Here’s a weird thing Monkey does almost every night (or early morning): he drags an item of clothing (or a blanket, or a pillow) halfway around the house. B and I are pretty sure he ‘mates’ with the items (he’s fixed, it just happened late, long after the instinct had firmly planted itself in his walnut-sized brain), but I prefer to think of it as ‘cuddling’.
Those of you who have visited the Granville Ferry area will no doubt be familiar with the Troop barn. The link shows it in its better days, if not its glory days. It was admittedly in a dilapidated state, but we always hoped someone would buy it and fix it up. Word is it’s going to be shipped to the South Shore to be re-built there, but as of today it’s fully dismantled and lying in heaps on its former site. B got some good shots of the frame while it still stood.
All of the daffodils I planted last fall are up; I had bought a bag of mixed bulbs, hoping I could separate the 4 different daffodil types and plant like with like in clusters. Turns out, my maternal Dutch genes didn’t give me bulb differentiation super-abilities. But a mix is cool, too.
B and I pulled over one evening to try and capture the early evening moodiness of Granville Ferry, but my camera wasn’t up to it. Okay, I wasn’t up to manipulating the camera. Still a nice shot.
On a walk around the marsh we surprised a mating pair of Canada geese; the male spent a lot of time hissing at us so I knew there were chicks around. Then I spotted one in the weeds (2nd photo). Dad kept clucking at us as I snapped these shots of them getting into the water, but my zoom allowed me to get pretty close while still respecting their personal space. The fuzziness of the chicks made focusing a real challenge, but look how cute!
At the end of our walk we came upon this river otter collecting materials for a nest.
We had some custom window boxes and brackets made and installed (thanks, Jerry!); the boxes have been painted our trim colour but the brackets are only primed in this photo. We’ll be painting them the same colour as the house so they blend in. Can’t wait for last frost so we can fill these!
All of my free time has been spent pulling up goutweed. I yank or cut the stalks and leaves off, which I’m told will eventually starve the plant, killing the root system. Pulling out the roots over the past 4 years only seemed to make matters worse; there’s goutweed all the way into our grass now. *&%^#$!!! I hate goutweed. But the garden is in its pretty, somewhat containable stage now. One more month and it will all go mental.
