What I see from our back porch

A challenge from Celie over at the blog The Kitchen’s Garden.  She has asked her readers to post what they see out their back doors or off their back porches.

Here is our view out the back door (most of our yard is still in the midst of construction that has been put on hold, alas).

View from the upstairs window out the front of the house (looking toward the animal paddocks, the white greenhouse covers show)

To the left across the back of the house

Straight out the back

A little farther to the right

To the right

Another turtle afternoon

Painted turtle laying her eggs

On Monday I got home from work and my husband was very excited.  He had been watching something moving toward the house out in the rather unkempt side yard, and realized it was a painted turtle.  He watched her as she came fairly close to the house and then dug a depression in the sandy soil there to lay her eggs.  He took the opportunity to get a beautiful closeup photo of her.  I love their orange bellies and the little orange marks around the edges of their shell.  They are such beautiful turtles!

Sunday of a busy weekend

4 lonely dyed skeins

I am taking a Red Zinger tea break right now.  Running from one thing to the next trying to get ready for a visit from my older son and his girlfriend for Memorial Day weekend.  In reality, most of what I am doing is trying to continue getting ready for the Maine Fiber Frolic which is two short weeks from now!  Yow!  To that end, I did a little bit of yarn and lock dyeing today, but not as much as I had meant to.

Temporary pen

 

Nutkin enjoying the green

I really needed to set up a temporary pen right outside of one of the paddocks so that I could get the three ewes and two goats in there to eat up the green stuff.  It’s just enough to begin getting their rumens ready for more.  So back I must go soon to invite them to return to their paddock.  We are supposed to be getting some fairly serious rain tonight and tomorrow, and I don’t like to have them eating drenched grass early on before they are totally out on pasture.  So they have had a few hours of fun.  And I think it’s about time for me to get back to work!

(While I am rushing from one thing to the other, I decided that I would love to listen to one of my favorite audiobooks again.  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an excellent read, but it’s an even better audio.  The book is a series of letters back and forth between all the characters, and the audio is done by a group of actors, so there is a male voice reading the letters from men, and female voices for the women.  It’s fantastic!  If you have a chance to give it a listen, it’s wonderful.  Post WWII Europe, Channel Islands, remembrances of the islanders’ experience during the German occupation, and a little bit of a love story all rolled into one.  Very satisfying!)

I am so easily amused

One of Esther’s very curious boys!

What a mug!

It really doesn’t take much!  I had a great time outside yesterday taking photos.  I don’t manage to grab the camera every chore time, and frequently I wish I had it with me as one of the sheep or goats is frequently doing something cute or funny.

SnowPea

SnowPea the goat is getting rounder by the day.  Her due date is at the end of May, so I am pretty sure she really is going to give us some kids.  The lambs are growing like hotcakes and their moms are not being as solicitous with feeding times.  They are just about 6 weeks old now.  I can’t believe it!  Pretty soon it will be weaning time.

Esther trying to extricate herself!

May morning

Even though it was 35 degrees out this morning at 5, I refused to put on my knit hat!  But I did cave and wear my ‘air conditioned’ wool longjohns.  I am such a baby!

No frost, however, so that was a plus.  Looking at the long-range weather forecast, it looks as though our nightly temps should be staying in the high 40s and 50s from now on… but that’s what I thought two weeks ago as well :*)

I doubt that frost would hurt the weeds that are popping out of the compost piles, however!

Foggy spring morning

I love foggy mornings in the warmer weather.  It wasn’t extremely dramatic, but it was striking because the trees are still that delicate light green color and the leaves are still small.  We got quite a bit of rain throughout the day, but the sun is out now and everything is clear and bright.  Here are a few photos of the day.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day!

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Rain is here, thank goodness

Lambs at dark

We never look forward to rainy weekends, but since we can’t order up the weather, it gave me the incentive to get some things done around the house (and, the fire danger is so high it was a good thing).  I needed to make a batch of soap, so that was first on my list for today, and then I spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen doing all kinds of things.

One of the white rams with our only ewe lamb

This evening John was outside checking on something and he came in and told me that there was a lot of baaing going on up in the paddock.  I stuck my head out the back door and couldn’t hear much, but the wind had really come up and was gusting pretty hard.  Sometimes the wind is enough to unsettle the ewes, but instead of simply wondering about it, I took a walk up there and spent some time in the paddock.  It wasn’t raining at that point, the lambs were playing hard up at the top of the hill, and the ewes were calling to them, without much response.  A lot of jostling and jumping going on and I tried to take some photos in the twilight.  Couldn’t get the action shots, but when they stopped jumping around for a moment I got a fairly decent picture of them wondering what I was doing out there at this time of night!