Soda bread and squirrel banquet

 Dining outdoors and in

Here's Butternut Boy enjoying the pear core I'd thrown out for him. It's one of the pears you saw on the windowsill. He also runs off with mango peels and canteloupe rinds. 

Not many of the scraps I put out to nourish the earth get left to rot down.  He knows where to look and I think he can tell time.

Indoors I was all set to make bread and found, unbelievably, I was completely out of yeast. So I made soda bread, not a great deprivation. Yeast is now on the shopping list.

My knitting groups have been running out of doors for a couple of weeks, but without me. With a brisk wind and temperature in the 60s f. I'm not up for sitting outside and trying to get my hands to work. This Friday might work though. We'll see. It's going to be a bit warmer.  My inner introvert is saying let's not go and say we did..

This has been a long cold spring, and the flowers love it, blooming longer than usual, no hot days to get them blown out.

Squirrel Butternut

Hazy Sunday morning picture shot through screening, of happy squirrel breakfasting on the butternut squash seeds and rinds I tossed out yesterday while I made lunch.

A couple of minutes after this, he drove off another squirrel who showed up wanting to join in. I'd have thought there was enough for ten squirrels, but Butternut Boy begged to differ.

Your consumer reporter, hard at work 6WS

I like to hear the end of the story, so I thought I should report back on a few ends.

The mobius scarf went over well, and Handsome Son went home wearing it, plus his fingerless gloves, which turned out to match and to have been knitted by me at some point I have forgotten about. 

The almond friands (very hard not to write friends there) went over equally well, with special request to do them again at some point. Just a bunch of paper cases on the plate I served them on now. So this was in fact worth the effort. Even if I don't have the special little tins you have to send away for, I seem to have said that a few times now.

And the kettle I blogged about ages ago when I bought it, and it arrived from Germany with semi translated instructions, has proved very well the water to heat admirably, even to steam.  I've been using it at least two if not three times daily, and it still does all the things it spozed to, so here's a shoutout to German workmanship.

Out of doors, however, there's a conspicuous lack of consumption by the squirrels. After an entire winter of trying to access the firmly locked and inaccessibly hung suet feeders while many species of birds noshed happily undisturbed, one smart squirrel finally managed to knock down the red net feeder plus the S hook, now sunk deep in the snow. And today struggled and finally got the other suet feeder unhooked and down on the ground. 

 However, that's where his thinking skills ended.  Squirrel yanked and plunged up and down, digging and scrabbling and swearing and completely unable to unlock the feeder, thanks to the split rings I put on there which defeated him. 

And since what was left was a small bit of food, he couldn't access it to eat.  While this titanic struggle was going on, hauling the feeder all over the patio, the large chunk of food was unnoticed in the red net feeder which was wide open to eat from.  This is a limited set of thinking skills.

So once the squirrel left, either from frustration or exhaustion, the birds all flocked down again and set to work on their food.  I'll hang it all back up again when the snow melts a bit.

And now for a pot of tea and an almond friand, neener!

And on the subject of Handsome Sons and genetics, he told me last night he's been writing a blog which is about a mythical set of characters based on real objects, and their adventures.  For which he has a keen audience!  The concept takes the form of announcements, like a kind of news blog, I think.

I asked him if this was anything like the Dolliver idea, and he agreed that it was, but more fictional!  Not as amazing as you might think, since he's been doing this sort of thing since he could first hold a pencil, illustrated stories of stuff around the house and what they got up to in their spare time.  I have bunch of little drawings up in the studio that he saved for me instead of recycling everything.

But it cracked me up.  No, I don't have a link to the blog, but he's planning to monetize it, and I'll ask if he wants me to link it at that time, when it gets more ambitious. 

Like Mom like Handsome Son, I guess.  So happy that his creative spirit is alive and well despite a couple of work setbacks in the last couple of years.  You simply can't tell an artist to just stop; they can't! They just find different ways to keep going.

 

Brief Encounter in the Cold

I got a day ahead of myself yesterday, blame Simon's Cat, who announced 12th Night a day early...but moving right along, very cold again today.

I had thrown out the pumpkin seeds when I made the soup, about the time I moved plants around and a little outdoor table ended up outside again.  And this morning found a squirrel collecting the seeds, setting them on the table, and tucking in.  They know how to live.

Then her friend showed up, and there was a series of brief encounters all over the patio.  In awe of their energy.  It's the life force at work, this being the season.