Ho-hum, back at the Aerie

Since getting back to the Aerie on Sunday I have seen a groundhog in the yard briefly on Sunday evening. (As soon as it saw me step onto the deck with the air rifle, it disappeared into the weeds and hasn't returned.)

Also Sunday evening at around 9:30 PM the local black bear came into take apart the bird feeders--again. I shone my flashlight at him and yelled but he just sat down and looked into the light. Probably would have started worshiping me if the charge on that million candle power light hadn't started to fade. As the light faded, I stepped back onto the deck and into the house. THe bear absconded with one of the feeders. (I found the feeder today up the hill about 20 yards--empty.)

It rained quite hard on Sunday. Over an inch of water was in the rain gauge. All that water has been good for the grass and the wild berries along the powerline right of way. Terry and I picked a cup of ripe red raspberries yesterday and I got a mixed two cups of red and a few black raspberries (one little bush) plus some blueberries this afternoon. Yesterday's berries ended up as last night's dessert on top of some shortcake with whip cream. Today's will end up over some pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.

I cut the grass today and the new section is growing very, very well. I realize I made two mistakes, however. The first was asking for hay and not straw to cover the seed. The hay sprouted right alongside the grass seed. It looks marvelous! (Straw is a pretty dead product and will not sprout. Even better is "salt hay" which comes from plants that need a little salt water tickling their roots. But that stuff has become pretty rare and expensive.) My second mistake was in not scratching up a few more of the bare spots and spreading seed and hay over them! If I had, the lawn would now look like a fairway at the local country club.

The next couple of days are supposed to be scorchers so I'm planning on spending a good part of the day in the basement where it will be 15-20 degrees cooler than the 85-90 they are predicting. I've got to rebuild at least one bird feeder and may put together another one or two while I'm at it. I will NOT be putting these outside again until later in the fall when Mr. Bruin may be deeper in the woods. I've also got to burn some CDs of pictures before I forget. My sister-in-law wants to see what I have from the wedding in San Francisco. And I still haven't created the back-up discs of my photos from either the PowerBook G4 or the Toshiba.

On a side note, I was sorely disappointed when I stepped on the scale on Monday morning. All that hard work and a fairly limited diet (no snacks, only a little carb in the form of sandwich bread and French fries, lots of protein but in reasonable servings) and I still I weighed a half pound more than before I left. *sigh* At least I felt like I converted some fat into muscle.