Shrew-d Moves

The dust has been flying around here lately!  While Todd is working on installing a subfloor upstairs...

...I have been discovering my unexpected love of wallpaper installation.  Pre-pasted, paste the paper, paste the wall...I have all of the types, and I am greatly enjoying them all.  Upstairs, I have a nature-themed paper...

If you look closer, you can see the blackberries, foxgloves, rabbits, and hedgehogs.  LOVE.

Because of the odd angles of the slanted walls and tiny doorways, I'm doing a lot of cutting and pasting to keep the patterns straight.  It's just like working a puzzle and therefore, right up my alley!

Downstairs, we've got rabbits in the bathroom...

...and the kitchen is nearly done.  It was tiled last week...

...and I spent at least 2 full days with the wallpaper.  There were so many little nooks and crannies around the sink that had to be custom cut.  But I absolutely adore the wallpaper, even though it's not quite an exact match to the trim.  Close enough.  It's hard to get a good picture in this early morning light, but you get the idea!  It's a William Morris pattern from 1876. 

We installed a new snail door knocker, whose long antennae will poke out an eye if you aren't careful.  We're going to cut those down a little bit and possibly replace the entire door.  A name plaque has been ordered to cover the hole left by the previous (personalized) door knocker. 

I've sanded down all of our cheapo '70s hollow core interior doors...

...and am in the process of installing beadboard and painting.

It's going to be a busy couple of weeks, because we will be moving in the rest of our things from storage after the floor is laid down upstairs.  I'll be so glad to have my craft supplies back, though.  And framed wall pictures, and summer bedding, and the list goes on. 

I've squeezed in some outside work, completely filling the newly-created front bed with perennials from an amazing sale I found last week.

The plants are severely pruned here, but hopefully they'll give a good show in late summer and certainly next year.

I had some nice company in the garden while I worked.  At first I thought I was seeing moles...

...but they were so much quicker than moles, and they were eating fallen seeds from the feeders.  Moles are insectivores and don't eat seeds.  I did a little research and discovered that we have a few SHREWS!  My photo at bottom, versus the confirmed shrew picture at the top.  

Shrews are SO interesting.  Their hearts can beat up to a thousand times per minute, and they are understandably voracious eaters.  If they miss a meal, they can die (I've experienced this problem myself, as Todd can attest)!  Shrews are also venomous and a single shrew has enough venom to kill 200 mice!  Humans are too large, though, to experience anything more than pain from a shrew bite.  There are endless YouTube videos about shrews fighting (and defeating) snakes, scorpions, frogs, chipmunks, and many other creatures.  Theodore Roosevelt kept a pet shrew and noted, "Certainly a more bloodthirsty animal of its size I've never seen!" They have pointy, red-tipped teeth (red because of iron deposits)...talk about an appropriate look! 

(photo credit John Rochester, Flickr)

Yes, they tunnel, but they also eat a great deal of garden pests.  For the moment, I'm glad to have shews around!

I spent hours and hours weed-eating around the perimeter of the barnyard last week.  It was nice to see the white barn again...it had been half-covered with weeds...but we've just been too busy to get back there and get the work done. 

Now we can see some of the fencing that has to be replaced next year!  This is one of the worst areas, but at least we aren't needing to keep anything fenced in right now.

While plowing through 6 ft tall weeds, I nearly destroyed this tiny nest, even though I'd tried to be intentional about going slow and giving lots of "notice" for wildlife (mainly snakes) to move along.

Thankfully I stopped in time, but I was worried that I'd removed its protective cover.  The nest was still about 2 feet off the ground, but was completely exposed.  I've been checking it, though.  On weeding day, there were 2 eggs.  A week later, there are four!  I'm excited to watch this spot for new babies!

Borga is enjoying our brief moments of sunshine during this rainy spell...

...and the cats are passing through our noisy construction time by staying close and taking lots of naps.

They'd better get used to it, though.  Many months of construction ahead.

Have a great week! 

let the sun shine in...

We had our last torrential rain storm on Friday!  Thankfully we didn't lose any trees this time, although we heard the cracking of trees or big limbs falling in the woods fairly regularly.  It's gardenia time, but delicate white flowers and constant wet do not mix well.

However, they persevered, and new blooms are ready to burst open!

The ducks love the rainy weather.

The goz do too.  I see them daily feeding on soggy vegetation down by the pond.  They're getting so big!  The oldest ones have finally taken on their adult coloration. 

They grow up so fast...sniff sniff!  At least the babies are still babies!

Meanwhile, since the weather is finally dry, Clotilde has settled on the stairs outside our sun room.  Tabitha objects strenuously but there's nothing she can do, really, except be grumpily watchful.

A bit of excitement on the front porch!  Last week, I noticed a finch egg smashed on the driveway.  Odd...how did it get out of the nest?  When I had time the next day, I checked and saw this:

Amazing!  See the larger speckled egg?  That's a cowbird egg.  Cowbirds don't make their own nests.  They watch and wait.  When they see a bird leave an existing nest, they sneak in, steal and destroy an egg, and replace it with one of their own.  The nest owner doesn't suspect a thing, even when the cowbird egg hatches a week before the others and the young bird is unusually big.  So the young cowbird will be bigger, stronger, and get more food than the other finches in this nest.  Sometimes they smother their competition. Mama cowbird, however, can move on without a thought and continue depositing eggs.  She can lay up to EIGHTY EGGS in a 2-year period!  But many don't survive, which will likely be the case here.  Cowbirds eat insects, and these finch fledglings will be fed seeds.  The young cowbird will probably starve.  There's a big internet debate about whether people should remove and destroy cowbird eggs when they are found in other nests, but I try to have a non-interference policy.  I'm curious to see what happens here! 

Work has been slow, and I've been working on things that don't make a big mess that have to be frantically cleaned up for showings, like puzzles.  I am an addict and have finished two in the past 2 weeks.

But soon, I won't have time for puzzles.

We sold our house!  As long as all goes well with inspections, etc., we close in early July.  It still seems unbelievable.  I'm not sure when we're packing up the house...where we'll stay when we reach Indiana...if we'll be buying or renting while we look.  For this type A person who's a compulsive planner, this is both exciting and scary!  Especially when we'll have truckloads of merchandise, 2 cats, and a dog.  But at least I know that it's going to be an adventure!

Have a great week!

cat lap fever

BABIES!

The house finch eggs hatched last week and the babies have been growing steadily.  They'll be on the nest for another 2 weeks.  Hard to believe that they'll be ready to fly away soon!

A goose is nesting down by the pond.

She rarely leaves the nest and when she does, stays close.

I don't hear any peeps yet.  The eggs are still nestled in piles of goose down.

We do have some "hatching out" this week.  The peonies have blossomed!

I think the centers look like sea anemones.

I've been spending a lot of time in the yard lately.  It's so green!

Sometimes I find an intrepid explorer in the hellebores.

Sometimes I find other things, too.  I have to be careful when weeding our stone walls.  I've found black widows and snakes here.  I can't forget my nemesis, the fire ant, either!  Even if you don't see a nest, you have almost invisible free-ranging scouts, very aggressive. 

This weekend I nearly grabbed a juvenile snake that I'm fairly certain was venomous.  His head was triangular, not like the gentle rounded slopes of the garter snake.  He seemed more aggressive, and I didn't lean in to get a look at his pupils.  Later, I was crawling through some bushes and shook this out of my hair later:

It's just another reason that here in the South, I prefer to do my gardening when Todd is home...just in case!

Inside, the cats have been doing the usual...

...and while I don't have a spare second for crafting right now, I did highly enjoy opening this package of cheerfully-colored fabric for a future scrap quilt:

I especially love the yellows.  I have all sorts of ideas for these bright fabrics I've been finding lately, but regretfully I folded them away for another day. 

Our big spring clean is nearly completed!  Only another week of work, and then we'll be able to slow down and move into 'maintenance mode.'  I look forward to long walks, board games by the pond, and cozy evenings knitting, with a cat on my lap, of course. 

Have a great week!

ren-egg-ade

With the exception of two wiltingly warm weeks, this spring has felt much more like an Indiana spring than one in South Carolina.  It was 38 degrees when we woke up yesterday, and today's high is 58.  I love it!  Lots of blue skies...and hot air balloons over our house!...

...and other signs.  Ants crawling on my peony buds means that they'll be opening soon!

We have house finches nesting in one of our hanging ferns!

They've tried to nest here for years, but I've put balled-up pieces of aluminum foil in the ferns to keep them out.  It's not an ideal place to nest.  They're constantly disturbed as we go in and out of the front door, and the fern also has to be watered regularly.  But I was lax this year about my deterrents, and eggs were laid.  So now we're all going to have to just roll with it!  The female has another week to sit on the eggs, and then the babies will be on the nest 11 - 19 days after hatching.  BABIES!!  And speaking of babies, we should have goslings running around in about 3 weeks.  I can't wait! 

I saw my first anole of the season last week.

Every day, the tentative leafing out of the surrounding trees becomes more pronounced, and all of the azalea bushes are ablaze right now.  I never realize how tired I am of dull brown, dead branches until I see these tender green shoots!

We finished another home improvement project.  Todd's dad came down from North Carolina to repair our deck...

...and I spent several days staining it (screen door webbing causes the photo distortion here).

The cats are incredibly interested in all of the exciting outdoor changes!

Meanwhile, I finished a project I've been slowly picking away at for a couple of months.  My Adelaide sweater! 

I learned a really valuable lesson here.  I measured every few inches as I knitted up from the bottom, but I kept getting gauge so stopping measuring.  My knitting got looser and looser, and by the waist I discovered that I had 3" of extra fabric.  Here is where I should've frogged the sweater down to the bottom band and started over with smaller needles, but I didn't.  "What's three extra inches?" I thought.  Well, the looser knitting made the sweater a little longer than I prefer, but that's not the main issue.  The arms are fine, and I always knit tightly in colorwork sections, so that area is fine too.  But from bottom band to colorwork band, that extra three inches means that a sweater that's supposed to fit snugly against the skin now bags.  It's just too big.  The good news is that I recently took a "sweater surgery" class on Craftsy.com.  I can literally cut this sweater in half, unravel the excess length fabric, and graft it back together.  I can also cut excess fabric out of each side, although I'm a little unsure of that process.  I'm putting the sweater aside until next winter, and then I will fearlessly chop into it!  Meanwhile, I'm ready to start another one!  I originally knitted Ysolda Teague's Pumpkin Ale for my sister-in-law a few years ago (modeled on a friend at the gym):

I've decided to knit one for myself in maybe a deep red or mustard color.  I also want to re-embroider this German language shelf liner that I made a few years ago: 

The work is sloppy and uneven.  I loved the idea and the expression ("There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company, than a good marriage.") and was in a hurry to get started.  I think I will use plain white cotton fabric and navy thread, but perhaps a different font.  So lots of fun projects in the works! 

Have a great week!