Skip navigation

Author Archives: Teri J Pieper

The Neighbors’ Chickens

Our neighbors have a fabulous garden and I imagine that part of that is due to their chickens. These stocky egg layers spend much time scratching and eating bugs and making fertilizer within the protected confines of the garden. When I visited yesterday, the big red rooster was ruling the roost, so to speak, chasing away hens that got too close to where he was foraging and making sure others were producing fertile eggs. Mostly the hens ignored him and went about their business – eating, pooping and laying eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fog Drops on Flowers

Life’s adventures are conspiring to keep me from going hiking, paddling or having other fun times away from home. What to do? Yesterday I went outside for some errand or another and I noticed that the rising fog was leaving tiny droplets on all the flowers and foliage. I rushed upstairs to get my macro lens to capture a few images before the moment dried up and went away. Flowers still blooming include sweet peas, nasturtiams, parsley, coneflower (well barely still holding on to some color), asters and some sunflowers. Temperatures tonight are forecast into the twenties and tomorrow night, the LOW twenties. Maybe even the teens. Good thing I got a few more images of summer before it all goes away.

Perennial aster, one thing the deer don’t seem to eat at all

 

 

Coneflower or echinacea, something that deer seldom even taste

 

Leeks, inside the garden fence

 

Nasturtiam, also inside the fence

 

Parsley umbel growing in a planter on the deck

 

Oh yeah, these sunflowers are inside the fence. deer love them.

 

Sweet peas. I like sweet peas. These grow on the garden fence. Fortunately, they grow tall and the deer only get some of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yup, I really like sweet peas.

 

 

 

A Rainbow-filled Day

The weather has moved on to fall. All signs point to it. Yesterday smoke columns showed up all over the valley as folks worked on clearing up brush and weeds from summer projects. A Bald Eagle landed on one of our pines. It has replaced the Osprey and Red-tailed Hawks of summer. We moved the camper into a neighbor’s barn. I worked on cleaning up the garden. Rain showers came and went alternating with rainbows and sunshine. This double rainbow extended across the valley. I’m sure there are pots of gold out there somewhere.

Something fun

It’s been a long hard week for me. But I remember that it started out much better a week ago yesterday. I went to the canine agility trials at Confluence Park in Wenatchee and saw lots of great dogs doing great (and some, not so great) stuff, running, jumping, going through tunnels and so on, all while having fun. I have over 1000 images to edit from that day. Tomorrow I will start on them.

On the way home, shortly after dark, my car hit a mule deer on highway 97 below Pateros. At 60 mph. It was not a good thing. I’ve never been in a car accident before and it left me shaken. And it left my beloved Honda a total loss, according to the insurance company. Luckily, I was not hurt and the deer, well, she got off the highway but I have to believe she died out in the bitterbrush. It took a couple hours to get my car towed up to Twisp and Ken met me with a big hug and we cleaned out most of the stuff and went home to a glass of wine and tried to relax.

And then on Tuesday I had to report to Okanogan for jury duty. ‘Everyone’ says, oh don’t worry, they always send everyone home, no big deal. Not so. I was the 13th juror selected for a three day trial. They had picked twelve and sworn them in and then the lawyers conferred with the judge and he asked me to join the group and swore me in separately. I nearly cried. And the stories we heard from the witnesses were enough to make a person want to stay home behind locked doors. There’s a big scary and sad world out there with people stuck in a milieu of drugs and crime.

Yesterday I started the process of car shopping. Ick.

So, should I try to put it all out of my mind and just think about happy things like the dogs running and jumping just for the love of their people?

I think so.

Wasp nest

Another nice walk today. Juliet and I rambled around in the upper Rendezvous for most of the morning. There was some smoke from controlled burning in Fawn Creek but other than that, skies were clear and the air was cool. We saw a few birds, some deer, lots of squirrels and a chipmunk or two. We came across at least four piles of moose droppings, none too fresh; and some bear poop. Well, I stepped in the bear poop.

One of my favorite sights was of an intact wasp nest. We had already run across one that had been pulled from its tree and dismantled. This one was still perfect and right at eye level and stinging insects around. On the ground, there were remains of an earlier nest. WAs it from earlier this year or the remains from last year? These nests are amazing structures and simply made out of spit. How do they do it? If you know more about these and the specific species that make them, I’d like to learn about them.

There is a hole on the top. It’s a little bit ragged and I wonder if it was made by a bird or is part of the original structure?

Hole on the bottom for quick exit and entrance

I really like the way it is formed around the branches that support it.