Ohhhh Gurgs, How Can You Leave Us Now…

Unfortunately, as you may have guessed from the title, our other cat Gurgi left to be with his brother this morning. He was nineteen and half years old (human years) so he led a very full and lengthy life with us. Even so, it is always difficult to say goodbye.

Here we will show you some of his legacy.

As mentioned in the post about Fizgig, his brother, this is the earliest photo we have of the two of them, taken in September of 2003.

Gurgi always had a thing for boxes, more so than his brother. Fiz would always check out the box, maybe sit in it for a few minutes, but Gurgi would take up residence in any box he could fit himself into (and even some he couldn’t). This picture was taken just a few weeks after he arrived in our lives.

You know you forgot something important, like filling the food bowl, when you get a look like this.

Does this box make me look fat?

Summertime relaxation in the sunroom.

Yeah, speaking of boxes, we were taking care of another family member’s cat, and Gurgi decided to take a nap in his cat carrier so he had to take the top bunk.

Sleeping the the dog crate works too, as long as the dog isn’t there.

Superman paws. Gurgi was very adept at that.

As you can see.

This is baker kitten, covered in flour.

I is Gurgi dough. Knead gently for as long as it takes.

Yeah, he loved bags too, though they were a bit more tricky. More than once he stuck his head through the handle and needed assistance to be extracted.

I is king of laundry, you must pay tuna toll.

He would try every box, even if he didn’t really fit.

More bags.

Stretched out on my lap.

Wrapped in a sweater.

You’ve heard of the Princess and the Pea story? This is similar but instead of a big pile of mattresses, you have a mattress, blankets, a box, another blanket, pillows and a towel.

Ready for shipping.

This one needs more packing peanuts.

Always double-check your luggage before going on a trip.

This bed is MINE!

A little oversized, but the packaging helps to reduce it to the correct Gurgi proportions.

Darth Gurgi.

Sleeping in the winter hats and gloves box.

And even in the art supplies box.

You are very much loved, my kitten. It’s time now to go share some divine paffs with your brother.

We are forever grateful for your love and companionship and our laps will not be the same without you.

What happened to autumn 2022

Technically winter doesn’t officially start until the solstice in December, but for those of us living in the Great White North, autumn (and all of its glorious colours) has come and gone. I did capture a few nice specimens, though, that I will share with you now.

We’ll start with the view of the trees behind the trailer.

That maple in the center always has nice colours.

This next one I took while walking to work one morning. It’s a really nice view of the valley.

While mowing the back 40 at the farm, I paused long enough to grab a shot of the developing colours.

I really enjoy the trees when they are in transition. Part of them might be red, but it blends into oranges and yellows and greens. Lovely.

A nice little golden maple.

With a little red one to go with it.

Here is a much larger golden maple.

It wasn’t long after those pictures were taken (really the week after Thanksgiving here in Canada) where the leaves fell and it looked like this.

Here is one with a bit of sunshine in it.

I took that last one as I was starting rake the leaves. Time consuming, but very peaceful. Not too difficult.

I hope you enjoyed.

What’s The Buzz, Tell Me What’s A Happenin’

Hey, it’s September. As far as my blog is concerned, we missed the summer 😛 Well time to get caught up on some things that happened and this won’t be done in chronological order.
Let’s start with the buzz, or in this case, humming.

We have always had a hummingbird feeder. Every year a few show up and throughout the summer they visit regularly during the day. Usually we need to refill it about once a week or so, maybe five days.

Well, something interesting happened this year. We don’t know if it was the new generation of young or perhaps interlopers who were travelling and happened upon our little stash, but for a week we had a hummingbird swarm.

Taking pictures of hummingbirds is tough but you can clearly see two sitting on the feeder. You’ll have to trust me that another is on the far side. That’s three out of four flowers taken. Occasionally all four would be occupied, but there was so much competition that even having three on there was a very short thing. Short, but often. They would drain that feeder in half a day. We ended up getting another feeder and running two of them, but they didn’t seem to like the second one as much. They did use it, but only if they couldn’t get into the first one (due to the line-up, or perhaps we had it inside when we were refilling it).

Fortunately, as I mentioned, that only lasted a week and then the extra population left. We have now returned to normal hummingbird populations and the feeder is back on its weekly schedule.

Let’s see what else happened. At some point in June I was up by the apple trees on the farm and got to see this.

That’s actually a crab apple tree, but the regular apples were looking very blossomy as well. Not only did they look pretty, they too were a-buzz with activity due to all of the bees. I even managed to get a picture of one.

Here are some other flower pictures I took at various times, obviously when they were looking their best.

Found this guy sunning himself on the blueberry bushes back near the end of June. The picture is a little fuzzy, unfortunately.

Cicada

If you don’t recognize it, it’s a cicada. At first glance it can look like a giant house fly, but when you look closely the differences are quite noticeable. Not to mention the size; this one, from head to end of folded wings, is probably the same length as my thumb.

Next up we have a painted turtle.

She was hiding under the plastic for one of the green houses at the farm. We were lucky that she hadn’t dug a hole and started to lay eggs, because we were about to replace the plastic on said greenhouse so she was easily transported to a safer location.

Here is a random picture of the lake up at the cottage.

And another random picture of some nice clouds that were going by one day.

If you’ve ever wondered what the blueberry field looks like at 5am, well wonder no more.

While we’re on the subject of blueberries, compared to last year, this year’s crop was very minimal. The berries were sparse and many of the plants didn’t produce any. There are probably several factors there, but one of them is probably because last year was such an amazing crop. After putting in all of that effort to produce berries last year, many of the plants took a rest and concentrated more on increasing their branches and leaves. Such is the life on a farm; not every year will be a great harvest.

On days when the temperature/humidex prediction is going to be really hot, I try to start the day really early and finish at noon so I can avoid the worst of the heat, which is why I have pictures of the farm from 5am.

Here is sunrise over the field booth at around 06:21 in the morning.

It’s a bit weird starting that early. I eat my “lunch” around 8am and then head home around 12:30. I will say it’s very peaceful, except for all of the mosquitoes and other biting insects. Make sure you’re prepared for that or you’ll have a really bad day.

Moving on to some more recent stuff, remember all of those apple blossoms? Here is the result.

That is the crab apple tree and I was up there to pick them. I cleaned that entire tree off in an hour and got 1 box full, which equates to about 38 liters. That’s supposed to be pretty close to a bushel, but don’t ask me.

The normal eating apples looked pretty good too, but they weren’t ready to be picked when I was picking the crab apples. They should be ready about now so we should have quite the abundance of apples.

That’s all I have for now, so I will leave you with this picture of the sunset that I took on the summer solstice.

Spring Tidbits

So, many of you probably know I work on a blueberry farm. I do all sorts of different things and it changes according to time of the season. Right now we’re doing a lot of pruning before the leaves come out. I’ve done a few other things as well, but the main point is I work outside, and when you work outside, in nature, you sometimes come across some interesting things.

Like this cherry tree.

It forks part way up, the two parts come back together further up (and yes they have regrown together at that second joint) and then continue on their merry way up towards the sky. It would be a really difficult picture to take if the leaves were out, but right now, we’re still leafless. Though that will probably change before the end of this week.

Next we have a beech tree.

You’re probably asking, “which one is the beech tree?” It’s the one that still has its leaves on. Beech trees, for some reason, have their leaves turn colours like every other deciduous tree in the autumn, but they often don’t all let go of the tree. You can often walk through the forest and see beech trees during the winter with their dead leaves still stuck to the branches.

Unfortunately, many of the beech trees in the area are dying due to disease, so if you have one, enjoy it while its still around.

Moving on, how about something bright red?

Found several instances of these guys. After doing some searching they look most like Scarlet Elfcup mushrooms. Feel free to do an image search on that or Sarcoscypha austriaca.

This next one is really cute.

That’s a baby balsam fir tree. Its less than a hand span tall, still very soft. Balsam fir trees are very common around here and they have a very nice aroma, often used in fancy natural personal products.

Up next, some flowers.

These tiny little guys are narcissus flowers. They’re the first ones to come up in our flower garden.

But right next to them, we have the first daffodils as well.

Ahhh, spring life. It’s great right now because there are no biting insects yet so you can enjoy these thing without wearing armour. You can even venture into the forest for lunch and sit beside a lazy stream.

That is a great place to have lunch, if there aren’t any bugs. You’ll have to take my word for it from the pictures 😉

There are a lot of health benefits to going outside, everyday. You may have heard about being able to produce your own vitamin D when you go out in the sun. Well, that’s not all you get, even on cloudy days. Go outside, enjoy some fresh air and stay healthy!