Cat Antics
The weather has been super nice recently so I’ve been spending my afternoons working in the garden. While I’m outside, I’ve been letting Dexter spend some time outside. He’s supposed to stay on the front porch, but occasionally he sneaks off. Yesterday evening, I was mulching the front hillside and looked up to check on Dexter. I didn’t see him on the porch and then I noticed he was in the maple tree in the front yard.
It was quite funny, luckily I had my camera so I could take some photos for Mr Chiots (who happened to be off walking the dog at the time). I was worried Dexter would get stuck in the tree since he’s not the smallest most nimble cat in the world, but I guess he used to climb trees before he showed up on our doorstep.
At one point I was afraid he was going to fall out of the tree, but he managed to get down, not very gracefully though. At least I didn’t have to call the fire department, do people really do that?
It was quite a sight, I got a good laugh out of it as did Mr Chiots when we saw the photos (hope you do as well). When he got out of the tree he collapsed on the porch as little Softie looked on. Little Softie seems to LOVE Dexter. Every time she sees him she runs right up to him.
I don’t know why animals can be so funny, perhaps it’s their lack of expression, or that they don’t get embarrassed. We love that the cats provide such comic relief around here, and Dexter seems to be the comic of the group.
Any great things that made you smile this week? Do your pets keep you entertained?
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Friday Favorite: Breakfast Edition
Mr Chiots and I are simple breakfast eaters. Most often our breakfasts consist of toast, scones, zucchini bread or something along those lines in the summer. In the winter we love a steamy bowl of soaked oat groats with nuts and cinnamon and perhaps a drizzle of maple syrup (here’s my post about that). Of course the main foundation to our breakfast is a big cup of coffee, which I talked about on my first Friday Favorite. About once a week though, we enjoy a big hearty breakfast.
There’s nothing better than bacon, eggs, potatoes and onions fried in the bacon grease, some buttered toast, and of course coffee. The eggs come from a local farm (can’t wait to have my own), this bacon is from Bisson Family Meats in Maine and it’s great, the potatoes are homegrown and the bread is homemade. This is my most favorite breakfast. Many people would choose pancakes or french toast as their favorite breakfast, but I’m not a sugar in the morning kind of person, I need protein and salt in the morning.
What’s your favorite breakfast?
WE HAVE WINNERS for the free seeds:
Annie
Dave
Grant
Ashley W
Veronica V.
Michelle M.
Canned Quilter
Seren Dipity
Lee
Amanda Daja
If you didn’t get my e-mail use the contact me button on the sidebar to send me your address so I can mail out your seeds!
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2011 Calendar in the Works
I’ve been getting some questions about my plans to design 2011 calendar, now that it’s that time of the year to start thinking about 2011 already – YIKES! 
I will be making one this year as well, I’ve been going through my photos for the year choosing ones I think I might like. This is actually the hardest part, choosing one or two images for each month. There are a few that I knew the moment I saw the photo during the year, but other months are proving difficult to narrow them down. I like to use photos that I actually took during that month. Here are last year’s images for each month. 
I feel like it’s going to be hard to top my 2010 year calendar since I love it so much, but I know I have some wonderful photos from this year that will make a beautiful calendar.
I thought I’d open it up to you – is there a photo you particularly remember from this past year that you’d like to see added to the calendar? (if you need a refresher, I upload a lot of them to Flickr and they’re easier to look through)
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A Day in My Life
Sustainable Eats tagged me to do a “Day in the Life” post. I’ve been thinking about doing one of these, so I figured I’d give it a go yesterday. My days are often very similar, get up, work outside when it’s warm and sunny, do my office work when it’s dark or raining, make lunch and dinner, read and go to bed. On days we film we get up early, leave, spend all day filming and then arrive home too late, often after midnight. I tried to pick an interesting day that was indicative of my “normal” day to share in this “Day in the Life of” for you. So here goes, my boring life broken down in hourly segments.
4:15 am – up at at ’em. This wasn’t really the plan, we were going to make good use of the time change and start getting up at 6 (which was the same as 7 which is when we were getting up), but we both woke up super early. Mr Chiots made us some coffee and we both got to work in the office. I like to work inside in the morning when it’s cold & dark outside, then I can spend the warm sunny afternoons outside. It was cold this morning, in the high 20’s, with a very heavy frost on the ground, there was even a skim of ice on our small pond. I chuckled and thought of Thomas Jefferson saying “Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.”
5:00-8:00 am – Since Mr Chiots and I both work from home, we spent our extra hours this morning working in the office. I worked on accounting and receipting some donations. I work for my parents who are missionaries, I take care of all the donations, receipts, accounting, newsletters, publicity, etc. for the Colombian Christian Mission. Mr Chiots and I also have a small production company (2nd Mile Productions), so he spent his morning working on a website and rendering out some videos.
8:00-8:30 am – Usually I’d just be starting to work in the office at this time, so I’m happy to have already put in a few hours of work! Generally we eat a simple breakfast of scones or toast with our coffee. Since we were out of bread, I decided to make some scones. I had pulled some sour cherries out of the freezer earlier that morning, and used them to make a batch of cherry macadamia nut scones. (for all of you wondering, that is a cast iron pizza pan that I baked them on) Mr Chiots made some coffee and we enjoyed our breakfast.
8:30-10:30 am – More office work, accounting, bills, lists of things to do in November, answering e-mails, etc. Not very exciting, but it pays the bills and I enjoy it.
10:30-11:00 am – Spent some time chatting with my dad, he came over to head down to Cabela’s with Mr Chiots to get some supplies for hunting season. When they left I mixed up some sourdough bread dough.
11:00am-1:00 pm – I noticed it was warming up nicely outside, now sunny and 45, so I headed out to start crating the hydrangeas. The large hydrangea up front had some beautiful dried flowers on it so I cut a 2 bushels of blooms. I won’t use these in my house, I usually save them in the attic and give them to friends or sell them at a garage sale. While I worked outside Miss Mama and Little Softie scampered about being very entertaining. During this time I was wearing a stop watch so I could remember to come in and fold my sourdough at the appointed times.
1:00-1:30 pm – Around one I started to get hungry and came in to warm up some lunch. I had 2 small potatoes in the fridge, so I fried them up in some bacon grease with some onions. I roasted some cauliflower in the oven and ate part of it as a side, the rest went into the fridge for tomorrow. As I enjoyed my simple lunch I spent some time checking e-mail, blog comments, writing a bit on this post, and a few other little tasks. (recipe for roasted cauliflower over at Not Dabbling today)
1:30-3:30 pm – Back outside to water the hydrangeas. I’m making sure I give each hydrangea 30 gallons of water since it was such a hot dry summer. I wan to make sure they go into winter in the best condition, and I have to empty my rain barrels for winter. This is hard work, the 3 gallons watering cans are heavy, so I usually do 5 trips, then work on another task for a while. During these breaks I took some photos and I added some burlap over my garlic and shallot beds to keep the cats from using it as a litter box. This works like a charm if you have trouble with cats using your beds throughout the winter. Dexter came out with me after lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the beautiful day.
3:30-3:45 pm – Came inside for a short break and to enjoy a cup of afternoon coffee. Mr Chiots made me a latte before he left, a big thanks to Mr Chiots!
3:45-5:45 pm – Spent more time watering and wrapping hydrangeas, plating a few remaining plants, emptying pots, moving things into the garage that can’t be left outside throughout the winter and I also spent 10 minutes looking for Dexter, who decided to go on an adventure into the woods.
5:45-6:30 pm – Downloaded all the photos from today, tagged them and picked out a few for this post. Spent some time reading and responding to e-mails, approving comments for my blog, and of course writing this post.
6:30-7:00 pm – Enjoyed a nice hot shower after a day of gardening. While warming up some leftover venison roast with carrots and potatoes for dinner, I unloaded the dishwasher and formed the bread dough into loaves. It was nice to spend some time sitting down to eat! While doing this my printer was busy printing off some newsletters to give to my dad when he got back with Mr Chiots from a gun auction.
7:00-8:00 pm – Selected photos, did some editing, uploaded them and put the final touches on this post. Mr Chiots arrived home from Cabela’s and the gun auction and told me all about his trip. I gave my dad a few little plants I had started for him and he headed home.
8:00-10:30 pm – More work in the office, receipts, invoicing, answering e-mails, stuffing envelopes and other things on the to-do list. I also took a few more photos to fill in a few spots in this post, like the alarm clock one at the beginning, there’s no way I would have been cognizant enough to take that at 4:25 this morning. During this time I also baked the 4 loaves of sourdough that I started that morning. We enjoyed a cup of mulled cider and a quick slice of sourdough with butter for an evening snack.
10:45 pm – Off to bed, so tired from getting up early and an active day. I’m not always this busy, some days we spent an hour or so watching TV or reading in the evenings. I am, however, not much of one to spend a lot of time sitting during the day unless I have to. I prefer to busy myself with things, so I love days like this! We had a beautiful sunset this evening with just a tiny sliver of a moon, quite lovely and a perfect way to end this post.
As I was proofreading this post last night, I thought about Thomas Jefferson saying “Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.” I must admit, getting up early really helps me be more productive during the day, I feel like I get so much done before breakfast. I don’t think I’ll be getting up at 4:15 every morning, 6 is good for me right now. Perhaps after hunting season we’ll start getting up earlier as Mr Chiots will be used to getting up at 5 am.
Are you an early or a late riser?
What about at the end of the day – night owl or early to bed?
I’d like to encourage you to do a day in the life of post on your blog. If you do, link back in the comments so we can all go check them out.
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One Gardener’s Trash is Another’s Compost
This time of year I’m always on the lookout for bags of leaves to throw in the car and bring home. As you remember, I use them to make mulch for the gardens. I also wrap my hydrangeas and fill them with leaves to protect them from the harsh winter weather.
Since you never know what kinds of chemicals other gardeners are using on their lawns, none of these collected leaves get used on my vegetable beds. They’ll be used on the hydrangeas and on the ornamental beds.
Last year, our neighborhood made leaf collecting much easier for us. During fall cleanup season they put a few dumpsters by the front gate for leaves & tree trimmings. We simply have to head up there every week or so to collect a car full of leaves. So far I’ve collected 12 big garbage bags of free mulch and most likely I’ll double that by the end of fall!
Do you pick up leaves you see on the side of the road? Do you have another source for free garden amendments like seaweed?
