Winter Comforts

It's getting seriously cold and snowy here, so I spent part of the day yesterday making sure the animals and plants were comfy.

The hens got special attention, since my geriatric flock is now down to six.  One disappeared mysteriously before we left for my mother's funeral, and another, who'd been looking poorly for over a year, perished when the weather turned frigid while we were gone.  (In case you're wondering, when one of our chickens dies we take the corpse out to the woods to provide some wild critter's dinner.  It's always gone by morning.)

I gave the hens some extra wood shavings for bedding, and a "poultry hot-cake"--a cylinder of high-protein food that I hang from a string so they can peck at it and be both nourished and entertained.  And, for the biggest treat of all, I defrosted some "drone brood" for them.

Drone brood, given to me by a bee-keeping friend, consists of bits of honeycomb filled with drone (hence, undesirable) larvae. The hens had never seen it before, and they exclaimed appreciatively at this sudden appearance of insects in the middle of winter.  I'm saving the rest of the brood for Christmas morning.

The four apple trees and the espaliered apricot got their winter "socks"--spirals of white plastic that I wrap around the trunk to keep the rabbits from girdling the bark.  And I wrapped the potted fig tree  in a double thickness of burlap.  The tree is supposed to withstand temperatures of -10F, but I'm not taking any chances.

Then I went to work on Wolfie and Bisou, whose needs were purely cosmetic.  I was clipping their nails, as I do every couple of weeks and, for the first time ever, I nicked the quick on one of Wolfie's. But instead of having hysterics, splattering the room with blood, and never letting me near him with the clippers again, this most tolerant of dogs merely muttered something that sounded like "wow" and let me finish the job.

When the clipping and brushing were done I rewarded the dogs with a walk in the field to eat frozen deer poop.  Speaking of deer, I really should wrap the Leyland cypresses in the backyard in burlap, to keep the deer from eating them.  But they don't actually kill them, and I know the deer have to be terribly hungry to come that close to the house, so I may just leave the Leylands to tough it out.

The wood is stacked on the porch.  The chickens are cozy.  The dogs are groomed.  My only worry now is the black cat that hunts far from the house, at the bottom of the field.  I don't think he has a home.  How is he going to make it through the winter?  There's no way I can lure him to the house, with the dogs around.  I'd leave some food out for him, but I don't know where to put it so he'll know it's there.

Any ideas?

The Angel of the Killing Frost Comes By

Last night he descended on our hill, and with a touch of his icy blade felled the peppers and the eggplants and the nicotiana, and turned the unripe figs to frozen lumps.  I must remember to salvage the figs for the hens, who will appreciate them now that bugs and green grass are history.

 A couple of days earlier I had brought the two geraniums and the Meyer lemon into the house for the winter, and the five big lemons on the tiny tree are now slowly turning yellow next to a sunny window.

I also brought in the big pot of rosemary.  I forgot that I had given it a good watering the day before, and when I went to lift it it was so heavy that I almost dropped it.  But I have never yet dropped anything I've tried to lift, and once I've got something in my arms I am loath to call for help.  So I staggered and groaned and finally got the pot up the two steps into the sun porch where it will live until the spring.  And I thanked my lucky stars for my relatively short back, which has never "gone out" on me yet.  But in the future I must remember not to water the big pots before moving them.

It's time to wrap the Leyland cypresses in their burlap coats, to defend them not from the cold but from the deer.  Last winter, on the pretext that the wild apple crop had failed, the deer tiptoed right up to the house and munched on the evergreens.  This year has been great for apples--you can see piles of them littering the roadsides--but I'm not taking any chances.

I must also remember to put those plastic spiral trunk shields on the fruit trees before the rabbits start chewing on their bark.  And I have to figure out a way to protect the climbing roses against those same rabbits, though I can't see how I can wrap burlap around their thorny branches.  Maybe chicken wire?

Then it will all be done, except for setting up the bird feeder now that the bears have safely gone into their dens.  And then I too can finally--except for picking the chard and the kale, which continue to thumb their noses at the Frozen One--go into hibernation too.

I Think I Need One Of Those Assault Thingies...

Just kidding.

But around here the war is escalating.  You might say that Nature is in surge mode.  Last night, when my husband let him out to scare any deer that might be feasting on what's left of our plants, Wolfie was attacked by something in the yard.  From the description--low to the ground, a bit smaller than Bisou--I think it's a fisher.  Speaking of Bisou, it's a good thing she was asleep upstairs with me at the time.  Usually she's right on Wolfie's heels, sallying forth into the outer darkness.

Anyway, poor Wolfie yelped, and the critter scurried, and Wolfie came limping into the house.  There was no bleeding, no particularly tender spot that we could find, but he could not put weight on one of his hind legs.  It's amazing how miserable a solid black dog can look.  And there's something about a big dog in distress that makes you feel particularly helpless.  You can't pick him up and put him on a comfy pillow.  You can't exactly cuddle him.

I gave him a couple of baby aspirins in a teaspoon of peanut butter.  He could not climb up to the bedroom, and whimpered so pitifully at the bottom of the steps that I decided to sleep downstairs, to keep him company.  But he couldn't settle.  He was desperate to lie down but in too much pain to do so.  I gave him two more baby aspirins and he finally lay down and went to sleep.  Then of course I worried that I had overdosed him, and kept putting my hand on him to feel his breath.

Thanks goodness for Penelope Lively's How It All Began, a witty and wise novel that you all would love.  I read for a couple of hours and then turned off the light.  But the minute I closed my eyes I remembered that it was supposed to snow heavily today.  If Wolfie was still in distress in the morning, how would we get him to the vet?  I fell asleep, but Wolfie woke up and put his head on my knee.  It occurred to me in my stupor that this meant that he was still alive.  Then I did some coughing (which I've been doing for a month now, along with everybody else) and slept for about a minute, and Wolfie put his head on my knee again....

This morning it is in fact snowing hard.  Wolfie seems a bit better, and ate his normal breakfast.  But I don't relish the prospect of having to take him and Bisou out on leashes every night.

This cloud is not, however, without a silver lining.  Fishers are the only predator known to kill porcupines.

Winter Lament, Continued

Let me know if you're getting tired of hearing about my victimization at the paws of non-hibernating creatures, but in the meantime, here's the latest.

Taking advantage of the time-honored January thaw, I went outside to take stock of the depredations and implement defensive measures.  My most depressing discovery:  the baby apricot that I  espaliered against the side of the house last spring is probably dead.  I had wrapped a spiral plastic protector around its skinny little trunk to keep the rabbit away, but I did this after the heavy snow of Christmas week, and I did not realize that with the milder temperatures the snow next to the house had melted.  This exposed a couple of inches of bare trunk between the protector and the earth, and the rabbit had chewed almost, but not quite, all the way around.  It had also started working on the lowest branches.  In the hope that that little bit of intact bark will enable the apricot to survive, my spouse built a wire cage around it.  We'll find out its fate in the spring.

That same rabbit has been making tunnels under the snow all over the chicken yard, which is covered in his poop.  I finally figured out what he's been after:  the long, twisted stems of kale that were left when the chickens ate all the leaves.  He's been systematically denuding them of their green outer layer, leaving only the yellow, fibrous insides.  (I am not a monster--I do not begrudge him the kale stems.)

Next,  I cut lengths of burlap and wrapped them around the deer-eaten cypresses, and the Master of the Knot secured them with old baling string.  Then I made another upsetting discovery:  not only have the deer been eating our cypresses, but they have also attacked the low-growing evergreen bushes that I planted in front of the house foundation. There was no way I could cover those earth-hugging bushes with burlap, so in a fit of pique I dumped a bucketful of woodstove ashes on them.  The ashes may repel the deer, or they may kill the bushes.  We'll find out in the spring.

The Seventh Squirrel has been caught and deported by the Master of the Trap, with a stroke of red paint on its tail so we can greet him by name when he returns.  The ermine remains elusive.  The Master of the T baited the trap with a freshly-caught (dead) mouse from our basement, and put a dab of peanut butter on his back to make him more attractive.  The next day the mouse was gone, but the trap was unsprung.  Everybody who hears about our ermine warns me of the impending murder of my hens if we don't catch him.

The birds are the only creatures with whom I'm not at war right now.  They go through a lot of seed and suet, and the ground beneath the feeder is covered in guano, but they haven't tried to kill anything yet.  Though who knows what they'll have gotten up to by spring....

Under Attack

The winter fauna are getting to me.  Here, in order of increasing annoyance, is the latest:

1.  A squirrel is back at the bird feeder.  It's a plain old gray squirrel, so I can't tell if it's one of the four that we trapped and deported across the state line.  It hasn't gotten inside the squirrel-proof bird feeder or into the chicken house yet, or into the trap that we have set under the feeder.

2.  The ermine, which I mistakenly identified as a stoat until corrected by Marty--  http://www.wcax.com/video?clipId=2211121&autostart=true--is still AWOL.  My husband baited the trap with one of the dead field mice he had trapped in our basement (traps upon traps--it's the dark side of country life).  The next day the mouse was gone, the trap unsprung....

3.  And, this is the worst, the deer have, for the first time in eight years, invaded our yard.  Yesterday, walking in the woods behind the house with Wolfie and Bisou, I noticed that my previous tracks on the snow were a palimpsest of deer hoof prints which ultimately led to our backyard and to the baby Leyland cypresses I planted last year in a desperate attempt to camouflage the failed wattle fence around the hen yard.  Alas, those little cypresses have been eaten down to the top of the snow.  I dearly hope there is some living bit of cypress left under that white duvet.

I have since moving to Vermont met dozens of people who can't grow evergreens, or hostas, or vegetables on their land because of the voracious deer.  I have always mentioned, with a humble smile, that "our" deer seem to find enough to be satisfied with in the fields in front of the house, and never wander into the backyard because of the mystical, magical effects of my marvelous dogs.

Well, that's all over now.  The backyard is the playground of the deer.  Was it Lexi's assertiveness (you remember Lexi, she was euthanized last spring) that kept them at bay?  She kept Wolfie and Bisou firmly in their places, and she may have done the same for the deer.  But Wolfie is a lot bigger and scarier-looking than she ever was....

If I were a dog owner like the dog owners of past millennia, I would tie Wolfie out on a chain and leave him out all night to earn his kibble.  There's no question that we would not then be troubled by deer.  But I am a 2013 tree-hugging, quasi-vegetarian, tender-hearted dog owner, and Wolfie is accustomed to sleeping next to our bed, plus he gets weird sores on his pasterns in deep snow.  I'll sacrifice the cypresses for the sake of his comfort if I must.

I have asked my spouse to let Wolfie out for one last patrol just before his bedtime, which is considerably later than mine.   And I have bought a roll of burlap with which to swaddle the remains of the baby Leylands.  Whether the burlap turns out to be a cozy blanket or a shroud, only spring will tell.

The Slightest Whiff

It was bright and sunny today, so I took the dogs to the front field at midday. The snow is patchy there, and last summer's dried up grass is poking through. I was listening to a pair of chickadees talking to each other on a bare tree when I got a slight, subtle, but unquestionably real whiff of grass warmed by the sun--herbal and sweet, with a hint of vanilla. I couldn't believe my nose, so I sniffed again...but it was gone. I walked to a different spot, sniffed--nothing. No matter where I went, I couldn't get the scent back. But I know what I smelled, for that split second. I smelled SPRING.

Lexi and Wolfie--lucky dogs--were having a scent-fest. What a riot of sensations a walk in the field must be for them as the earth begins to warm up.

I found a pile of fresh deer droppings. Can it be that the deer are leaving their yards deep in the woods and coming back to our field? There is green stuff peeking out under the dry grass--plantain, for sure, and soon there will be dandelions.

I can't wait for dandelions. This year I hope to catch them early enough to make salads. And later I will collect flowers for dandelion wine. And I will take Blossom and Alsiki out of their pen and let them graze to their hearts' content, which will be my heart's content as well.