….thanks to Xingfu Mama for hosting Pull Up a Seat Photo Challenge
This is my granddaughter with her older cousin from her father’s side of the family. Thanks to my daughter for sending me this photo.
….there’s something quite lovely when you look closely at these decaying sumac flowers
…today was a beautifully warm day and before dinner I needed to make up some steps to reach my goal
No wind, the setting sun and temperatures hovering around 10 degrees Celsius were ideal conditions for an evening walk through the neighbourhood. I headed west and entered Col. Sam Smith Park where I opted to walk through the naturalized area and over to the marina. Here are a few of the sites I encountered along the way.
Can you guess what that lump in the pond is?
When I returned home I prepared a simple supper of eggs, avocado and tomatoes.
….thanks to Amanda for hosting the Friendly Friday Photo Challenge
I adore photos of raindrops. Since we’ve only just seen the last of our snow I had to dig into the archives for these photos.
….thanks to Nancy Merrill for hosting the Photo a Week Challenge
Every week I work with fire as we bake our bread for the inn and the Farmers’ Market in an outdoor bake oven. There’s also an old fireplace in the tearoom that we light when the weather is particularly cold. I couldn’t resist including the fire from my daughter’s birthday cake. I love how it illuminates our granddaughter’s face.
….thanks to Cee for hosting the Black and White Challenge
In the warmer weather he’d be standing on water when the fountain is working.
….had to buy these when I saw them at the fruit market
…this time last year we discovered a similar visitor in our backyard
Some of you may remember the racoon we found in our deck box last year. We managed to get a couple of photos before it scurried off and never returned. All spring we’ve had a heavy metal pan sitting on top of the box so we figured that would be enough of a deterrent to keep the racoons out of the box.
When our dog Frances started to get excited and agitated around the outside of the box this week my husband suspected that the racoon had returned. We took the dog back into the house and quickly the racoon escaped. When we opened the box we found another surprise.
The mama returned shortly after but she wasn’t sure what to do.
We called Animal Control and they told us to make the area very uncomfortable by playing loud music, especially at night, and throwing in some dog fur into the box. The one thing not to do is add moth balls because they are too toxic for the babies. Apparently racoons have more than one den site so the theory is that the mother will take her babies somewhere else.
We were all set to do that but my husband didn’t want to wait until nightfall so he started by opening the box all the way. Again the mama racoon scurried away. It didn’t take long before she returned and one by one she removed her babies and waddled across the deck and the backyard, up the chain link fence and into the neighbours yard. We were afraid she was going to move into our old garage or crawl under our deck but I guess one of her other den sites is in someone else’s backyard.
Mama Cormier 