Water from the hose...

From Spring 2010, just a reminder of a favorite spring and a favorite little buddy.  Might be time to start thinking about a new addition to the family again...

"We have had a cold, rainy, snowy, blowy spring here in Colorado which has made everything lush and green and the trees have been flowering powerfully and then suddenly the past two days have reached into the eighties. It feels like Summer! I spent much of the day planting my veggies and herbs. My favorite basil and cilantro will be great in recipes this summer! We got four heirloom tomato plants which are going to respectively produce black, yellow, green with yellow stripes and red with orange stripes. We were going to opt for the white tomatoes, but were just having a hard time imagining them in a salad. I am pretty sure I am going back to get them this week. My curiosity is peaked and there are still some sunny spots out there.

As I work in my gardens and yard, it is often that I am shadowed by either my Italian Greyhound (Toots aka Batman) or my little Tonkinese Manx cat (Pwowie and the fact that she is a manx is why she has just a tuft where most cats have tails). Toots will generally recline within feet of where I work if there is a nice, shady tree to spend time under, but Pwowie is fairly insistent about remaining under foot and exploring and examining the slightest changes in her territory. She has a large rock in my front garden that is her outpost, where she watches the world go by, called Pride Rock, but if I'm working in the yard, she simply must come and oversee.

After working in the vegetable garden it was time to pot some flowers in the front pots to adorn our wonderful front porch, where we like to sit and take in evening and is my outside writing office often during the day. My mind drifted as I listened to Hall & Oates covers on my iphone (by THE BIRD AND THE BEE, which I highly recommend) and watched my cat following me from place to place as though she were really doing something to assist rather than just sniffing everything and looking at me curiously. After potting several pots and making a wonderful mess on the porch, I hosed it off and filled the watering cans getting ready to tackle my next project.

As I came around the corner, back up onto the porch I caught my little buddy Pwowie in the act of taking a cooling summer drink off the freshly filled watering can and I was suddenly reminded of two things; illustrations in Beatrix Potter's wonderful Peter Rabbit books and those long ago days as a boy when "stolen" drinks from the hoses connected to houses up and down the street was simply the premium refreshment, even rivaling many a mom's lemonade or Kool-aid (though for me, NOTHING rivaled grape Kool-aid!)

I remember summer days when we came home so hot from our adventures in the fields, at the fishing holes or riding in our gang on our stingrays when we felt like we were somewhere near Hades. The August sun baked the skin a dark brown and parched the throat so dry. The water that ran in the ditches was cool on our feet and fun to play in with hours of digging out holes where crawdads backed in trying to get away from a bunch of rascals or having water skipper races, where we each picked ours and tracked it up or down the ditch as it skittered across the top of the water either going with the flow or racing upstream against it. But somehow we all knew the chocolate milk looking water wasn't water we needed to quench our unbearable thirst. So we would hustle to one of our houses and turn the water on at the spigot and wait until it ran all the sun-heated water out of the hose and went cool to cold. Then we would drink so deeply that our stomachs would bloat, impatiently pushing each other aside to get a drink and invariably turning it into a cooling water fight, with the lucky one in control of the hose tethered to the house and hose as we scrambled to find other sources to drench him or her and steal away the hose. There simply has never been a more refreshing drink of water in my life that those. The water flowing out of that hose was like nectar.

So, this summer as I toil in the gardens, I will make sure there is plenty of cool water for my little buddy in the watering can and I will be drinking from the hose. Now I am off to my favorite gardening center to pick up some white tomatoes and I just thought of a place where I could put a catnip plant for Pwowie."

Bringing back the Chronicles of the Squirrels...?

It looks like another spring of Squirrel mania.  Yesterday I spotted three when the woodpecker was taking great liberty with my chimney.  I think I spy a nest, meaning there will be another gang.  My Italian Greyhound, Tootsie aka Batman is keeping a vigilant eye on the back windows.  Please reference the word cloud, click 'squirrels' or 'critter count' to see my saga in the past if you are not familiar.  Somehow, someway, this is all going to be a book someday.

What kind of squirrel capers would you like to read about?  OR, do you suggest to leave this subject be and find another saga? 

Squirrels checking in...

LET'S ALL GET OUT AND SEE SOME OF THAT AWESOME WORLD OUT THERE! GREAT ADVENTURES AWAIT IN 2012!




It has been a looooong time since I blogged about squirrels, so I thought we'd check in with some of those we moved to greener pastures.
If you go back into the annals of my blog you will see that Tootsie (my beloved Italian greyhound) and I have been fighting a squirrel situation for many years. We finally got the best of them and they seemed to have moved on (for the most part).

We relocated them to greener pastures and had some funny trapping stories (no animal was hurt in the relocation process).



Then I find out they not only went on to a better place to live, but took up some awesome activities. This Christmas I got some postcards from them, thanking us for getting them out of their humdrum existences and onto exciting lives, all of them.
















Here are just a few shots of their new adventures since they left my back yard. I hope 2012 brings GREAT ADVENTURE to you and yours. I know I plan to go on some and will surely blog from some exotic locales as I "research" my next books.











Go to the right hand side of this blog and find the word cloud down aways.


Hit Squirrel and it will bring up all of the entries about the
'GREAT SQUIRREL ERADICATION PLAN'. Some have gone peacefully
and some have been "drama kings and queens."

Guess which one this dude was????

Super Squirrels

Okay, I am about to throw in the towel and spring has just begun.

In the past (see the word cloud on the right for squirrel entries) I have battled the elements in my own yard kindly, especially when it comes to the DOGGONE PEACH AND APPLE LOVING SQUIRRELS using a humane trap to relocate them and tasty enticements leading away from my yard toward the open space to try to rid my yard of these crazy, chattering creatures. This way of treating them has backfired on me several times. Those humane traps have also trapped two raccoons (man those dudes are nasty when they are mad), three birds, countless squirrels, our cat and once the neighbor's cat too!

My main goal has been to preserve the end of summer preserves (hundreds of prized peaches and apples) not to mention keeping them from raiding our vegetable garden.

I wouldn't even mind if the fussy, fuzzy varmints had one or two pieces of fruit... problem is the squirrels don't play fair. They wait until my trees are bowing low with the "fruits" of my labor and then climb up into the tree, take a bite, throw the peach, take a bite, throw the peach, take a bite, throw the peach... In one day they will throw twenty peaches to the lawn below. We are not going to eat a peach that has been munched on by a varmint who might be carrying the plague. SO, what to do?

Here's what caused me to think I might throw in the towel and let the squirrels win (problem is Tootsie never will). I was up EARLY this morning because I couldn't sleep, because at VERY first light a woodpecker decided the metal on my chimney was the best way to attract a female. Trouble is we have two chimneys and it seems two males were playing their own version of "dueling banjos" on both sides of my house.

As I crept around outside armed with pebbles to toss at MY OWN HOUSE to ward them off, I realized how cold it was because I was wearing sandles, boxers and a t-shirt. AND OF COURSE, my next door neighbor just decided to go for an early morning jog at the same moment I was hurling pebbles at MY OWN HOUSE to scare off the wood peckers. She laughed into her fist and started jogging... Oh humiliation.

As I tried to get into the back door I realized I had let it lock behind me. Now I had to do the unthinkable. Trudge around to the front of the house where of course about ten cars went by on their way to work as I stood in my driveway trying to remember the garage code. DID I MENTION I WAS IN BOXERS?

I finally remembered the code, the same code as my high school locker, DUH!

Then I finally got a cup of French Pressed - French Roast, which now wasn't as hot as I like it, settled onto the couch in my office ready to pull my laptop open, begin some writing when TOOTSIE, my dog, went nuts.

Right outside my office window were, 1, 2, 3, 4... are you kidding me 5 squirrels chasing each other around the yard, each running up a peach tree and staking it out as if to say, "YOU JUST WAIT, WHEN THERE IS LOW HANGING FRUIT HERE, I WILL CAUSE MAYHEM FOR THAT WEIRDO IN THE BOXER SHORTS!"

When this happens there is no calming Tootsie down. She has to go out there and tree the squirrels, look straight up, BARK! look to the window to see if I understand what is happening out there, BARK! Look to my neighbor who is standing at her glass back door trying to figure out why my dog is barking and surely wondering why I was circling the lawn, throwing pebbles at MY OWN HOUSE and did I mention wearing boxers? She looks at me standing in the window looking at my BARKING dog and just frowns and nods her head. Did I mention I was standing at the window (the whole length of my office) wearing boxers?

I counted 5 squirrels treed with my shivering greyhound beneath them, running from tree to tree to tree to make sure none escaped. Then I heard # 6 and I believe #7 on the roof right over my head. I leaned as hard as I could on the window without going through it, looking upward to see if they were bungee jumping off the drainspout and of course as I pulled myself back off the window I noticed the three children who live behind me with their frowning, nodding mother were all pointing and laughing at me. Did I mention I was wearing boxers?

Just Peachy, but the squirrels are STILL the PITS!

About five years ago someone kindly gave me a box of Palisade Peaches (awesome) from the western slope of Colorado and I saved all of the pits.

I pushed the pits down into composted soil around my vegetable garden as I had seen my father do when I was a boy.

I now have seven peach trees growing in my yard and four of them are HEAVY with peaches!

This is our second HUGE year of enjoying a HUGE yield of peaches here in mid-August and they are EVERY bit as good as the original peaches we got from Palisade.

Compost and peach pits! Water and pruning! = Shade, beauty, privacy and PEACHES GALORE!

As I write this I am eating a bowl of juicy peaches and real cream for breakfast! All from a handful of pits. This is one bowl of 14 so far from one tree.

There are still as many on the tree and we haven't even harvested the others (but the doggone squirrels sure love their little trick of pick one, take a bite, throw it onto the lawn and scale the tree again)... I wouldn't really mind if they picked one, took it to their nest and came back only when they were hungry again. Because I spend so many hours monitoring the door for Tootsie, my greyhound who sits and whines at the windows and door when she sees them scaling the tree... I AM SUPPOSED TO BE WRITING A BOOK!

Anyone want to trade a bowl of peaches for a high powered squirt gun? I have spent too many hours relocating the squirrels...

There are two reasons I am not getting my chapters finished...

SPRING HAS SPRUNG! It is my favorite season as it is many peoples. Colorado in springtime is just a cul de sac from Heaven!

The robins are busily tending to their young hatchlings. The other birds are singing merrily in all of my trees. The bees are gathering pollen from the wonderfully flowered out fruit trees and lilacs. The sun is shining and warming the earth. The dandelions are popping up in assorted polka dots across my otherwise beautifully greening lawn. The mountains to the west, just outside my office window are snow-capped and beautiful and the air is perfumed with the essence of new life!

Ahhh... it is perfect... almost, with the exception of my new adult onset allergies... mating, noisy, destructive woodpeckers who have an affinity for the wood around my chimneys, Mama raccoon foraging in my yard (I compost) for goodies, and the doggone squirrels who seem to love to ravage my vegetable garden, steal the bird seed in the feeders, make weird screeching sounds in the trees just outside my bedroom, run and play noisily on the warm roof tiles and DRIVE MY DOG ABSOLUTELY CRAZY!!!

My dog, Tootsie aka Batman, is going nuts again! Some of you who have followed my blog in the past have read about my squirrel situation. I have many, many peach, apple, ash, fir, pine, crabapple, aspen and other assorted trees in my yard which is a lovely playground for pesky varmints like these two. In the past I have had a pretty good relocation plan for them, moving them to nicer habitats where they can run free and not worry about my dog constantly running from door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window, well you get the idea. Tootsie aka Batman is already high strung because of her Italian Greyhound background. My Italian friends talk with their hands, Tootsie talks with her entire being. Squirrels are her nemesis. Just the mention of the word SQUIRREL (dog gone it, just typing it made her spring off the couch in my office and run from door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window door to window to door to window to door to window to door to window, well you get the idea. It's funny, even the word girl or any other word that rhymes somewhat with squirrel, there she goes again, will make her spring to attention, stick both ears straight in the air and ruffle her spine "fur". After talking to others who have relocated the squirrels like me, I have found now that it is true. If you move them, others will come to take his or her place. SO, what are Tootsie and I going to do to make peace here? SUGGESTIONS?

Other than her manic behavior about those furry, brown creatures in the yard, Tootsie is a good girl, NO! NO! BATMAN, I SAID GIRL!

Squirrel # 9 for summer '09

After days and days of rain and the trap being out of commission, I was
working in the garage, set the trap outside with NO bait...WHAM! COMES FROM THE BACK YARD--- Curious George Gets A New Home!

Reading to a CAT????

This is Baby Ruth listening to my latest chapter in the GO ASK MOM saga. She seemed to like what she was hearing. Then I started to read about my narcoleptic cat...










She got all fidgety and acted like she wasn't listening. Like she didn't care, then....








After hearing enough about another cat, she became ferocious.





I think I should just test my chapters on my greyhound Tootsie (and my beautiful wife)!

RUN, TOOTSIE, RUN CONT...

RUN, TOOTSIE, RUN

My running buddy!

If you have never seen an Italian Greyhound in action, you have missed out! Tootsie aka Tootsie Roll, aka Toots, aka SKINNY puts me to shame when we go on our runs, but it is fun to try to keep up!