Easter Weekend

 Good Friday was indeed good here on the Fink Family Farm. Johnny and Annie puppy and I took a walk down through the woods to take cuttings of the four kinds of cedars we have and try to figure out what the church trees are that Johnny had a cutting from. I have a weird way of telling my cedars apart. Western Red have butterflies on the underside of their needles. Incense cedars have incense holders, or vases. Port Orford cedars have Xs, Alaska Yellow cedars have Ys and are yellower than the others. The cutting Johnny had looked different from all of those... maybe closest to incense cedar. But Johnny, a retired forester, is not sure about my system. So he has been pouring through books and asking nearby foresters for their opinions.

That afternoon still had good weather and appropriate tide levels, so I did my beached bird survey. It was a beautiful Good Friday at the coast with no beached birds but a few live ones foraging in the sand.

 

On Saturday morning, I fed the horses as I always do first thing, then cleaned their barn/paddock as I do every morning. While scooping up manure, I saw a small brown creature trying to get up the ladder into the loft. I thought it must be a squirrel. But then I saw it better... it was a weasel! A beautiful reddish brown weasel with a white belly. I stood still and watched. It soon came down out of the barn with a mouthful of something... which I figured out on subsequent weasel trips up into the loft and back down... was insulation from the ceiling that the starlings have pulled out to make their own nests. I called Johnny on my cell phone and asked him to bring my camera. I hoped the weasel would still be working on lining his burrow that is apparently in the shrubbery by the big poplar tree next to the barn. Johnny arrived and was able to watch the weasel make his trips up and down the barn ladder several times. He took photos with his cell phone. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to look at them and how to get them into the computer. Techies we are not. I managed one photo of the weasel peeking out from the bushes, keeping a wary eye on Johnny as he approached the horse barn.

What a beautiful little creature! I guess the fur and feathers or whatnot that it probably had lined its burrow with was no longer warm enough in our crazy wintry April weather. How smart to locate insulation to make a cozy nest.

After morning chores, the lawn was finally dry enough to mow, so I mowed. Johnny had mowed in the garden and was working at getting the tires and other stuff out of there so he could mow more. It was a sunny day. 

Until it wasn't. I was close to being done mowing when I felt a few sprinkles... that soon turned to hail. I mowed faster. The hail turned to snow! Crazy weather. I hurried to put the mower away and get to the house. We had a lovely snowfall for half an hour or so, which made a thin layer on the ground and coated the trees. I'm glad the weasel had a nice layer of insulation to snuggle into.

And then it was Easter Sunday... no rain or snow or hail, just fog, then clouds. Johnny and I hiked through the woods again. I took photos, naturally. We cleaned yellow jackets out of nest boxes. I have done this several times this winter. Either I don't get them all killed and they come back or there are others that find their way in. Miserable creatures. (I realize I'm making judgments on creatures: weasels good, yellow jackets bad. But that's because yellow jackets sting me.)

 For whatever reason, this blog decided to load my photos from last taken to first. Oh well. The last photos I took were down in our swamp... of the Green False Hellebores that look so lush and promising but end up with very unspectacular flowers.

 

 

Agency Creek with a pair of Common Mergansers resting on the rocks

Common Mergansers, female sitting, male standing

A tree with a lot of sapsucker holes... had not noticed this one before!

Bleeding hearts

Sessile trillium

lots of sessile trilliums

even more sessile trilliums

Johnny looking at the sessile trilliums

The Chocolate Lily

It still wasn't raining in the afternoon but the coming week promised to be very wet, so I hurried to mow the arboretum paths and Johnny hurried to mow more in the garden, plus the chicken yard.

He managed to liberate the raised beds and is here raking around the onions that I have all over the place, making mowing around them a challenge

Snow on the hills we see to the south tells us that winter is still fighting to hang on... but we have the mowing done!   ...For now...

 Happy Easter weekend from the Fink Family Farm!