I guess if I am not going to abandon this blog permanently I should make a post.
Our MN weather has been so nice that one does not want to take up much time indoors. After being here for 24 winters and never seeing a winter as mild as this one, we are mostly in ‘shock’ and awe. In the past week we have had right near 70° at one point and in the 60’s most days. For mid-March this is unbelievable for our part of the country.
It is also very welcome. Although most of us do not believe winter is over and expect any day to wake up to ‘reality’. We have had some major snow storms in April and generally do not look forward to the garden being workable until the end of April on the first of May. But this year, unless we have a sudden change, we might be able to put out cold weather crops by mid-April.
Whatever the weather does at this point we consider ourselves very blessed in having such a short mild winter. Naturally there are a few hardy souls who bemoan the situation. In younger days I would have been one of them, but as ‘father time’ catches up with me, I am thankful for some early relief to winter.
Otherwise my world has been busy, which is normal. It is one assured fact that when you are self-employed with a woodshop right out your backdoor, there is never going to be any lack of work. There might be a lack of “profitable work”, but that is secondary to the fact that work is a necessity for a happy life. Work we have, “profitable work” is an illusive critter.
Speaking of critters. We have recently had a skunk that was hanging around near the house and buildings. In fact, I think one of our cats made friends with it and they were hanging out together. We have not seen it for a week or so, thus we are in hopes that it has moved on. However, I do have a live trap set for the stinky little bugger. It has given both me and my wife some serious grief on a couple occasions. My excitement was when I opened the back door in the dark one evening to go out and nearly stepped on it! Lucky for me it did not care anymore for my company than I did his and ran off before I got get my hands on a shotgun.
Then my wife had a bit of excitement. We have what we refer to as a mud porch, where we store firewood and such. One night a few days ago my wife went out late in the evening to get some firewood. To her disappointment the mud porch door was standing open, meaning any animal could be inside the mud room. Of course it was dark with only some light from the kitchen shining into the mud room. She looked and listened (I don’t know why she did not retrieve a flashlight), when she decided that there was no ‘visitors’ in the room, she shut the outside door and went to the wood box. Then she heard ‘something’ rustling in some paper bags that we keep on the porch. That was my first notification that she was in ‘distress’! What a howling and crashing on the steps leading to the kitchen! Door slamming and near panic! Reminded me of the time she found a snake laying underneath the pair of jeans she was about to put on during a camping trip, but that is another story.
I went to see what the ruckus was about and she explained in very excited terms that “something” was on the mud porch, probably the skunk, because “someone” had left the back door open. Looking through the window I could see that the back door of the mud porch was now closed. So I asked her why she shut the thing up, so it could not get out. Her very short answer was, because she had decided there was nothing on the porch, that was until she heard it in the paper bags behind her while she was getting some firewood.
I need not point out who had to go investigate. But I took a flashlight and carefully made my way to the outside door and opened it, so whatever creature was on the porch could make its escape without being alarmed. I have always thought it was poor judgment to “alarm” a skunk. After I opened the door wide, I commenced to find the creature. By then I had doubts that it was the skunk because I could not smell him. I was right too, for when I found the culprit it turned out to be one of the cats! All the ruckus over a pet cat. But that is how the human mind works. We jumped to conclusions before we have all the evidence. In this case, my wife nearly ripped the kitchen door off and fell up the stairway, all on an “assumed threat” that she was about to be smelling very “ripe”.
Sure glad she was the one getting firewood that evening and not me. J
