A Deer's Breakfast

I don't care how many times it happens, it's always a magical experience to see a deer.  The other day, this beautiful animal was out having a good old nosh of the wild apples along Willow Lane.  Don't worry though; I managed to collect enough to make a decent batch of wild apple jelly!  




Checking out the neighbourhood.



Listening.



That's a big mouthful of apple!



Crunch, crunch ... and it's gone.



Yum!



She stayed for about 15 minutes just happily eating.



Wait ... is someone taking pictures? (:




Wild apples are everywhere along the pathway.



In this last shot, you can just see the hail which had begun to fall.  She whipped her head around, then suddenly pranced away into the woods. She knew the hailstorm was imminent. Smart lady! :)

Fall Colours

Just a few images of Fall at Willow Retreat.

A certain young lady taking a cool dip.



Abundant crop of apples this year. These are Northern Spy: perfect for making pies. :)



The way in to one of our campsites. Beautiful by day; mysterious and otherworldly by night.



Just a few of the goodies we've put up in the root cellar. Jams, jellies, pickles, chutneys and even marmalade!




The pond in shades of autumn.




No shortage of water this time of year!




Avalon Woods are full of hidden brooks and streams.




Glorious highlands in full colour.



The garden at peak colour.



I love to see the hillsides ablaze with orange and red.



The way in to our second campsite, named for the fairy hawthorn that stands guard at the centre.



The Mists of Avalon Woods ... here there be dragons.  

Fall Visitors

Every season brings its different wildlife visitors to the gardens and woodland.  I had recently hung up a suet bird feeder, which soon attracted a pair of blue jays.  Every house we've lived in, we've always had blue jays visit, and so it was great to see them here.  They've been scolding me for picking their grapes!  I managed to get some photos:







Such pretty birds!  And they always look as though they're posing for their portrait.  :)

We've also had a visit from a pair of ruffed grouse.  I think it's the male I've been seeing around the garden - first in the apple tree, and then on the grass collecting fallen berries.  It was definitely the male the second time because he was fanning his tail and had his ruff of collar feathers standing up.  This is a mating display, and I was lucky to catch it on camera:



He took a few turns around the base of the apple tree, then started strutting towards me.  He put away his feather display and became more interested in food, picking up fallen berries in his beak.





He's a beautiful bird.  The previous day, I think it must be the same grouse, was up our apple tree:



He was making some hilarious faces at me through the kitchen window:





Between the apples, berries and rosehips, we're certainly keeping him well-fed!  Maybe if his mating display is successful, in the spring we'll see chicks ...  :)

I'll keep posting wildlife photos, as and when I can capture them.

Celtic Colours

Is it the first summer storm,
Is it the colours of Fall?
Is it having so little, and yet having it all?

Lyrics from "Love" by Sugarland

On September 25, I took a bunch of photos of the leaves changing.  It was meant as a kind of panorama of the garden.  It was a gorgeous day, summer-like, and the light was wonderful.  Today, October 3, I took a few more photos, and wow, what a difference a couple of weeks makes!  The colours are now almost at their peak, and the highlands and glens are shades of rust and gold.  Not to mention, the highways and hotels are packed full of leafers from as far away as California! 

Here in Cape Breton, the Celtic Colours Festival is a major annual event.  This year it runs from 7 - 15 October, and features concerts and ceilidhs, with fiddlers and guitarists, folk dancers and singers.  But here at Willow Retreat we have our own Celtic colours, right here in our back garden!  Here are a few photos to entice you:











These were taken September 25 ... now look at the difference:





Amazing how fast the leaves change.  The weather, as well, can take you by surprise; we had a long dry spell recently, to the point where the streams were starting to dry up.  We woke one day to a severe lack of water pressure, and thought there was a burst in the pipe ... but on further investigation, it turned out there was no water in the pipe at all!  When we walked up to the power house, the reason was obvious: the stream where we had our water intake was dry!  There was even a dead fish lying in the bottom of a dried out pool.  When you rely on water for both your household water, and your electricity, this is a bit of a problem!

After hiking up the mountain and finding that the source had not dried up, it was simply a lack of water in general, we moved the intake further upstream, and this did the trick.  (This sounds easy.  Rest assured, it was not easy.  Thank God for my husband, who knows everything there is to know about water and its temper tantrums.)  Several hundred curse words and a gallon of rum later, and we had water back.

Naturally, as soon as we had that sorted out, it decided to rain.  It's rained for about three days straight, and just started to clear a bit when I took this photo:



There's something very magical about the way the mists come down the mountain.  I guess the Celts have always migrated to the same types of landscape, whether it be the highlands of Scotland or here in Cape Breton.  Either way, it just wouldn't be Fall without the beautiful autumn leaves.  You should come and see them one day!

Autumn Soon

So I'm sitting here making apple juice, to be tranformed into apple jelly tomorrow, the house is nice and cozy, I'm listening to the sound of the rain; and a mouse runs out from underneath the woodstove and just sits there, staring at me.  Yes, it's Fall again, and this time I don't have to go home; I am home. 

The leaves have started to turn already.  Just a slight tinge of colour, but unmistakably, a change:



Around six o'clock I went out and tended the potato patch.  If there's one thing I'm learning from vegetable gardening it's that you must have patience.  I have to resist the urge to fork up our precious potatoes ... they're still thickening up their skins underground.  Every evening I go around and cover up the ones that have popped their heads out of the soil ... if you don't do this they will turn green.



I just cover them up with a handful of soil and hope for the best.  In the meantime, something has been taking a bite out of a couple of our potatoes!!  Possibly voles??  Good job the cats are decimating the vole population!

The other thing that damages potatoes is the slug.  Here is one that I caught in the act:



Eww!!  DNW!!

While I was concentrating on the potatoes, Mr. Downy Woodpecker was in the mountain ash, mocking me.  I managed to take his photo:



We've also recently had a visit from a pair of Northern Flickers, which are also members of the woodpecker family.  This happy couple were on the lawn, getting worms:





A closer look.

The bees are still feverishly working away, and it never fails to amaze me how the garden rotates; no matter the season, there is always something that bears pollen, and presumably something else that needs to be pollinated.  The hollyhocks are still in bloom, and the echinacea and sedum have just come out.  Mallow, oregano, thistles and of course the roses are still blossoming even now.



Bee on echinacea.



Bee on sedum.

And in the woods, a black toad crossed my path ...



The other night I was amazed and extremely privileged to see no less than four deer in our garden.  They sauntered around the edge of the grass, nibbling here and there, then went on their way.  One bounded across the concrete posts for the cabin, white tail bobbing as she went!  I tried to get photos, but sadly it was dusk and my camera refused to focus.  This is the only shot I managed to get which shows any kind of image at all - there really is a deer there, if you look hard enough!  You can definitely see the catchlight in his eye ...



I wonder if this is who has been nibbling our grapes?!!



Never fear, there are plenty more grapes still on the vine!

I can't write a post about autumn without including one of the most famous poems of all time, which I used to know by heart, thanks to my English grammar school ... says it all, really.

Ode to Autumn, by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Under normal circumstances, “my husband” and “explosives” are not words you want to see in the same sentence.  However, with our beaver problem going from bad to worse, plus the onset of some of the wettest weather Nova Scotia has seen in recent years, the pairing of these phrases became not only acceptable, but necessary.

As I had already returned home, I can only give a second-hand and necessarily vague report of the shady goings-on down at Beaver Dam.  The first round was a fairly straightforward win: with the aid of a keen eye and a great deal of patience, the final score was Paul: 2, Beaver: 0.  The evidence was left at the dam as a warning.

This is all well and good, but word on the street estimated the beaver population along this waterway to be forty-plus.  If this was the case, we needed to find a more permanent solution.  The gravel surface was now almost completely washed away, and if the erosion continued, our road would become a river.  We had discussed various options: a bridge, a bigger culvert, raising the level of the road.  All of these are costly endeavours which require a backhoe, not to mention a wealth of time and material.  Simpler, more immediate action was needed.

Trust me, there’s a reason why Paul’s nickname is Pierce Gibson McGyver.  See, you leave him by himself for a couple of days and he gets bored.  When he gets bored, he thinks up mad solutions for tough problems.  Hmm, he thinks to himself, what would happen if I used my knowledge for good instead of evil?  Ah, what indeed? 

Around the supper hour, a large boom was heard in the vicinity of Beaver Dam.  The theme from “The Dambusters” may or may not have been playing.  The initial percussion caused a small shock wave, giving local blue jays and chipmunks time to scatter.  Shortly thereafter there was an ominous burbling sound, and a huge mass of mud, tree branches and debris rocketed out of the culvert like a cork from a bottle.  Water began to gush through the cleared culvert and almost immediately the flooded area began to subside. 

Here are a few before and after pictures:

Before



Remember this?  Knee-deep ... and this is the road!



The extent of the flooding, with our car to show scale.

After

 

That great big lump that looks like a part of the riverbank?  That was tightly packed inside the culvert.





View downstream showing how quickly the water has receded.



The riverbank which was previously completely submerged.



.... and the road is now dry!

The amount of material blocking the culvert was such that we guess it had not been cleared in years.  As well, when we looked at the photos of the waterway when we first saw the property back in February, it’s obviously been quite a few seasons since the water level has been this low.  We’re hoping that now the culvert is clear, as long as we keep it clear, the water will flow under the road the way it was supposed to.  We can’t stop the beaver activity, but as long as we can maintain a dry road, there’s no reason why we can’t co-exist.

In the meantime, if you chance to meet Pierce Gibson McGyver on a dark night, my advice is to be very, very nice to him.