If you read my previous post, Coastal Adventures, then you'll know that I'm in the midst of house sitting for a friend. She's away in the far north of Scotland on an archaeological dig and putzing around having general merriment. She comes home on Sunday. So far it's just been two weeks exactly, with four more days to go. Or there abouts. So, let's see some pictures of my house sitting adventures. First of all, I know the maths are wrong in that equation up there. But, see, I don't know the plan. She just said she'll be home on Sunday. Will she be home at 3 am? or 10 am? or 6 pm? I have no idea. Also, does she want me to be there when she arrives home or not? So, I may or may not be sleeping there Saturday night. So, I'm just counting to Saturday as the last full day and probably when I should do laundry and tidying up. Obviously if she hasn't said anything by Friday, I'll need to message her to find out more details, as she'll be starting her home travels 6 hours ahead of me on Saturday at some time. Anyways, so my job was (is) to sleep at the house, feed the woodland creatures and stray cats, take care of her cats, water her Mexican Petunia in the front, and get the mail. Those were the daily tasks. The extra tasks and also non daily tasks were to not be at the house and leave the keys for her house keeper on this one Monday, pay the electric bill when it came in and mail it off, take out the trash and recycling on appropriate days, drive her car a little, and check the fly traps that she has outside and replace with new ones as needed while chucking the old. She has two cats that are hers and are indoor/outdoor cats. They get food in the morning and at night and the dry food refreshed throughout the day (whenever they are picky and it doesn't smell cat foody enough), also one of them gets "special chickens" which is this chicken fillet cat food stuff that's an extra treat. And there's to be water and dry food outside the front door for them, whenever there is no dry food or the water is dirty. Then there are three stray cats that she takes care of in the backyard. I've only ever seen two of them, last year and this year. A black cat named Chekotay and a gingie named Number 9. The other is a tabby that she named Mama Cat. They get fed in the morning and in the evening. Dry food and half a can of wet food and make sure the water is clean. Then there are the birds (and squirrels) that she likes to feed. Last year I was to feed them in the morning and in the evening with this bird seed mix and occasionally give them this berry blend. This year it's just feeding them once in the morning with black oil sunflower seeds. In the back yard, it's fill two bird feeders and throw some on the ground under the Sweet Gum Tree. In the front, there are five bird feeders and throw some on the ground under this really huge tree that I don't know what it is. There's also suet cages attached to one feeder and I'm to give them some occasionally. Oh and the hummingbird feeder that I have to clean and refill on occasion. Now you might be wondering why her outside water bowls are getting so dirty that I'd need to clean them every time I feed the cats. Raccoons. She's aware that the raccoons will come and eat bird seed and the dry cat food and she's totally OK with this. I'm glad because I'm OK with this too... except raccoons are kind of bad. Last year I was sitting on the couch in her den and on two separate nights raccoons tried to break into the house. One night one of them stood up on its hind legs and peered in through the glass at her back door (they're long paned windows on either side of her fully paned glass door) wondering if I was in there and would give out food. Two nights later, a raccoon jiggled the door handle and then looked in. They also made off with her old suet cage and I found it on the side of the house with no suet in it one night last year. This year, they're trying to rip the partial cages off of that one bird feeder to get at the suet. This year a raccoon was trying to get in through the front door. She leaves her door open with just the storm door closed while she's awake, and well, it was trying to get in for more food. The day we took her to the airport on the coast, I was late getting back to feed the animals until after dark. The raccoons had chewed up her plastic food bowl and knocked some things over because they were upset that there wasn't any food. Just as long as they don't actually get into the house or end up attacking me at night while I'm outside smoking, then they're adorable. I realize they'd rather run away than attack me, but what if I don't know one is sauntering up the bushes to get to the food and I shift or move my leg and it ends up climbing up my leg or biting me because I scared it? Yeah, I don't have time for that. Oh, yeah the water. Since raccoons are nocturnal, they generally only come out at night and The Sister and I last year would flip on the back light and watch them eat or see them hanging upside down from a bird feeder. We'd coo and say they were adorable, flip off the light and that'd be it. This year though, they're showing up in the middle of the day, like 11 am, noon, 2 pm, etc. There's just two... I think, but still. So, it's easier to watch them and do you know what the girl raccoon did once she was done eating dry cat food? Washed her tiny pee-paws in the river (aka the water bowl); just scrubbing away for a few seconds like she was washing crawfish or a shiny object. Another day, she simply stepped her front pee-paws into the water twice and was off. The boy raccoon generally eats at the front and one night he was just standing in the water to eat his food. Nutter. So, that's the mystery of the super dirty water bowls! And now onto pictures, huzzah! First, the French picnic. The Sister received a gift card for this fancy cheese shop downtown and decided to use it now, two months after her birthday. It was awesome. I do love good cheeses and the fruit and olives and meats were delicious too! I'll just get all the food related stuff out the way first, shall I? So, we went for the 60-something cent pancakes at Ihop, along with some bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns. Mmmm.... pancakes.... And I purchased this peach juice at the start of my house sitting and it was so, so good. Hardly sweet at all, which is good because I detest overly sweetened things like this. Even The Sister and The Mom liked it and they're the same as me about sweet drinks. To treat myself for having a mini vacation I went to the library to get books! I've already flipped through four books (two of mine aren't pictured), I've partially red two books and I've finished one that The Sister chequed out. So, the Halloween book, I chequed out because there were autumny recipes that looked interesting and I didn't want to sit there in the library and look at them. Didn't feel like writing them down right now either, so I took photo's of the ones I was interested in. Same with the Vintage Tea Party books. One is about British holidays through the year, and the other is for fabulous tea parties in the morning, noon, and evening. Those books were... weird. They were cute and quaint on if you wanted to go all out and have super vintage decked out tea parties all British style, but the food, for the most part, was disgusting. It either looked like cat vomit or it was a whole bunch of fishy dishes like halibut and boiled eggs or haddock and raspberry with black pudding or innard parts or just... yeah, a whole lot of things that either didn't look nor sound appetizing in the least. They were kind of a let down and makes me wonder if I'd be able to hack it living in the UK. Perhaps these dishes are mainly her concoctions and are mostly super fancy, so are not typical fair? I know some of it is real like Toad in the Hole or Black Pudding or Coddled Eggs or meat pies with hot water crusts or whatever. But also, are most of the things quaint and old fashioned and most people don't really eat this stuff anymore? Is it like me wanting to use the terms "In a bit of a sticky wicket" or "Whoops-a-daisy" which are not terms used anymore, as they're outdated and hokey, which is why I like them (and perhaps only the losers ever used those terms to begin with back in the twenties or something?). I know they have other food in the UK, like fast food (not like I want to eat McDonald's) and ethnic eateries in some places (it's like here, more ethnic food places in larger cities, and hardly any in po-dunkville), and perhaps some of their typical food isn't all fish and blood and innards, right? Anyway, the book make me slightly queasy, so that was extremely off-putting. The other book that has also already been taken back was Freak Nation: A Field Guide to 101 of the Most Odd, Extreme, and Outrageous American Subcultures. It was fun to briefly look through, but needed more of a look through than just at the library, because I wanted to read about myself basically. Read about Trekkies, and stamp and coin collecting, Steampunk, Cryptozoologists, Conspiracy Theorists, or even the one on Yoga (because that's The Sister). It was slightly amusing, but also kind of boring, so I was done with it pretty quickly. I've been reading the Invader Zim book which is a collection of the comics, and I completely finished Grave Sight which is book one of the Harper Connelly mystery series by Charlaine Harris. The Sister has already read those and kept telling me I'd like it, so those four books were her cheque out, saying she'd read them and pass them onto me. Well, book one was sucked down in about a day and I'm waiting on her to finish book two so I can start it. So, in the mean time I'm reading Sailing Alone Around the World which is his real life account of Captain Joshua Slocum sailing his sloop the Spray alone around the world. It took him three years (1895 - 1898) to complete the journey and he published the book in 1900. It's really interesting so far, even though he's only made it from Boston to Nova Scotia by chapter three. Sad though. He did all this sailing and ship building, and sailed alone around the world, and then ended up being lost at sea, in the Spray in 1909 (there's a small forward beginning the book which tells you about his life before and after the journey). There was a pretty sizeable tree here last year, that she had cut down and removed recently. I was sad that the tree was gone, but it was exciting to see all of these mushrooms growing in the spot! I keep looking everyday to see them whither away and which types will show up next. That is one of two Mexican Petunia's that she has. This one's planted in the ground out back by the mushrooms and I don't have to worry about it. It's the one in the planting pot out front that needs the watering. Slightly different mushrooms that sprang up yesterday, different from the three in those first photos. I was excited. What can I say, I'm a fungi nerd. I keep finding feathers in the yard and I'm staring a collection. They're all normal, adult bird size, except for this one which came from a juvenile Blue Jay (one of my favourite birds). So I have a dark grey, a lighter grey, a regular sized Blue Jay, and this baby one. I don't know the birds of the grey feathers. The Sister drew some chalk art, and Astro rolled around in it. That was a fun day. He's her actual cat, the other is a slightly chubby grey tabby named Bodhi who always has grumpy face and might attack if you don't get with the food makings quick enough or if you touch his belly. We have all this antique slate and thought we'd grab a piece and make a gift for our friend. Last year this Mexican Heather was only really visited by very minuscule bees. I didn't even know bees came in that size. But only a few would visit and a few bumble bees. This year it's practically swarming with honey bees, and I'll still see the occasional minuscule bee or bumble bee. There will be twenty honey bees getting nectar from these flowers in the morning and in the evening. It's a bit noisy too. So, we thought of this sign, with The Sister drew out in chalk. We're pretty sure our friend will like it. Last year, she had a turtle who would wander up from the creek on really rainy days and eat cat food in the back yard. Haven't seen any turtles out back this year, but I woke up one morning and this one was at the front door waiting for food. So cute! I named her Penelope. Finally to the raccoons already, right?! So, this one is a mamma because you can tell she's been nursing baby raccoons (BABY RACCOONS!!! *head explodes from the thought of such cuteness). She's super tiny like the Marzipan of raccoons. Marzipan is our cat. She's super tiny, so anything that's tiny is the Marzipan of this or that. Like hummingbirds are the Marzipan of birds. Anyway, I've named her Hildi. On this particular evening, I was coming out to feed the stray cats (and ultimately her) and she was just stepping over the top of the fence. When she saw me, she froze, then she slowly moved backwards back over the fence keeping her eyes on me, and then slowly lowered herself down to where I was seeing face, then just eyes, then just her ears, and then she was gone. It made me laugh it was so cute. Here is Hildi having brunch a few days before the previous photo was taken. This is when I saw she was a mommy and always when I saw her wash her pee-paws in the "river". And finally we have the boy raccoon, who's still kind of young, but is larger than Hildi (and also you can most definitely tell that he's not a breast feeding mom). I've named him Roosevelt. Isn't that just the cutest name ever for a raccoon? This is The Sisters' photo, because I haven't gotten one of him. He was nervous because I'd switched on the front door light and possibly he heard other raccoons who might hone in on his location and food cache.
That concludes our two week tour of my house sitting adventures. If anything else happily exciting happens, I'll capture pictures and make a second post. Otherwise, we're pretty much done here.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
Categories |