Posted on 03/01/2026 5:58:25 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
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Raccoons tore off Beau’s sap buckets from the Maple trees he was tapping. He was not a happy camper! I guess they didn’t get the memo that he has FOUR DECADES of ‘coon hunting under his belt, LOL!
They’ve started messing with my suet blocks, so I brought out my more ‘raccoon-proof’ suet feeder today. If things are busy at the feeders tomorrow, I’ll trust Mother Nature and brace for snow impact! ;)
Last Saturday, had a whole gang of Robins in my yard. SEVEN of ‘em. Never saw anything like that before. One or two, sure. But seven? Do they travel in flocks, I wonder? Or was this crowd some kind of bizarre coincidence? Heh. :-)
I hope your storms either split, re-route altogether, or at least dissipate enough to not cause any problems or dangers.
As for Robins, I always see a bunch of them together. And the Males and Females look almost alike, so I don't know HOW they figure that out during mating season. ;)
I had a whole flock of Eastern Phoebe here this Fall - never had them come through here before. They really do sing, 'Phoebe! Phoebe!' It was so cool. Pretty little bird.
That’s great you can get the chimney cap back on!
I have a pine branch down that’s big enough I’ll have to get out the chainsaw.
Forsythia & daffodils are blooming, as are the Bartlett pears. High of 70 tomorrow, then drops into the 30’s the next 2-3 days :-(
Maple tree tapping! Really exciting. Hope Beau can lock them in place and get a good yield. The place must smell wonderful when you’re concentrating it.
He cooks it down outside - it make a huge STICKY mess in the kitchen, so I put an end to that! ;)
With our early warm-up the trees have started budding out, so sap production is pretty much at an end, already. It takes 44 galls of sap to make ONE gallon of syrup - and he only has about 10 total right now.
We’ve got plenty in the pantry from previous, more successful seasons. This is just not one of them, for sure!
Starting tomatoes tomorrow! Here’s who made the cut:
Three cherry-types will be grown in pots:
Artisan Sunrise Bumble Bee
Valentine
Black Cherry
Determinate Tomatoes:
La Roma IV
Mountain Merit
Goliath Bush
Cream of the Crop Beefy Purple
Indeterminate:
Adiamo
Wild Boar Beauty King
Chef’s Choice Orange
Grandma’s Pick
Italian Goliath
Golden Jubilee
Semi-Determinate:
Purple Boy
HaHa I am so stealing that. Thanks for the laugh!
I miss Swampsniper
I agree! A Neanderthal like myself has a surprisingly soft side, and birds are able to bring that out with a single trill. (Or maybe a single "Phoebe") :-)
A previous year, when we were still maintaining the backyard, now a prehistoric jungle.
The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.
The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place's name.
The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like a sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.
For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.
Baking slide.....”The Best Brownie Cookies” recipe.
Found this recipe recently.
Cookies that are like brownies....so good I made 1/2 a recipe , twice in the last week.
For the melting chocolate I use a 3oz. bar of Ghirredelli Intense Dark 86% cocoa
chocolate bar.
A whole recipe would need TWO 3oz. bars.
https://divascancook.com/brownie-cookies-recipe/
The male and female robins are very similar, but the male’s head is usually more black than gray, and the breast is a deeper red vs rust on the female. In other words, as usual, the male’s colors aren’t as dull or washed out as the colors on the female.
I love hearing the Phoebe. Every now and again I get to see one, but I hear them first. They’re fun to see.
Authentic Queso Fresco Enchiladas / Mexican Crema
Ing 2-10 oz pkg crumbled Cacique® Queso Fresco, 12 corn tortillas 1 ½ c veg oil shredded lettuce. ENCHILADA SAUCE 1 small can tomato paste 3–4 peeled gar/cl ½ rough-chp med onion, ½ tsp ea Mexican oregano, ground cumin, s/p, 3 Tbl chili powder 3 chipotle peppers w/ tbl adobo sauce 1 ½ c chix stock. CHIPOTLE CREMA 1 c Crema Mexicana (like creme fraiche) 1 diced chipotle chile in adobo sauce, ¼ tsp salt
Method Blender sauce ing smooth. BTB in pan, simmer 20 min. Heat oil til shimmery. Dip tortillas in oil, singly, to soften/lightly fry 45-60 sec. Then dip into enchilada sauce; plate. ASSEMBLY layer crumbled Queso Fresco, pepper slices on tortilla. Rollup around filling. To serve, top w/ shredded lettuce, queso fresco crumbles, drizzle of Chipotle Crema.
Crema: blender smooth Crema Mexicana, chipotle chile, salt 20 sec. Fridge til needed.
So Thursday we had steak for dinner. Some might recall that I have that Alpha-Gal Mammalian Meat Allergy Syndrome. Must have got bit by a Lone Star tick Tuesday when it was above 80 because I woke up Friday morning at 1:30 am with the hives. Itched and scratched for a couple of hours and said screw it and headed to town an hour early for work. Took it slow and went and got some coffee because we were out at home so I hadn’t had any yet.
Made it through Friday even though my energy was zapped from the hives which are a mild anaphylactic symptom. My son has been sick a few days, cold/flu he brought home from visiting his mom. I kind of felt it but was sure by yesterday morning that I now have it. So it was another fun 10 hour day.
I’m a little bit perturbed at the ex-wife for having our son visit over there when she knew there was a bug going around over there. She had just gotten over it.
Supposed to be leaving for work here in 20 minutes. I’ve got 14.24 hours of PTO so I have to go today. Might take off 4 hours early tomorrow. That’ll leave me with a full 10 day of PTO. Then again I might just take tomorrow off. In a month, I’d be back up to 10.
Linear Actuator came in. Before this 24” version had gotten here, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to use it the same as the 12” version I had planned on.
I’m going to go with bi-folds that raise up instead of drop down. Makes more sense in a few ways.
The mechanism will be a design borrowed from fork lifts. Many of them use a chain connected to a stationary point, looped up over the lift cylinder around a sprocket and then attached to the forks. for every inch the cylinder raises, the forks raise 2 inches. Same basic tech as a block and tackle but in reverse.
A 24” stroke becomes 48” of travel for a 60” bi-fold. Bi-fold doors can’t be opened 100%. They need to retain some sort of V shape for rigidity.
I have some old bicycles with shifter derailer sprockets and some chain that will need soaked in coke or something. That’ll work for testing.
I’m going to run about 300’ of ethernet cat5 cable from the modem/router to either the shed or tunnel. Right now I have a bunch of controllers connected to a network switch which is plugged into the router. I can see the controllers on every PC and my cell phone via WiFi. I can extend/retract the actuator from my phone’s browser via the control page at 192.168.1.***
“I think” I’ll be able to interact with them via my self hosted website which also has a local IP address of 192.168.1.***
That would give me access from anywhere with a cell/wifi signal.
me too!
I remember seeing a picture of that room before. We are in the heavy woods, lots of natural vegetation all around always wanting to encroach. We called it beating back the jungle.
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