happy new year! i don’t necessarily believe in resolutions, but i am going to try to do more posting here this year, because i enjoy it when i’m doing it, but i just don’t get around to it enough. and i will hopefully try to draw in more readers, which i know will involve making more postings on facebook, and i’m not crazy about that whole deal, but there you are.
the funny thing about last night is that we never stay up til midnight to ring in the new year. but because kevin got an ipad for christmas, he’s going a little crazy. i finally went to bed about 11, but kevin stayed up past midnight, reading a book on his ipad! i find it ironic that the only time he’s stayed up til midnight on new year’s eve since i’ve known him, he did it alone. gosh, that ipad was the perfect gift, and hopefully we’ll still communicate despite his love of playing games and reading on the thing. last night amy and jim said that kevin should set up messaging on his ipad so we could text each other, but kevin wasn’t so sure he wanted to go down that path. and i feel that if we can’t actually talk to each other while in the same room, i really don’t care about texting.
so…the beavers have struck again. maybe it’s a lone beaver, we don’t know. a few years ago, a beaver chopped down the lovely weeping will that jim had planted at the shoreline. the willow was two or three years old, and really nice.
one day, though, i walked to the water and it had been sawed right down. it was still lying there, but the next morning the beaver had spirited it away to his beaver lair.
fast-forward to the day after xmas, six days ago. les and i took a walk down to the water because the ice was gone so there was no risk of les falling through.
when i walked to the water’s edge, though, i was surprised to see two of our lilac bushes. or rather, to not see them. well, there were a few scraggly sticks left, but it looked like somebody had come along and chopped the main branches right down.
here’s the view from the dock – there had been two big lilac bushes to the left of the tall grasses. gone.
clearly, a crazy person hadn’t come along in the night to chop them down, because here are some of the smaller branches floating in the water.
beavers.
look how neatly they sawed them off.
dang. is nothing safe down there? if it’s not deer chewing the day lilies down to the ground, it’s beavers eating lilacs.
we have two other big lilacs, but so far them haven’t been eaten. but we’ve got a lot more winter ahead. come to think of it, i feel that the willow tree had been chopped down in the summer or fall.
the last little bit of ice glistened fabulously along the shore. i wish i’d had kevin to come and look at it because it was so shiny and cool looking.
les, of course, walked down to the rocks to search for anything out in the water that he might be able to catch.
and then he did his next-favorite thing to walking on cracking ice – he strolled along the rocks.
aha! he said! look at the pretty ice!
no, he was really more interested in finding blowing leaves out on the water.
yes, he’s way out on a rock now.
crazy cat.
not so many leaves to catch now, so he moved on.
he walked back along the rocks, but here it was a little bit treacherous. not a lot of choices for stepping. he managed to scramble past the ice, which was falling, and jump up onto the dock.
chester joined us, but he never has any part of that risky behavior.
les then patrolled next to the felled lilacs. beaver-hunting, perhaps?
he looks so tiny here.
ok, it’s a brand-new year. mom helped get the majority of the christmas crap down yesterday, and now i just need to do a bit more tidying up. and hauling tubs to the basement. an exciting start to 2017!
happy new year,
grace