longer watching the contest but instead paralyzed in my chair, goggling at the enormous insect sitting on my chest. The paralysis ended with a convulsive, repulsed flinging of said insect onto the ground, whereupon it crawled back towards us and began to climb up the leg of Kim's chair.

Kim leapt to her feet, and between her dancing on the spot in a mixture of phobia and ex-Science-teacher fascination, and my incoherent sputtering and pointing, we began to attract more attention than the 100 mile hot dog eaters. First two little kids crossed right in front of the stage to come and see what was going on. Then the people behind us stood up and craned their necks to get a better look. Then the parents of the kids came over with their cameras to take photos. Then one of the kids managed to convince the bug to crawl up its arm so he could parade through the audience showing everyone.

I suspect it was a welcome diversion for both the 100 mile hot dog eaters (chewing and chewing and chewing those really dry buns) and their audience (trying gamely to keep up the level of enthusiasm despite the slow pace of eating).

Who says life in a small town can't be exciting?

Bambi

What does the name "Bambi" bring to your mind? Probably a baby deer or a starlet, am I right?

Not me. Not any more. These days Bambi is my favourite salad green, beating out my old standby Anuenue hands down. Bambi is a gem romaine, which means it's the cutest bundle of crisp, dark green, tasty leaves you've ever held in your hand. The fully-grown heads are grapefruit-sized, and make a generous salad for one, and they're the best thing I have grown, as far as I'm concerned. And since I'm someone who doesn't naturally gravitate to lettuce salads, that's saying something.

We first had gem romaine at the Genoa Bay Cafe in a deconstructed Caesar salad, with the individual leaves stacked log-cabin style on the plate. I tracked down the seeds at Johnny's over the winter, and started them in the greenhouse in early March. We're eating it as fast as I can grow it - I'm on my third planting, and can see many more in my future.



Our local bunny is a fan, too. I'm thinking that once I plug all the holes in the fence he's using to make his way into the inner sanctum of the vegetable garden, I'm going to have to plant a little patch of Bambi in the pasture just for him. A bunny and his Bambi. It could be a movie...

New kid

There's a new kid in the Mucky Boots flock, and it ain't a chicken. It's a rabbit. 

We first spotted it a couple of weeks ago, hanging out in the back pasture where the chicken tractor and chicken yurt are, and now we see it every day. Just a regular rabbit, but it doesn't seem afraid of either us or the grown-up chickens wandering around very close by. Gump and his flock cruise around the pasture eating grass and bugs, and there's the rabbit right beside them, nibbling back dandelion stems like pasta strands. Does s/he think s/he just blends in?

We're charmed, even though the little bugger has found a way into my vegetable garden and is helping itself to my lettuce...

...but we're also a little concerned, because Miss Comfort Queen herself, Petunia the cat, is an expert and somewhat bloodthirsty rabbit hunter. We know this because a few times a year she leaves the bottom half of one on the door mat. (Yes, the bottom half - neatly severed at the waist line, and no, we don't know what she is doing with the top half. Perhaps that's where the tastiest bits are.) We love our Petunia, and want her to live out her kitty destiny, but we'd rather she left this particular rabbit alone.

Come to think of it, Petunia gives the adult chickens a wide berth - after all, most of them are bigger than she is. So maybe our rabbit is hanging out with the chickens for a little protection.

What a smart rabbit.

The Comfort Queen gives a lesson on priorities

Today felt like summer. It was warm, it was sunny, and all around us flowers sprang open and trees popped out leaves. It could - and maybe should - have been a day for weeding, and transplanting vegetable starts into the garden, and raking the winter's worth of pine cones littering the driveway. But Miss Petunia the Comfort Queen had another idea about the best way to spend the day.

Walk in the garden

April is half over, and just like clockwork, my annual spring arthritis flare-up has arrived - a not very welcome return guest. Fortunately I have learned a thing or two, like the importance of not giving into the urge to be in the garden all day every day because overdoing things only prolongs the misery. And that the worst feelings of self-pity can be alleviated by nothing more than a walk through the garden. There's enough there to make the most miserable person feel better.

The fawn lilies, for example. We're blessed with hundreds of them, in all the shady beds around the house. And this year it's a bumper crop, thanks (I think) to all that scratching and flicking and digging the chickens did before The Great Divide. These are spirit lifters nonpareil, with their gorgeous speckled leaves and the sheer whimsy of their slowly lid-flipping blooms.

The catkins of the curly hazel tree along the fence line have erupted, giving us a reason to stop and admire the berserk curly pandemonium. I have to wonder about what evolutionary advantage is at work here...

The huckleberry bushes growing near the coop are a favourite of the chickens - in the summer, once all the berries at chicken height have been eaten, Hector jumps up to grab more, then drops them on the ground for his hens to enjoy. And when even those berries are gone, Kim weighs down the taller branches with string and cinder blocks, so the chickens can enjoy every last berry.

Every time I visit our local nursery I'm captivated by the deep indigo hellebores they have. But I've been reluctant to fork out the money to buy a couple, especially since we have about half a dozen hellebores in the garden already. One, in particular, is blooming abundantly this year, working hard to show it can stand up to its showier cousins at the nursery.

I think this is a spirea. I love its colour, especially in the sea of green this time of year. We have a few shrubs in the woodland part of the garden, and they're letting us know they're feeling neglected and a bit crowded out by ferns and salal. Transplanting might be in order.

No, Frankie is not a plant in the garden, but he makes my heart happier than one. Unfortunately he's having a sore April, too, because of what might be a pinched nerve in his neck. So he and I are laying low together, content in the knowledge there will still be gardens to play in and balls to catch when we're feeling better.

Winter

We have been having a strange winter (although I hesitate to use that word since none of the winters we have had here at Mucky Boots have fit the usual pattern): more sun than usual, and colder than usual. And almost no snow, which I attributed to the fact Kim and I finally got snow tires for our car.

And then, this week - snow!

It came in a few acts: four inches of soft, beautiful powder one day (unlike our usual sodden, heavy, wet snow) another eight or so two days later, then a brief flirtation with freezing rain that laid down a slick coating on top of it all. And now it's dissolving in a steady rain that is making a muddy, sloppy mess out of everything.

The best part of the week was the lifting from my shoulders of the huge weight of worry (and before you worry, please remember that worrying about anything and everything is a specialty of mine) when I realized what an enormous difference our new snow tires make. That horrible hill we need to drive up in order to get to the main road that has been the scene of more than one slow-motion icy ballet as we struggled up only to slide back down again? Hah! No problem: I drove straight up easy as pie. The drifts in the driveway that would have had us digging and pushing and swearing and pushing again? No problem: I just drove right through them.

And then there was the joy of watching Frankie in the snow. This may be his twelfth winter, but any sign of senior doggy dignity gets lost the instant his paws touch snow. It almost makes me wish for more snow.

Almost.

Back to normal

Our heartfelt thanks for your comments and emails about William. Most of you have never met us, or William, or been to Mucky Boots - it is an amazing thing to me that such caring and support can come across the ether.

We are feeling more peaceful about William's death, with just the occasional stumble to make us pause: vacuuming up the last of Williams' hair from the carpet, washing and putting away his water bowl, opening the back door and not realizing we were expecting to see him until we are surprised when he's not there. Petunia was out of sorts for a few days, but she knows how to demand a snuggle when she needs one. Mostly she, like us, is spending the bulk of these rainy, cold days in front of the wood stove. We are finding our way back to normal.

Goodbye William

William died yesterday - he was hit by a car. He was too old, and the damage was too great, for him to survive, so we had him put to sleep late last night. After a terrible day in which he managed to drag himself home through the rain on two legs, he ended his life peacefully, wrapped in warm blankets and surrounded by love.

He was 16, and had gone through more lives than two cats put together. When he was just a kitten he was found abandoned in an empty apartment in Toronto with his sister Arbus, and when they were about 6 months old they were adopted by Kim. Maybe memories of those early days trapped in the apartment stayed with him, because he much preferred an outdoor life - at his prime he would only come home to eat, spending his days roaming the neighbourhood and dining at a few homes other than ours. When we still lived in Ontario he loved to go camping with Kim at her property north of Toronto - he would sleep in the tent with her at night, and go canoeing with her during the day.

William was a charmer, a character, and a very handsome cat - he looked just like Sylvester from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, only grey and white instead of black and white. His long, silky fur was gorgeous, but a problem for a wild outdoor roamer like him. We always knew where to find him in the house because he would leave a trail of debris behind him -all the sticks, leaves and burrs he dragged in with him would gradually be deposited on floors, couches, counters and beds.

His closest call came about eight years ago, when a raccoon chomped out a good portion of his throat. As he recuperated he had a tube to drain the wound running right through his neck, so he looked like a very handsome and furry Frankenstein. We tried keeping him in after that, but he was miserable being confined, and so we decided to let him lead the life he wanted.

He started to slow down in the last year or two, and began spending his days on the rocking chair in the verandah and his nights in his special bed away from the pestering attention of Petunia.

And now we imagine him reunited with Arbus, young and strong, with all his teeth again, and fur without a single mat, roaming the bush in search of more adventures. Thank you, William, for making it home last night so we we had a chance to say goodbye. You were a good cat and we will miss you.

Merry Christmas from Mucky Boots

Frankie is one happy dog today. His human grandparents don't only know what makes my heart sing (new ergonomic gardening hand tools in lime green so I don't lose them) and Kim's (a new book full of colour photos on guitars and guitar makers). They also remember the four-legged members of the family. And so Frankie is the ecstatic recipient of a knotted rope toy and a fabulous new B-A-L-L. What a lucky boy.

He's back

Yes, this is our little psycho bird, a Western Tanager, back for another day of doing his best to get into our house. He's an early riser, and this morning it's our dining room windows he's trying to get through.

He hovers in front of them almost like a hummingbird, then either bumps into the window or flies away. I have turned the lights in the room on, and off, trying to determine if it's his own reflection he's after, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. The window can't be acting like much of a mirror because he sees me as soon as I move into the room and flies away, which made getting these photos an exercise in patience.

What do you want, little guy?

Under siege

Like the looks of this little guy? Think he looks cute and harmless? Think again. This bird is psycho.

Well, maybe not the actual fellow in the photo (which isn't mine - it comes from here). But one of his relatives, who lives in our neck of the woods, spent the day dive-bombing our house, bashing into windows, going from deck to bedroom window to living room window, all around the house, doing his very best to somehow make it through one of those pieces of glass.

It started about 6:30 this morning. Petunia started to make her bird hunting noises as she prowled the window ledges in the living room where I was eating my breakfast, then I began to get glimpses of brightly coloured flashes in my peripheral vision, and then the first thump on the window got me out of my chair to have a look.

I'd never seen a bird like this before, and its colouring made me think it must be a finch or some sort of exotic bird. We're used to mostly plain-Jane brown birds around here - anything this brightly coloured must come from a pet store, I thought. But when I did a quick Internet search I discovered it is a Western Tanager. Huh. Who knew.

But back to the siege. This determined little bird flew around the house all day, from window to window, hovering and flapping and thumping into the glass. Why?

I thought maybe it was trying to fight its own reflection in the window, thinking it was seeing a rival. But that didn't make sense with the sun direction, and in any case most of the windows were shaded.

Until I discovered it was a normally occurring bird species, I thought it might be a household pet that had escaped and was trying to get back home, any home.

Maybe it just likes our taste in home furnishings. In any case, we're waiting with some anticipation for the morning, to see if it comes back.

Here are two interesting tidbits about Western Tanagers I found out today. (1) The red colour on their heads is not built-in. It's a result of the insects they eat. And (2) if you are stocking a bird feeder in hopes of attracting a Western Tanager, they respond well to cut fruit, nectar and baked goods.

Baked goods.

Does that mean freshly baked croissants, or would day-olds do?