End of the Season

Apparently, we are in the beginning of the end of mountain cedar pollen season.  Or at least that is what the weatherman on the news just said.  Of course, the mountain cedar might not know that - from what I can tell, it blooms 24/7/365!

Last Fall, we had one of the many 8-legged visitors we get.  This particular one was hanging out between the corner of the house and the honeysuckle trellis.

The web was hard to see, unless I happened to be at just the right angle.  It helped that the spider was actually on the web, he'd been hanging out up on the rain gutter and not actually on the web.

Here's a close-up.  I know some people don't like spiders, but they are actually pretty neat.  They are very important insects and play a major part in the ecosystem.  This particular type pulls it's legs up close to the body and gets very still.  They essentially play dead, until an unsuspecting bug flies into the web.  Then, they use all 8 of those legs and they are FAST.

When he wasn't on the web, this is where he was hanging out at.  The web was attached at the corner of the rain gutter.  Technically, it was probably a she and not a he - I think the majority of spiders that make webs are actually the females.

This is the toy we bought Bill last fall at his favorite tool store.

The firewood we got was from a lumber yard, it's pieces of wood that was originally used to hold things like pipe stacks together when they are delivered.  It's untreated so it is safe to burn, but some of the pieces are pretty big.  They are generally rectangular and some of them are pretty thick.  Which is when the wood splitter comes in handy.

They are pretty easy to use, it's all hydrolic and it does require a little upper body strength but it's not hard in the sense of swinging an ax would be.  The wood is placed in between the moving part and the stationary end, then there are two long arms that are swung which causes the spring to move.

The spring moves the flat piece which forces the wood against the stationary end which has a pointed wedge.  As the wood is forced against the wedge, it splits.

(Bill was being a good boy and wearing his sun hat!)  He's holding on to the two arms, they are swung one at a time and it's a pretty good workout for the arms and upper body.

This is actually the start of the process.

This is the woodpile before he'd done a lot of splitting.  Some of the wood was small enough that we didn't need to split it, but a lot of it was too big.

This was something else from last Fall.  It was originally part of the maple tree right outside of my dining room window.  That tree was pretty badly damaged several years back when we had the big ice storm.  It's still hanging in there, but is lost a big limb in a storm last Fall.  This piece of the limb was on the ground, the hole is a woodpecker nest.  It probably didn't help the tree's integrity, woodpeckers can be very damaging in their hunt for insects and also they nest by burrowing into the tree itself.

Frasier seems to be back to normal today.  I was really afraid that we'd have a bad surprise this morning, but he was fine.  A little groggy because I gave him a tranquilizer after all last night because he was a little restless, but happy to see me.  When Bill got home today,someone was coming over to see him so he put the dogs out in the back yard.  I picked up Otter and J so that she could get the car tonight, and when we got here I could see Frasier wandering around the back yard.  I let the dogs in and Frasier was just overjoyed to see J, which is unusual.  He likes people, but he is a very protective dog and especially if Bill is not in the same room I am.  He's met J before and likes him, but today he was just super affectionate.  Later on I was out in the back yard watering the crepe myrtles and honeysuckle, and the dogs came back out with me.  Frasier spent most of his time running around the back yard repeatedly.  He was having a great time and was like a puppy.  At the moment, he's grooming Maggie.  He woke her up to groom her!