Playing and Planning

I've been playing animal umpire the past few days, trying to "feed up" the skin-and-bones nursing female fox who is getting almost too comfortable around the cabin or is so hungry she's throwing caution to the winds and playing with fate around the dogs whose owners allow them to run loose...

She seems confident she can outrun all of the dogs and really plays with Dixie's head, seemingly aware that Dixie's missing hind leg leaves her at a disadvantage, walking to within a few feet of her, jogging away just fast enough to keep in front of her if Dixie tries to give chase.

Yesterday morning when I got up and pulled back the curtain on the west window the fox was was lying in the yard waiting for me to get up and provide food, which I did.  She was enjoying the fact that Dixie and her running mate Jimmy...

...were nowhere around.  Dixie's owners had left her with me until 10:30 p.m. Saturday night--I'd closed up shop and turned off all the lights but my reading light thinking they'd just decided to let her stay all night when they finally showed up to claim her.  I guess for that reason they decided to keep Dixie and Jimmy in yesterday even though it was a nice day.  So the only dog we had to contend with was Apollo who lives across the road to the east...

I'm surprised the fox doesn't have an ulcer, being in fight or flight mode at all times, but she seems to be an escape artist.  Apollo keeps her on her toes, sometimes coming around the north side of the cabin, sometimes the south, and I'll hear the skittering of nails and claws on the wooden deck, barking pulling away into the distance and shortly Apollo comes back, panting, tongue lolling.  I keep my fingers crossed and eventually the fox returns when she thinks the coast is clear, having worked off most of the calories I've fed her, ready to eat again.  So we go along.

I'm planning, if these winds quit, to complete a project I started last week.  When I was cleaning out the woodshed trying to dig out my summer tires, I came across a plastic bag in which I'd stored two generous lengths of oilcloth I'd bought last year at Goodwill for $1.99 each that I want to use on the picnic table and benches this summer...

Last year I used a plain beige and white check...

I managed to get the table and one bench covered before I left to spend the month of July with my brother and his family in Tacoma, thinking my sister and her husband were coming to Colorado, only to find out after I arrived in Tacoma that my brother-in-law was having a heart valve transplant and they wouldn't be coming.  I never got the other two benches covered and now the oilcloth I put on last summer looks like this...

...and this...

...the severe weather here in the mountains and the ultraviolet light are very damaging, and I really need something to cover the wood and prevent injury from splinters...

I got a square of oilcloth cut for the table top last week so can proceed as soon as the weather cooperates.  My thermometer is climbing toward 60F degrees, but with an overnight low of 30F degrees and wind gusts of up to 26 mph this morning, it has seemed chilly.  Perhaps I can get out this afternoon.

I actually did something rather thoughtful last fall when I stored the oilcloth.  I put the hummingbird feeders in the same sack! 

Thinking all the time.  With the quixotic weather we've had this spring, I'm not sure when the hummingbirds will return, but am looking forward to it.  In the spring it's their call based on the meadow flowers starting to bloom I suppose.  In the fall, we are cautioned at this altitude to put all of the hummingbird food away after Labor Day because we can get freak snowstorms that will freeze the birds in their sleep at night.  If we remove the food source, they are forced to move to lower altitudes to find food and, hopefully, won't get caught by a cold snap. 

It's hard to do because they are feeding at their most frenzied at that point getting ready for the long trek south and I feel terrible removing the feeders.  They line up like jets waiting for clearance to land.  I think I see five in this photo, counting that one in the distance...


Here there are four feeding, or trying to, simultaneously...

They can get pretty aggressive with each other.  Here's a more bucolic photo...

...something to look forward to.

What are you looking forward to this summer?  Teddee