spring was sprung! then subdued....

on the first day of spring three female and one male gold finch showed up at our feeders! it was apropos i think! then of course over night it was all freezing rain and snow and slushy on the way to work, mother nature, wtf?!

(p.s. i have recently learned that one -read me- should NOT under any circumstances have a couple glasses of wine and go on etsy!.... at least i bought a chrsitmas present!)

despite the view from the window....

spring is coming i know it. it has to. i need it.

also i saw a dark eyed junco today, haven't seen one of those lil fellas in a while.

tonight easy croissant sandwiches and soup to wash off the cold.

tomorrow, more of the same weather.

a little bit of my life

my dog and cats take up a large portion of my heart. in fact so much so that i feel guilty sometimes when i get short with them for being, well, them! the post with the chair shows cooper (or more often "coop") the dog. he's a beagle crossed with a red tick. all hound. but pretty much the best hound i've ever come across. he's an interesting little dude. looks like he should have had longer legs. my manfriend, R, takes him hunting (yes he does that and i'm okay with it) and coop is an excellent deer runner. even for people other than R. here's an updated shot of our lil man. he enjoys having his hip/bum scratched.

the first critter "we" had, well, that i acquired was summer our little mini calico. you might remember her form the chair post too. she is a bit of a princess and makes sure everyone knows it. but super soft and loves to cuddle. and boxes. she loves to sleep in boxes. obviously.

the middle child is trixie. i've mentioned her before. she's my soulmate. she picked me as her own and i couldn't do anything about it. she is an amazing cat, so friendly and kind of dog-like. as far as cats go? we definitely won the lottery! she is a diluted calico, so white, grey and peach where as summer is white, black and orange. and she is a happy cat.

we are tentatively considering adding a puppy - a girl - to this mix later this year. a black lab. the parents are smaller in stature as neither of us want a giant lumbering lab, sweet natured and beautiful. and of course being a lab she would be trained to retrieve. remember, hunter manfriend, our dogs are dual purpose. that being said we wouldn't get rid of her if she couldn't retrieve.

not a terribly interesting blog post today but it's something and it has photos once again. we're a little family and more furry than anything else but we're happy and get along just fine. next post? manfriend?....

i seem to be caught on a loop

while i started the year with such high hopes the blog fell by the wayside again! i am terrible at this apparently. but while i still don't have a "direction" in mind for my blog i have realized a few things lately....

1) i have a serious disease. i have barnheart. if this means nothing to you, sorry. if it means something to you, welcome to the club. i have always enjoyed gardening and producing my own food etc and last year i put in a 16x16 ft garden and got some potatoes, special non-ripening tomatoes (lol), green onions, some beans and peas. oh and one teensy tiny head of broccoli. so this year i have been researching. i will be ready this year and will be revamping the layout etc. so look out groundhog, i'm going to be super ready for your tricks this year.

2) on the topic of barnheart, i will be acquiring some lovely laying hens from a friend and co-worker. she has too many for her liking currently and why not start with some guaranteed layers right? perhaps i will add a few chicks and maybe a handful of meat bird chicks as well farther into the spring when i have everything established. so that's a main project for this spring - coop building!

3) my house. it's under renovations. our siding is nonexistent currently it's just the insulation board so there's outside stuff and inside stuff to keep us busy, and far too long and boring to list here.

4) on top of that i will be working two jobs soon. the one i currently have is full time occasionally when we're busy enough and the other is my "summer" job from last year. so labelled because it depends heavily on tourism and lets face it not many cottagers come up this way in the cold winters we have.

so i will be negotiating my way through 2 pretty much full time jobs for the majority of the spring/summer/fall as well as working on the house and raising (sort of) some chickens! at some point in there i'd love to see my friends and family as well as go camping, do crafts, sit on the beach (or my deck) in the sun with some cider.

now i'm definitely not trying to sound like i'm complaining, i am very thankful for everything. i'm just trying so hard not to overwhelm my mind with it all before pretty much any of it has happened. i'm bad for that.

on a new topic i have kept this blog pretty uninformative on myself personally. at arms length as it were. i think some of it was because if there was no information about me personalizing it then it wouldn't matter as much if someone i knew found it. not that i'm worried about anything i write on here, it's just sometimes nice to have an outlet, ya know? needless to say i will probably be expanding into my self on here letting you guys (laugh! who?) see what's going on in my life as i know it.

and sorry again no pictures!