Rudigrrr Wolf has found a new favourite thing to do at THO. The “hobby” is to play with, amputate and eat the legs from the daddy long legs (Opiliones) spiders that hunt there.
We have dozens of amputees in the cloth porch now.
I think that the spiders do not allow this to happen without a fight. The consequence for Rudigrrrr is that he has swollen glands so he went to Hamilton with Big Papa Wolf to get checked out by the vet.
Any suggestions on how to deter Rudigrrr from hunting spiders?
Today has pretty much consisted of sweating, whining about the heat, playing a little Skip-O, but we relented and finally got off our chairs for a few minutes.
We put up a bit of fence for the pole beans to climb. Not too much work. We used about 5 feet of left over fence, two barely used boards, c-fencing nails and six screws to attach them to the base of the raised bed. Took about ten minutes but made us sweat like hell.
I hope the beans don’t think that it is too hot to climb.
At Tiny House Ontario my morning ritual is to look out the window to see how the forest survived the night. There are changes every single day even if it is simply wildlife that is moving around. Currently, the forest is gasping for a drink. The tops of the maples have started turning yellow in response to the current drought conditions. It took 100 litres to give the garden a drink and I suppose that the forest would need about a million litres for it to help them through until the next rain. That is a hundred of those water trucks full and then there would be the issue of getting it spread around.
The ancestor tree next to the cloth porch is the only tree that seems to be OK but of course, I always give it my bath water, dish water, left over tea and coffee including the grounds and leaves as well as melted ice water from my cooler. Lucky tree.
Today, when the forecast called for rain I think I even saw Dictator chipmunk doing a little dance. Sadly, the rain turned out to be less than a mm. The good thing is that it did cool off the air a bit, so there is something to be grateful for.
There is hope! I just looked up the weather on my computer and found that the forecast calls for possible storms tonight and there is rain on the forecast for the next couple of days too. I hope that we will have a few days of slow steady rain. I am sure that the farmers would agree! I can’t wait to tell the chipmunk!
Hj and I carried in 100 litres of water for the garden yesterday. We are fortunate to have neighbours who are kind to us because we do not yet have a well on our land.
Today the garden looks really good again!
Hj, also did a bit of clearing nearby so that we can get the solar panels set up there next week.
Just yesterday I was saying that I had to do very uninteresting things. This was NOT that I was not calling out to the universe to send me an erratic bit of craziness into my life. Still, a call got me out of bed early this morning which I found only slightly annoying but which got me out of bed when I sort of hoped to sleep.
When I got up, the dogs and husband also wanted to get up. Might as well get to the morning rituals. So, everyone goes to the bathroom, dogs breakfast prepared and gobbled up fast, kettle on, coffee bodum filled, cups out, granola bars. The kettle was nearly boiling when our closest neighbour came right into the house without so much as knocking. So much for a nice quiet morning! I am not sure that I have ever mentioned that our closest neighbour is a chipmunk named Dictator. There he was right in the middle of the room, my husband, myself and the four dogs noticed him at exactly the same time. So, without much warning, we had a crazy chasing freaking out batch of dogs chasing the poor terrified, fast moving, erratic and seemingly insane creature filling up every space in the Tiny House.
Dictator chipmunk built its home right next to THO, moving in right under the tarp where I keep the miscellaneous extra building supplies. Since this little critter moved in it has trained me to bring it water and nuts. It stands near the cloth porch and yells “tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck” at me when it wants something. I think it is sort of cute and with the horrible lack of rain that we have this year (60% less than normal), I think that bringing in an extra cup of water a week for the Dictator next door is not a hardship. I always comply which his orders since I like his company.
Anyway, when the dogs were away last week, Dictator started breaking into the cloth porch and was even into the house a couple of times through the screen door, but I just told him to get out and even though he makes the orders he complied. It was not a really big issue – sort of cute, you know?
Today was different. It was like the world went crazy for a couple of minutes! Dictator finally hid by squeezing into the space under the in-house sink and then under the toilet so while it was quiet we brought the dogs out to their yard. My husband opened the toilet, scared Dictator out and then the little chap ran to the cloth porch and out the hole between the two cement pads.
I had put some wood in there a few times already but Dictator does not want this hole filled so I guess that it must order one of its minions to remove the wood. Today I filled it with rocks and then put a large rock in the way so that Dictator will not have easy access. I guess this is silly because I am certain that he can come in easily by putting a hole in the cloth porch. Still, I hope that the impact of today is just heavy enough that the cloth porch and the Tiny House seem out of bounds.
After I locked Dictator out, I brought out a fresh bowl of water, some soybeans and almonds. After he sufficiently recovered, I watched him enjoy his Tiny feast.
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Of course it was not possible to take photos of this mornings exciting beginning, but I put in a photo so that readers who are not familiar with chipmunks. They are quite cute! Dictator is about 6 inches long plus his tail is about 4 inches.
Tiny House Ontario 