Deep and cold: Seventh Day December

 The view out to the vegetable garden. Below: Homemade vegetable soup.

We're enveloped in winter. We have just under 3 feet of snow on the ground thanks to a three-day storm earlier this week. Bitter cold followed almost as soon as the snow stopped.

It's beautiful and brutal. Time to break out the snowshoes and stoke ourselves with hot food, hot tea and our favorite port.

With everything buried, it's even more comforting to have a simple Saturday supper of vegetable soup with carrots, onions, potatoes, green beans and tomatoes from the garden. The harvest lives on.

Make yourself a cup of tea or pour yourself a glass of port and take a look at Seventh Day December.

Dinner, together

 A grouse is almost too heavy to balance on a stem of this viburnum while a chipmunk hangs upside down to grab his share of berries. Below: The berries.

The viburnum at the end of the driveway became a popular dining destination earlier this week. The shrub, Viburnum dentatum Red Feather, was loaded with blue-black berries -- until they were discovered by the birds, including this grouse, and the chipmunks.

The shrub is a good choice for our garden. It doesn't need a lot of coddling, always a happy attribute around here. In spring, the emerging foliage is maroon and because of some prominent veining, the young leaves themselves look something like feathers. White flat-top flowers follow. The berries arrive in fall as the foliage begins to turn purple.

 

These days, we're seeing lots of bird activity as the fruit on the crab apple, viburnums, roses and other shrubs ripen. The blue jays already have stripped a frontyard oak of its acorns. Sparrows scoot through the perennials searching out whatever seeds and other food they can find on the ground. And the Silly Dog has to keep track of the resident chipmunks as they run through the garden caching whatever they don't immediately devour.

Two reasons why we cage trees and shrubs

 1. This doe about to enter the yard.

 2. And this doe already in the vegetable garden, trying to snack on the remains inside the pepper house.

Both were midmorning visitors on Tuesday.

Night visitor

Caught redhanded! A raccoon made a bold, but unsuccessful, attempt on a birdfeeder on a recent night.

The silly dog was first to notice the raccoon on the deck the other night. Out on the final-before-bedtime pee, Dakota stepped out the side door, stopped, turned toward the deck and stuck his nose in the air. Something was amiss, he seemed to be saying. Then I heard the thumping.

Suspecting raccoons, I got Dakota back in the house and then got the camera. Sure enough, there was one, balancing on the deck railing with his back to the house. A feeder full of sunflower seeds dangled above him. He seemed to be in no hurry to leave, so I snapped a few photos, took Dakota out front to do his business and then took another look. Still there. Still there an hour later. Are we that scary?

Raccoons can be trouble in the garden. They'll eat the goldfish in the pond and feast on the corn. In fact, the first raccoons we saw this year was just as the corn was ready to harvest. Coincidence? I think not.

Fortunately, we had the motion-detecting sprinklers to protect the corn harvest. And we have Dakota to alert us to trouble the rest of the time.

Change on the wing

 Those tiny flecks against the sky are nighthawks, which really aren't hawks at all.

A small flock of nighthawks passed over sillydoggarden on Sunday. On their way to South America, the birds swooped and turned and counter-turned, all the while catching flying insects in their mouths. You can't tell by my miserable photo attempt, but they have white bands on their wings that are visible in flight. A change in season is imminent. Can the hummingbird migration be far behind?

The Star Tribune writes about nighthawks here. And John Latimer describes watching them as they move south.

New neighbor

The new neighbor is a quiet sort. I have yet to hear him call.

The four goldfish in the pond have company. A small frog (probably a green frog) apparently has taken up residence in the former bathtub turned garden water feature.

He/she nestles into the moss between the stems of the umbrella palm, where he seems to spend hours barely moving. He is neatly camouflaged but if you look close you can see his throat swelling and falling. Occasionally he moves to a place on a waterlily leaf or suns himself on the flat rocks that line the pond's edge. It must be something of a dream home for a frog. The water stays nice and warm -- sort of like a comfortable bath -- and there's plenty of food nearby.

Which is not to say that he can't move fast when he needs to. Startle him and you'll hear the plop of frog on water before you can make out where he lands.

A night's lodging, but no dinner

This painted turtle seemed to materialize out of nowhere. All of a sudden there he was motoring out from under the Arctic blue willow. He spent a night in our pond where, fortunately, he didn't eat the goldfish (or plants). And then, the next day he was gone. Just passing through, apparently, on the way to some grand adventure.

In the wild, painted turtles can live to be as old as 40. I wonder how old this one is ...

Mystery diner identified

Franklin stuffs yet another campanula leaf into his mouth.

He's been showing up regularly for weeks. Quick and nimble, he teases the silly dog by hiding in drainpipes. He appears to live and work alone, scooting out of the pipes and through the flowerbeds. Thinking he might be a gopher, we tried to catch him using the live trap, but he would have none of it. He's shown a remarkable preference for chewing on Campanula punctata 'Pantaloons.' Just the 'Pantaloons'. Another Campanula punctata, 'Cherry Bells', grows a few yards away but he has no interest in it. What's up with that?

For the record, he's not a gopher. Outdoors writer Sam Cook helped us determine that he is a Franklin's ground squirrel. The Minnesota DNR is tracking ground squirrel sightings this year as part of its MN County Biological Survey.

Unlike the resident red squirrels, which chatter and scold loudly throughout the day, this guy has been mostly silent. I could, however, hear him chewing while I photographed him eating the campanula. Those jaws move rapidly! 

Our Franklin (I've taken to calling him by name) is a pioneer of sorts. Franklin's ground squirrels are more common in southern Minnesota, but, as Sam reports, they are moving north. More information about the Franklin's can be found here.

A few of our visitors this week

We get lots of blue jays, but these two seemed more in sync with each other than most.

The rabbit has finished with the crocus and moved on to nibbling the trees.

We may live in the gopher state, but they're really not welcome here. A live-trap has been set in hopes of relocating this guy. We think he's setting up house in some of our drainage pipes. (Watch dog obviously is sleeping on the job.)

Along the squirrel highway

This is one of the main routes the squirrels follow.

Being the industrious, focused creatures that they are, our resident red squirrels have transformed the backyard into their own efficient highway system. They have dug tunnels through snowbanks, excavated other hidey-holes/rest stops and packed the snow into easily discernible roadways that give them direct routes from the more vulnerable open area around the bird feeder to the safety of the woods.

Like us, the squirrels use their highways to move goods. They take sunflower seeds from the feeder or cones from the pines and carry them to corners around the yard for safekeeping. Like us, the squirrels use their highways for pleasure. We take joy rides and they run and chase each other back and forth and up and down. Perhaps there was something more going on. The Minnesota DNR says red squirrels engage in dizzying courtship chases.

The squirrels have been especially active the last few days -- spring is taking a few tentative steps. Longer days, the sun moving higher in the sky and temperatures warm enough to begin melting the squirrels' highways -- until next winter. 

 

One of at least four resident squirrels surveys the rodent road system from a perch on the deck.

The wildlife garden

This rabbit joined our bunny relocation program.

It may be winter but there's still plenty happening in the garden. Yesterday started and ended with wildlife. Those pesky rabbits were at it again, gnoshing on whatever isn't protected. That means they're chewing on some of the roses in the herb garden that aren't protected by wire cages. So out comes the live trap and sunflower seed bait. Yesterday morning, sometime between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., one of the critters made a wrong move and wham! its breakfast was over. (How do I know there is more than one rabbit? Because one moonlit night I saw three at once bopping around the yard. And, well, they're rabbits -- there's always more than one.) Fortunately, it wasn't that cold and he wasn't in the trap for long. I loaded the trap into the car and released him down the road -- far enough away, I hope, to make a return unlikely.

The deer also have become regular visitors -- we see them almost every night and often during the day as well. They're still having some trouble moving in the deep snow but not so much that they're unable to browse around the bird feeders and scotch pines.

This is just one reason why many of our shrubs and small trees are caged in winter.

Seventh Day January up for viewing

Buds of azalea 'White Lights' will go from spare (left) in January to frothy (right) in June.

Buds, bark and needles are the stars in the January edition of the Seventh Day Project. A variety of winged and furry creatures also are a dominant theme this time of year. In recent days, we've had bunches of finches (and other birds), a trio of deer, rabbits, a short-tailed weasel that managed to make off with a vole while I watched and squirrels that scamper across the crusty snow like there's no tomorrow. 

Here's what happens (below) when the Sillydog corners a squirrel on the deck. The squirrel clings to the house siding until Sillydog is called back into the house and the coast is clear.

 Squirrels are either fearless or reckless. But they've managed to outsmart Sillydog so far.