Snow in the Oaks

Woke to a winter wonderland this morning.....Just in time for deer season tomorrow.

Rock Bottom

Ken hauled these rocks up from Northern Columbia County to be used the build a retaining wall along the west side of the garage.

The existing eave drains will be combined into one and go through the retaining wall and across the walkway.

Logging Operations

These are spruce logs from a downed tree northeast of the house.  The tree has been down for at least 3 years, but we are going to see if we can get any usable lumber from them.  Ken dropped them off at the Amish for sawing yesterday (11/15/13).

Rosalie & The Boys out for a walk

Visit by a Pileated Woodpecker

Today we were visited by a Pileated Woodpecker.  We find it interesting the Downy, Harry and Pileated all look the same, but are different sizes.

The turkey's demise

We have had a few wildlife adventures over the past months. We have been trying to find the deer traffic on a trail cam, but haven't seen the bucks reported by neighbors. We put out the apple trimmings, but didn't really see any signs that deer had visited those.
One day, the turkeys were sighted using the south trail. Ken tried to sneak up on them, but they moved through too quickly and disappeared.
Today, however, there was a flock grazing on the acorns along the southern trail. Ken grabbed his camo coat and shotgun and was out the door. He snuck up the east trail, and through the woods. He crawled his way through the woods to a big tree, and when he felt one turkey was aware of him, he rushed a shot before the alarm could be given. He harvested a turkey! Good meal on Sunday.
There were more turkeys coming across the field to the south that Ken didn't see; when I told him about those, he thought the first flock was hens and poults, and maybe the incoming flock was the toms. Oh well. I hope the turkeys return to graze again. It is fun to see them.

Yesterday, Ken dug holes and placed gate posts for the entries into the pond-side flower beds where we built a stick fence. We had to go cut more locust trees down, to get some thick, taller posts.
Here is the stick fence before the gate posts were placed:

The boys played outside all afternoon while we worked on the fence, and we had a fire going in our fire ring. It was a fun day.

 

and here is our resident black squirrel...it is entertaining to watch him around the yard. He has several gray squirrel friends to play with also. So far, they haven't climbed up the shepherd's hooks to get at the bird feed. They are too busy burying acorns.