Hopefully the last snowstorm?

Another snowfall last night. Some of us are hoping (against hope?) that it was the last. I took some pictures while walking the dog.

It was a wet, heavy snow, just right for making snowpeople. Alas, my kids are old enough now that snowpeople aren't often on their to-do lists anymore.

I saw a bald eagle today!

There I was walking the dog when I spotted a bald eagle happily circling part of the park next door (where I was at the time) and the neighborhood.

Bald eagle numbers have been increasing here in northeast Ohio and so these sightings are becoming less rare. There are lots of nesting sites along the upper Cuyahoga River, and in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is just a hop skip and a jump away from where I live.

My son and my daughter have both seen bald eagles over the past few years while doing mundane things like driving home from high school and (again) walking the dog.

But today was my turn, and it was pretty nifty to watch a bald eagle soaring over the soccer fields in the neighborhood park.

Let the Gardening commence

Over the weekend my husband and I tilled up the two garden plots in our back yard. One plot is for herbs and the other is mostly for veggies, but will also have some herbs. This morning I planted some lettuce, spinach, and five-color Swiss chard. They don't mind a bit of cold weather and can be sown early.

I don't have any pictures of either of those plots yet, but I did snap a picture of the community gardens, which are a three minute walk away. I will have a 10' x 20' plot in these gardens this year:


The ugly orange fencing is meant to keep the deer out. There are plenty of other critters around too, voles and rabbits, to name a couple. This is the third year of the community gardens. I walk past them everyday with the dog and over the past two seasons, it looks like the critters have left things alone. I hope this year isn't the year they suddenly discover the fresh veggie stand not five yards from some of their burrows.


My plot is somewhere right in the foreground in the picture below. You can see the old barn from the farm that used to be here in the background. They haven't put up the stakes marking each plot yet, and planting season is still a few weeks off. We have to wait until about mid-May until the last freeze has passed:

Once it's safe to plant, I'll use this plot for veggies.

On the way back to the house from our walk, my daughter and I spotted a little snake. It looks big in the picture, only because it's a zoomed-in shot. The little guy (or gal) was only about the size of a pencil in both circumference and length:

Maybe it'll grow big eating voles and keep them out of my garden.

What we woke up to this morning

We got about a foot of snow overnight. The wind piled up some drifts that were deeper:

Snowy walks are the best:

When the snow stopped early this morning the clouds started to disappear, and now we have a rare blue sky and sun:

A Walk in the Cuyahoga Valley

We went for a walk along one of the trails in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park today. It was a bridle trail, but we only met a few people on horseback toward the end of our walk. My camera batteries were low, so I only got a few pictures. One was of a stream with only a little bit of water:

Strider liked it, even if the water only cooled his feet:

There were all sorts of wildflowers, and blackberries ripening, and other interesting things, but you'll have to take my word for it.

Afterward we stopped at a small drive-in restaurant so that we could get a little cup of vanilla ice cream for Strider. That's the only reason - the sign advertising homemade strawberry and banana ice cream had nothing to do with the decision : )

Farmer's Market

Yesterday, hubby, dog, and I strolled down to the farmer's market. We had a very pleasant walk, the weather was beautiful. We even bumped into my son's girlfriend who was on her way to the market too.

The market was busy with people. This is the market's third year in our quaint little downtown. In its first year I was a participant and sold homemade candies and fudge. I really enjoyed the experience, lots of happy people all enjoying the market on a Saturday morning.

Yesterday we came away from the market with these various items:

Honey from two sisters (I would guess teen and pre-teen) who have been keeping bees for the past four years. They started beekeeping as a 4-H project.

A sixpack of fern cakes from the local owner of a Gaelic Imports shop who sells pasties and pies and confections at the market on Saturday mornings.

Three breakfast cakes from a seller of all-vegan treats.

A package of double ginger almond biscotti from a local baker's booth.

A small bag of green beans.

And not pictured here because I forgot about it when taking the picture, a bag maple coated puffed spelt which I bought from an Amish man. It was homemade and the maple syrup was locally produced.

Also not pictured, a little package of homemade dog biscuits - peanut butter- for Strider. He enjoyed them while we sat at outside a local shop and hubby and I slurped fruit smoothies.

Today it's back to the damp, drizzly weather we've had for most of the past week. It's nice that the damp took a break for the market.

Mega Mutant Dandelions

We're in trouble if these things ever take over. I've noticed them in the park next door when walking the dog (click on the first photo for the full effect):

On a brighter note, here's an aerial view of the dogwood at the corner of my house:

I leaned out of an upper story window to snap the photos:

Dogwoods always remind me of clouds.

Robin Song Morning

This morning as my dog and I passed one of the picnic shelters in the park, I heard the most magical birdsong.

A robin was sitting on one of the picnic tables in the shelter, which is basically a roof and no walls. He was singing his morning song which was being amplified and echoed under the shelter's roof.

He must have thought that he'd found the most wonderful place to sing, and his song, already beautiful, had become almost like a concert in symphony hall.

Even on ordinary occasions I love to hear a robin's song, but this was a real treat.

Evasion tactics, or, "Where, behind that cat?"

We have a cat who likes to come along for walks when we take the dog out.

We have a couple of different routes for walks in the park. The smaller route which goes around the pond is the only route on which we allow the cat to join us. The other route, which encompasses the whole park, is too long. Too many things could go wrong for a cat - other dogs, for instance, or just the feeling that the whole park is now its domain. The latter one is what I don't want the cat to come to believe. The park is too big and too busy for the cat to go gallivanting that far from home.

The result is that, if the cat looks like it's trying to follow us on the longer route, we must try to outrun it, hoping that it will finally stop and go to the hedges which are its favorite place to wait for our return.

So yesterday, my husband and I went running out over the soccer fields, dog happy as a lark, cat running after us, all the time looking over our shoulders and shouting, "He's coming, hurry!"

To onlookers it must have looked something like Monty Python running from the killer rabbit.

Icicles and Snow

We've gotten some snow over the past couple of days:


The old farm buildings I walk by everyday look nice in the snow:


My dog likes to nose around in it. Here he's smelling where one of the deer trails comes out of the wild parts and enters the tame environs of the park:

Here's what he looks like after he's been nosing:

Icicles and snow... argh! It isn't even Thanksgiving yet! :

I saw some bluebirds on our walk. I've never seen them in my neighborhood before. I tried to get some pictures, but they're flighty little things and I couldn't get close enough.

Hope you're warm and cozy, wherever you are!

November Snow and Doggie Ice Cream

It's snowing today. Every day this week there's a chance of snow.

This picture is a little blurry - probably because of me, but also because the falling snow makes it look a little blurry:

My doggie and I just got got back from a walk in the snow and he rushed outside with his after-walkie treat:

What is his treat, you ask? Ice cream. Doggie ice cream. It's not real ice cream, it's made just for dogs. He likes to have one after the big walk of the day - every day. No matter the temperature or weather. He loooves it:

Nom, nom, nom!

When the weather's really bad, I make him eat it inside. He likes outside better, though.

In which we go on an ADVENTURE

My daughter and doggie and I headed out into the wild for an adventure. My daughter claimed that she had found a bubbling spring several months ago and she wanted to take me to it.

We headed out into the old farmer's field whose last crop of corn was harvested seven years ago. It's now full of goldenrod (note, you may click on any of the pictures to see a larger version and then click on the back arrow to return to the blog):


A brave aster rose above:

We walked along a deer path while we could:

And still we were swallowed by the goldenrod:

In the field we spotted a garden spider busy on her web:

And a mantis with one green eye and one black eye:


Here's one with both eyes the same color:

When the deer path petered out, we made our own:

When we finally reached the forest, we were met by the muddy, upturned roots:

Of a new-fallen tree:

At times the forest gave way to swampy areas inhabited by tall, reedy grasses. Here are a few at the edge of a much larger patch:

A raccoon had crossed the still-muddy bottom of a drying creek bed and left his prints:

Bark on some of the larger trees formed interesting patterns:

Moss peeked through the detritus covering the forest floor here and there:


As did other interesting things:

My handsome doggie always loves to go for walks in the woods:

This mushroom looks as though something tried to eat it:

The colors of fall aren't up in the trees yet, you have to look around more closely to see the colorful bounty the plants have worked all summer to produce:

A large tree fall. We've seen this one before:

When we emerged from the forest again we encountered a type of thistle with the softest fluff:

And other interesting things:

This leaf brought to you by the letter "J":

My daughter captured this beautiful flower with her camera:

And that's not all that she captured:

Here is an interesting, if gruesome, story. Last winter in about a foot of snow, we trudged through the goldenrod field. At one point we noticed that our footprints were bloody. The blood was not from us. It was a large area in which the snow had been soaked in blood and then had been covered by fresh snowfall. Icky. Upon reaching the woods, my daughter spotted more blood. She found a deer with a newly missing leg which had somehow hobbled to a place underneath the branches of a fallen tree, lain down, shut its eyes, and died.

We don't know how it lost its leg, but it had traveled quite a long distance without it, as evidenced by the blood trail. We hadn't been back to that spot since winter, so we went to see what was left of the deer. We found its bones in the same spot, though they had been moved around a bit by scavengers:

We found the part of the leg bone with the trauma caused when the deer lost the rest of the leg:


Here's a comparison of the injured bone with the same bone from the other leg:

We don't know what happened. It looks more like a clean slice rather than something that might have happened in an encounter with a car. If a car or truck had done this, I would think that it would have been smashed, rather that have such clean-looking trauma. But I'm no expert. To us it's a mystery.

Well, we didn't find the bubbling spring, but it's been very dry here for the past few months. We'll go looking for it again after the fall rains have replenished the water table. We did, however have a run-in with one more deer. This one very much alive.

On the way home, we skirted the goldenrod field at its edge where we could make use of a deer trail so we wouldn't have to blaze one of our own. I said, "Thank goodness for the deer," and as if on cue a giant buck jumped up from its resting place not five feet away, off to the left in the goldenrod. He rose, facing us with a huge rack of antlers, then instantly turned and bounded off into the expanse of goldenrod, velvet hanging from his antlers and swaying as he leapt.

I will tell you that it was scary facing those antlers for that split second. My daughter remarked that it's getting to be rutting season and she was glad he wasn't feeling crazy enough to attack. We wouldn't have fared well in the encounter.

The goldenrod was too tall for our dog to see what had happened. He was so startled that he just froze. Usually he'll try to chase deer if he sees them. I'm glad he didn't this time.

It all happened so quickly that I wasn't able to get a picture of the buck, but I snapped this shot of his nest of squashed-flat goldenrod where he had been bedded down before we startled him. I know, it's not a great picture, but I was holding the camera up over the goldenrod in front of me so I could take it:

And that was our adventure. We made it back home, tired and full of little burrs, but happy. Thanks for letting us share our adventure with you.