Bunny Hutch

I wanted to show you the hutch Todd built for the bunnies. In the background you can see a corner of the greenhouse, some of the ramp leading to it and part of the garbage shed.

"What is the black thing hanging from below the cage?" you may ask. Well, it's a poo chute. Yep. It's gotta go somewhere! So we catch it and amend our beds with bunny poo. Turns out it's a pretty great system, originally designed by Michael and refined by Todd.

This is the ingenious removeable door Todd designed to keep out the wind and rain in the winter. Yes, there's a vetilation system for next summer. These bunnies may even get a runway to a ground cage next spring!

Here is the original, the gray bunners. I think she's getting old in bunny years. She holds perfectly still when I pet her for as long as I will do so.

And here is the fluffy friend I got for her as a baby. They are very sweet together, grooming each other and snuggling. She, however, is very wiggly and active, being very picky about which methods and styles of petting she will allow.

I like my bunnies.

Black Friday, Roseburg Style

Since yesterday was so relaxed (NO company - oddly enough, nice) Priscilla and I thought we would go shopping today. Actually, she decided at a frosty 5 a.m. that 6:00 a.m. was so not worth it for $.99 flannel at Joanne's. And snuggled back in. Good choice. Leaving together at 9:15 or so was much nicer, having enjoyed coffee and leftover cranbrosia and cheeseback (which taste amazing together, by the way) with Todd. Our first stop was the Craft Bazaar at Riversdale Grange, where I bought too many hand crafted beauties, and really enjoyed the atmosphere, as usual.

We then stopped in at Kruse Farms to stock up on Asian pears and apples, mostly. Also Yukon Gold potoatoes. Very chilly, even with their huge wood stove blazing.

So, drove by Joanne's to just check on the density of shoppers. Dense. So dense, in fact, that we continued on towards Macy's.

Which was quite dense, but with more floor space to accomodate the mass. Very nice to look at beautiful things and buy a few.

Back home, worked in the office for a while, a friend stopped by to chat for a couple of hours, ate turkey/stuffing/cranbrosia leftovers, watched Hunt for Red October. A great day after Thanksgiving.

Ah, November in Wilbur

This is the one bed that's fully dressed and layered with rabbit poo, newspaper and bark dust - Lime Thyme and flowers still blooming. The color sort of washed out - the snapdragons are a lovely coral, the lime thyme is vibrant green.

The three rosemary plants are so healthy! I picked chives today for my hash browns. Yes, that's salvia blooming in the background. And weeds. Got to deal with that.

Bright Lights swiss chard with varied thymes and another of the rosemary triplets. One of these days we'll get around to eating the chard to see how it tastes. This bed needs some serious soil amendment, so I'm a bit tentative to eat from it. And I sure don't want the guys to eat bad s.c. and think it's all nasty. Hence, procrastination...

To any of you who have sung in choirs directed by me, guess what? I'm back to it! I really thought those days were gone, but with some prompting, I believe from the Lord, I looked into it, and our "seeker-church", which has chosen to not "choir", has agreed that it would be great. So we have 6 weeks to pull together a couple of songs. AAAHHH!!! The turnout is great - 30 voices, some of which are experienced and beautiful. It's so neat to again have family included - Priscilla, Michael and Tyler, all of whom sing so well. Pray for me - this is a big challenge, and everyone seems to be taking it for granted that everything will be great!

Sorry I didn't blog for a while. I think I was depressed - okay, I was depressed. And I didn't want to dump all the junk in my mind into the world of blog. Now life is better, or it looks better to me. I'm functioning better. So maybe I'll start blogging again. Thanks to all of you who have given me a place to go on your blogs. You make me happy.

Sunrise

Oh, if only I had my camera with me this morning! I was taking Michael to school early because he had been invited to attend a Bible study in one of the teacher's rooms. Halfway down the hill I saw pink in the sky ahead of me - lots of pink. We couldn't see much through the trees and the mountain, but beside Buster and Annie's house I stopped the car and got out. Down there was a ground fog that was also colored. The sky was filled with brilliant pink clouds that looked rough, like the coarsest setting on a cheese grater. I wish I could adequately describe the sight. Pastor Paul said on Sunday that the most fundamental expression of worship is, "Wow". Wow.

As we drove on to school the fog around us was sort of a diffused glowing color, lavender, pink, peach. Then it cleared and the same cheese-grater clouds were now brightly glowing palest golden with a background of deepest gray-blue. Michael wondered out loud if Christians have a deeper appreciation for this sort of thing than atheists.

It changed so fast. I wanted to sit and watch it, but M was squirmy about stopping at all. Maybe he heard me tell him that it's sometimes important to stop and get out of the car to look, maybe he didn't. Duty made me get back in and keep driving. Soul longed to stand and see until the show was over.

Collecting leaves

So the other day the the compost was too wet and I was collecting dried leaves to add to it. Picture me holding two rakes like a big set of tweezers with a big wad of leaves between them, bent over, when I feel something on the back of my exposed neck. A definite something, not a small fly or a leaf. I completed placing the leaves in the tote, gently reached back, and found the largest praying mantis I have ever seen.

Their feet cling.

He didn't brush off.

(Pause for shudder...)

So I gently removed him to the closest flower, a salvia of which I am fond, and went for the camera. Here's the guy.

What made the moment even more interesting was that after snapping the picture of the gigantic insect I had just removed from the back of my neck, I returned to leaf collecting. The very next sweep of the rake revealed this beautiful little snake, which might be a red racer, I don't know. But he has red on his sides. I know, not a very scientific identification process. Actually, very shortly after that a very nice lizard whisked up the wall beside me and paused in the shade of a bearberry plant. But I can't get the picture in the proper place in this blog and he is very hard to see anyway. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Quite the afternoon for creepy-crawlies.

Girls out the back door

Not exactly as exotic as the moose on Megg's blog, but still pretty fun to watch. Until they complete the eradication of the Blue Wave petunias by the upper stairs.

Salsa for the winter

It took a whole box of tomatoes, many of different types of peppers (but none very hot), a whole lotta onion and garlic and cilantro, to come up with twelve quarts of salsa to freeze. That's three gallons of salsa for winter. Kinda pretty, huh? And it tastes really good.

It was pretty enjoyable to make.