A Close Encounter!

I spend a lot of time in my garden. And my house is so secluded in the woods here that no one can see the yard or garden. So I often work in the buff. Well today, as I was bending over transplanting some kale, my phone which was laying on the ground a few feet away, rang. I picked it up and as I answered, turned around. There was a big bull moose about 10 feet behind me!

I think we both startled each other. My guess, since there is no way he could have not seen me as he walked up the lane, is that he wasn't sure (moose have poor eyesight) what kind of animal I was. So he was on his way to investigate. It's amazing that something that large and heavy that can leave deep prints even in fairly dry dirt, can walk up behind you that quietly!

I retired to the porch both to get my camera, and to be able to get out of the way should he get upset. He, also startled, ran toward the fence that circles my little clearing. The only opening was the lane where I, clearly in error, thought nothing would walk in while I was home and working outside. He walked around the fence line till he got back to the lane and then trotted off.

Above you can see him following the fence behind my chairs and swing.

Here you can sort of see the two sticks I stuck in to mark where I was standing (the near one) and where he was when I turned around (the far one, almost on the right hand edge). His location was super easy to mark because he left a set of super deep tracks when he jumped sideways when we scared each other. In the photo below you can see those sticks a bit better.

Here he is making his way in front of my van, and below, he made it back to the lane and headed out. Since he was not aggressive, this was kind of a cool experience. I've been close to several moose, but this might have been the closest, and for sure the only time one walked up behind me unawares! It would have been neat had someone else been there with a camera to capture both of our expressions when I turned around and realized he was there. I may keep the fence/gate up across the lane now if I'll be home working for a while though. Moose can be very aggressive.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Here's some photos of my garden, what it started from, and how things are looking now. Above is my veggies a few days ago. Also, I've got a new video tour of the whole area which you can watch below.

Here's what the clearing looked like when we first started turning up dirt. This was early in the spring, so all the brush was just starting to grow out. 

These two shots are after running a harrow through it a few times and pulling out all the brush and lots and lots of rocks.

My house was still sitting down the hill where she wintered while waiting for things to dry out enough to be able to pull her up the hill.

All smoothed out after lots of work! Looks like great soil.

Planting some little starts to get a few things going.

Frost covers to protect them since temps were still getting close to freezing some nights.

Adding lots of seeds. And now my house is up here too.

More things sprouting.

Tiny little strawberries and rhubarb at the far end.

Getting a bit bigger!

Then I added hoops and enough frost covers to cover the whole garden if I need to and keep the covers up off of the plants so they could continue to grow.

Now things are getting big. Here you can see a lot of strawberries on one of my plants.

These are hardy kiwi vines that I am excited to try to get some fruit from in a year or so.

Then I got busy with haying season and such and the weeds started to get out of control. Here they are nearly burying all my veggies.

I also planted apples, grapes, cherries, pears, plums, and raspberries. Many of the trees from dry rooted stock, and here you can see them shooting out new leaves.

While I have lots of flowers around the house, I also planted veggies and herbs in those planters. Above is a thick patch of kale, and below you can see my dill.

After pulling all those weeds (and adding them to my compost, so their nutrients will be going right back in this dirt), the veggies are looking good.

Some things came up a bit spotty, I think due to all the weeks of rain, but I've replanted those now, and have little new plants coming up between the big ones. 

And you can see one of my cherries that's looking like it might be ready to eat soon!

Nightfall and Skies over Fy Nyth

Here's a few recent shots of my place at night. And some of the impressive thunderheads that rolled through the other evening.

The last sunlight streaming through the trees to the west.

Though you can hardly see it, that is an owl sitting on the tip of the branch with the big dipper in the background. It was pitch dark when I took this.

My inviting little porch.

The hay moon rising over the mountains.

My yard at night when the little solar motion detector lights kick on.

Dusk.

Another full moon shot. I wish I could have made it look as large as it did to me in real life!

And one last shot of sun rays.

Babies in the Tiny Nest

They hatched! If you saw the eggs in the nest a few days ago, this is the same one. A mother nested in a hole right on the ground almost beside my house. That final egg has now hatched as well, but I haven't gotten another shot since. Newly hatched baby birds area almost so ugly the are cute. I can't wait to see them all filling out and turning into little fluff balls.!

Haying

You may know that work around the property is part of how I pay for my stunning house parking spot here. This year I helped with the haying as part of that. We had an amazing hot dry stretch of 12 days in a row (after six weeks of rain that helped all the grass get super tall) that let all the hay get baled and put up in beautiful condition. And then a huge downpour about an hour after the last bales came out of the field. It was so nice to watch the lightning, wind, and rain and know the hay was done!