Julius and Ceasar ... and the past few weeks.
The end of last fall, a local family, was the lucky recipient of a litter of kittens.
A stray had given birth in their pool shed and they all were given away.
We adopted the last one to offer a good home and for his older brother "Julius"
to have a little bother.. er brother.
Ya, a soft spot does exist in the recesses of my cold heart.
Julius,
Laying on the floor in the picture below, trying to sleep, can't catch a break.
He's mostly a outdoor cat that showed up a couple years ago as a stray.
He is the typical come and go on HIS schedule and has a wonderful
BFYTW attitude. I nicknamed him "Tabasco" for that reason.
He also is a morning riser and wants out at zero-dark-thirty if he has graced us
with his presence overnight.
I don't no how he keeps better time than my iphone but damn
near 4:30am every morning he will walk up on the pillows
and bap you on the forehead to let him out.
For that he has earned the additional nickname of:
"Clockwork Orange"
Now, Ceasar aka "little fucker", is very vocal and loves to go outside.
The problem is he is not as street smart as Julius.
We have had him out on a harness and a couple times he has gotten
out of it. Never when you're there. One minute there, the next, poof!
That leads to an hour or more trying to find him.
A few days ago he was the lucky recipient of a new, no escape, harness.
( So they claim).
So far so good.
It went like this:
"Awww, sleepy, I have something for you"
*yaaawn*... "Wha..what is it human?"
"You'll see" sinister laugher
Game on and the end result.......
"Whaaaat?? the fuck??"
"I'm not talking to you"
"Nope , still not talking to you"
"Fine, I'll just lay here and die. I hope none of my friends see me"
They are a funny duo I tell ya.
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Projects, we have projects.....
This is the making of the last two week unplanned 'project' right here....keeping me busy.
Someone bent the yard hydrant:
I'll give you a hint:
How it started a few weeks ago.
It's still on-going.
One thing that I did come away with during this project, so far, is a deep deep respect
and admiration for our fore fathers that came here to New England and had
to manually clear the land by hand and horse and oxen. Almost every single scoop
of dirt by skid steer, backhoe, excavator or shovel, had some form of rock or boulder
to deal with. You can see an example of two that were pried out of the hole in the
image above.
Trust me, there are lots more.
We also had planned the driveway to be paved at this time and they had
to pull this beauty out of the middle of it.
.jpeg) |
| It was accompanied by it's children. |
There ended up being 4 boulders, in that large size range, just under the old
pavement.
Needless to say , lots going on. I'll be around.
Stay safe out there.
Don’t water them so often
ReplyDeleteThe horses or the boulders ? ;-)
DeleteThe cats.
DeleteThose glaciers were prodigious, weren't they?
DeleteThat just looks like entirely too much work, my friend. Better you than me....
ReplyDeleteYou put a big smile on my face this morning.....nice to remember there is a real world around us.......
ReplyDeleteOh you guys didn't see anything.
ReplyDeleteIrish dug holes big enough to bury tractor trailers in.
I'm not even joking!
Big,deep and wide holes.
He could have just filled them with water and had ponds.
Stop me if I told this over at LSP's place.
ReplyDeleteToo late!
Mrs. & I have been slaves to an assortment of cats during our marriage. Our current ruler has had several names that come and go but the current name, and the one most likely to endure is: DAMMIT CAT!
Irish, read "Look to the Mountain" - early NH settlers.
ReplyDeleteAnd now you know why there are so many stone walls in New Hampshire.
All I've done lately is buy fireworks.
ReplyDeleteWhich you can only legally do, for 4 days here in CA.
And they ain't cheap. Lol. But I'm ready,..
From another resident of Rockville Township, Stone County!
ReplyDeleteI think I've told this before; up at camp our field pukes up a new crop of baseball to basketball sized rocks every winter. This land was originally cleared in the early to mid 1800's. Occasionally there's a bigger one. The stone walls are waist high and two rocks thick. Most of them weigh well over 100 pounds. Not to mention all of the large ones in the foundation and the well. The well is interesting. Somehow they came up with a bunch of triangular shaped rocks to line the well with down to 25 feet. The points of the triangles are mostly facing in so that when the ground freezes the rocks stay in place. In 50+ years that the property has been in my family that well has only gone dry once and then only for a couple weeks.
ReplyDeleteNemo
When I got my cat I had a harness and rope, after a couple of weeks I just had the harness on her and she didn't go anywhere. A couple of weeks later no harness and she knew this was home and stayed put.
ReplyDelete"manually clear the land" and died young and broken. That kinda labor was my incentive to be an electronics techie.
ReplyDelete"no-escape harness" Ours lasted about three minutes. Screw it- cat's being tracked by GPS now.
I'll assume that those rocks are glacier erratics from the Ice Age... :D
ReplyDeleteIt's New England. All of the land in New England is covered in glacial till. A mixture of rocks, boulders and erratics all bound together with glacier grease. Glacier grease, that's what I call it, there's probably some geological term for it, is a mixture of mostly clay and poor soil topped by 1 to 2 feet of top soil depending on where you're located.
DeleteThere are also numerous terminal moraines all over the landscape. Most people think they're just hills with no idea how they were formed. The town I grew up in had seven hills, all of which are terminal moraines. The city I live in now also has numerous terminal moraines. I live on one about 1/3 of the way up. It's 80 feet tall and about 1/4 mile long. About a mile to the south there's another one that's 150 feet tall and about two miles long.
Nemo
I've replaced valve parts on a hydrant without digging it up. The trick is too unscrew it (with a big pipe wrench) replace stuff, and screw it back in with the water on and the hydrant open. Because otherwise the water pressure will prevent you from starting the threads (down deep in the ground) and you'll get dirty and rocks in it too. And of course you'll get all wet and muddy, but it's much cheaper quicker and easier than digging.
ReplyDeleteI don't see any reason you couldn't do the same with a bent hydrant? Just pray you buy the right size replacement!
That ground sounds like southeast OK. Older houses, I've seen a lot of corner fenceposts that were made by making a loop of wire fence and filling them with all the rocks you dug out of the garden every year.
ReplyDeleteI've still got the digging bar dad's father made from a Model A driveshaft for clearing some of that stuff.
Happy 4th.
ReplyDeleteOhio Guy
Here's the earliest known recording of The Star Spangled Banner, sung by The Diamond Four, 1898. https://bunkstrutts.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/star-spangled-banner-the-diamond-four-ca-1898.mp3
ReplyDeleteOur 2 boys, also named Julius and Cesar have passed on, however Apollo is still here. Lusting after the harness; what is that one? looks good.
ReplyDeleteVery smart ... putting water source right next to electrical outlet! Yikes!
ReplyDeleteFirst off, It's a GFI, waterproof outlet. Kinda like the ones in your bathroom or kitchen. Second, how do you think we keep the water troughs from freezing? There are heaters that are installed during the winter.
Deletehttps://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/farm-innovators-drainplug-deicer-for-rubbermaid-stock-tanks
I'd like to hear an update on that escape-proof harness (and the brand, if it is working for you). My cat is a furry Houdini!
ReplyDelete