I went to a community meeting for our little town a couple of weekends ago and the council mentioned that they’d had problems with beavers in the past and that we should mention if we saw any on the pond. My hand shot up so I could mention that we’d scared something off the banks of our property on our pond the night before. Chris has long thought we had nutria or maybe otters on the pond but we’d never really had a good look. Then a couple of nights ago Chris saw one up close and called it a nutria and then he went off to Lowe’s to get…

May 14, 2012 May 31, 2013 I was going back through the photos we took on one of the visits we had to our house when we were contemplating making an offer on it to look at a tree Chris thought was leaning a lot more than when we moved in (it’s not, it was leaning just about the same then) and found the photo of the driveway and front of the house and knew I had to take a photo of how it looks now to compare. It is hard to see all of the changes but the most evident is that the grass is so much greener this…

1 part steady downpour for several hours + 1 part super saturated ground = Sweetgum tree falling into pond with aid of pine tree. So this flood event wasn’t nearly as bad as great flood of July 2012 and I honestly wasn’t expecting it to get like this. Thunderstorms moved through the area yesterday afternoon, we had some pea sized hail and steady downpours and then went to dinner with my parents and uncle who were in town for the weekend. When we came back we noticed the creek near our house was just below the bridge. Then we noted that the second pond in our little ‘town’ was up…

I’ve got the goofiest, laziest, and silliest feral cats!

Right now it is raining, a light drizzle, enough for the water to pour off the roof and for me to hear the *ting* of drops on our metal roof. The sky brightened for a minute, perhaps a thinning of clouds for the late evening sun to glow through just a bit, but now the sky is darkening once again. The light there for a moment was a yellow-green, the colors of the newly opened leaves of the trees and overgrown grass reflecting back up into the atmosphere. Last night it rained heavily after dark, lightning dancing across the sky and the cymbals of thunder booming after. The forecasters had…

+I bleached our luffa sponges a few weeks ago. They turned out really lovely and I’m going to have to get Chris to cut them for me. Maybe one day when we have beeswax I’ll make soap and the luffa will pair nicely with the soap as gifts! +I’ve been listening to a lot of food/sustainability podcasts lately and one of them discussed organic bananas and the banana industry. It was a bit of a revelation because I don’t usually pay that much attention to buying organic bananas. Bananas are generally very cheap to begin with and the podcast was discussing that even organic bananas are relatively cheap in comparison…

I know, I know, I just did a post about cats but here are some more cat photos I took this weekend! Ruby and Isis chilling after eating their afternoon meal. Apparently Isis thinks the baobab pot is a fine place to slumber and Ruby can sleep standing up!

Fred is the resident cat who does not wander very far from the house. Every now and then I find him far down the driveway but usually he’s cuddled up in a spot on the south side of the man cave. Or on my truck. Isis has been enjoying some freedom by jumping fences lately. Ruby inches above Mr. Stripey in the competition for noisiest cat. She’s easy to figure out when you can’t see her but only hear her. The sunshine is a great place to take a bath. Or scratch your head. Momma comes and joins the party. And parties a little more hearty by hanging out on…

These days I’m… Reading: Flower Confidential. I’ve known about this book for several years but finally picked it up at a used book store several weeks ago. I’m really loving it so far and it has me rethinking buying cut flowers, but not only that it delves into this crazy world of hybridization and growing plants. I’m about halfway through and will likely do a full review at Sprout Dispatch when I am done. Barnheart: The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One’s Own. This I picked up on a whim one day when I went to the library to pay a fine. At first glance I thought I would…