Squirrels

for the past couple of years, we have had a grey squirrel, with white ears, visit our feeder.  We figured that the ears had been frozen, like you sometimes see on cats. This spring the squirrel was engaging in flirtatous behaviour  the scruffiest thing you've ever seen, and we realized that it was a female.  Over the past couple of years, she has been just about the only grey we've seen, as the red squirrels are much more aggressive and chase away the greys, but this year there seem to be very few red squirrels ( although I've seen a tail hanging down out of the garage roof across the back, where there is usually a nest).  There has been a lot of grey squirrel action around the feeder, and the the other day I saw White Ears at the feeder with two smaller ones, and realized that  there had been babies. Then yesterday, she was there again and I called David to take a look, and she had four little ones with her!  They are so cute! And they all have white on their ears--so it must be genetic, not accidental.  I think they relax in our yard as the rhubarb is right beside the feeder and they have shelter from the crows.

Yes, there was a frost warning last night, accompanied with chances of ice pellets or rain.  Quite cold , so the furnace is on again.  The basement was cold, as well, and we needed the heat for the rhubarb wine that David has in the primary.  Most of our chemicals were quite old, so he bought everything new for this batch.  All I can say, Beth is that it's been cold and wet here for over a week.  Some of it is sure to head your way soon.

Right now there are two men in the yard next door creating topiary out of the cedar trees.  I'm dying to know what it's going to look like when they finish. We got out on our bicycles this morning.  Having decided that we can't afford to eat breakfast at Tim's anymore, we had to find a new route to cycle.  So we went with trying to stay with a cross wind, which, this morning meant choosing east/west routes.  Worked quite well.