Friday's Hunt v. 4.22

I'm rather late in getting around to Friday's Hunt blog - it has been a busy weekend.  Just scraping in under the wire with my entries for Eden Hills' prompts!

Starts with V
We have two rats that we adopted from one of Marc's coworkers (her cat was scaring them so she was looking for a home where they would not be so frightened).  One rat is named Violet and the other is named Ivy, so they both have a V in their names, but only one starts with V.  We think they are lovely pets - easy to care for and easy to love.  They are fun to watch - although they are mostly nocturnal so we don't get to see them at their most active times.  Here is Violet yawning!

Our indoor cat, Mitten, does not even pay the slightest bit of attention to them.  Here is Violet again, after having a bath.

Festive
We actually put up and decorated a Yule tree yesterday!  We don't put one up every year.  In fact, I think I've only had a tree up once in the past 5 or so years.  However, we are now well settled in our home and it seemed like a good year to try to find the right spot for a tree.  It is an artificial tree because we are both very busy and remembering to water a tree is another thing on the list that neither of us really needs.  However, it is a nice quality tree and we had fun putting it up.

Marc carried the tree upstairs.

I added a festive bow to our house mouse's tail.

We assembled the tree and Pippin came to check it out.  He did an audit and determined all the lights were working properly.

A couple of hours later, it was all decorated.  I'm not much of a tinsel person.  I like handmade ornaments the most.

It looked pretty with the room lights off, too.  Here you can also see a festive wall decoration from Marc's childhood on the rear wall.

We listened to a CD of Harry Connick Jr., and then a vinyl LP of Bing Crosby, both singing holiday tunes.  It was definitely festive.  It's nice to celebrate the winter holidays even though we are not at all religious. 

Wood
Several of the ornaments that I put on the Yule tree yesterday are made from wood.  Most of the ornaments on the tree have a story or a history to me.

This lovely wood heart ornament came from Winston-Salem in North Carolina.  It was purchased on my last vacation, which I looked up today, and realized was in 2008.  That means it will be 10 years since I have been on a vacation, with the exception of a few long weekends or our short honeymoon, which was 3 nights in Quebec City. Oh, and one night away this year on PEI.  I think I am in need of a real vacation soon.

There are two wooden bear ornaments on the tree.  Marc is especially fond of bears.

This ornament is actually made from wood shavings.  I am sure it is from Europe but I don't remember where - my parents bought these long ago and I have this one from their collection.

This little camel ornament is actually made from olive wood, and I think it might have come from Bethlehem from somebody who visited there.  I'm very fond of camelids, so it's nice to have this one on the tree.

I'm hoping to do a few more blog posts about other ornaments on the tree in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned!

Wind Casualty

My work has been really busy lately, and I've been missing my regular bird and plant walks around the garden.  Today I decided to take one of those walks, even though I felt like I didn't have time.  I was pleased to be back from my trip and able to feed the chickadees again.  I noticed a lot of leaves and small branches on the ground as I began walking.  We had some extremely strong winds, and other parts of the Maritime provinces have been very badly damaged by the storm that was the tail end of Hurricane Matthew passing by.  There were record-breaking rainfall totals in several provinces and many power outages.  New Brunswick fared better than Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, but we still had the damaging winds and fairly heavy rain.  I wandered around to the front yard and discovered, much to my surprise, that we had a tree fall down during the night!

The tree was an old spruce that was positioned along the lower edge of our driveway.  When it fell, it broke with about 2 or 3 feet of stump left in the ground.

The tree fell outwards, towards the road, and spans between the road and the bottom curve of our driveway.  The wood doesn't look rotten, so I think it was just the heavy winds combined with the height of the tree.

It's probably a 75 foot long tree, or thereabouts.  These tall spruce have branches without many needles along most of their length, with the green and vibrant part right up at the top where it gets the sunlight.  I wonder if that also makes them a bit top-heavy.

I noticed that it also took down a large bough from a pine tree in its fall.  Here you can see the top (green) part of the spruce pointing to the left, and the pine bough underneath it.

When he came home after work, Marc was able to help me move the pine bough and the top part of the downed tree into the goat and sheep area, so that they could snack on the pine and spruce needles, which they love to eat!  They also eat the lichen on the branches.  Now there is a bit of an open patch where the sunlight comes through - no doubt it will lead to a new tree being able to grow up into the space that has been left.

I was sad to see that we'd lost this tree, but it's part of the natural cycle of woodlands, and many creatures will benefit from the old wood as it decays.   We will have to cut up some of the largest portions and move them, but some of the branches and smaller pieces will stay on the ground.  Here's a young spruce just starting out in the area that the old one was shading - maybe this one will be the next towering tree!