Bear, Grandchildren, Etc.

It's been a long time since I last posted. I'm motivated today because of a bear sighting that we experienced this morning. Kristen and I were sitting out on the porch at about 7am, reading the news on our tablets, when a very large black bear came bounding up the driveway. When it caught sight of us it veered off across the lawn between the trailer and the bird feeder and went crashing off through the trees. We mentioned this to a neighbor later and she said that that explained why her dog was unwilling to pass in front of our house this morning,

Grant, Melissa and the kids visited recently so, for the first time, we had all 5 grand kids together,

Here they all are with their parents and us.

 On one of their early days here, Briar, Grant, Niko, Maya, Colton and I attended an open house at the Patriots training camp.

Here's Tom Brady (#12)

And Rob Gronkowski (#87)

Grant couldn't resist taking a picture of this deflated football in the Patriots display case. He was sure that this must be the one.

Briar and Gus had rented a cabin in New Hampshire's White Mountains for a week. With a squeeze, they had room for everyone. We all went.

We all travelled by car to the top of Mt. Washington, the highest peak in New England. The hiking trail to the top was marked by a series of cairns. Couldn't resist getting a picture of all of the Cairns next to the cairn at the top of the mountain.

Grant had seen a story on Animal Planet about Marty, a Maine coon cat that lives at the weather observatory at the top of the mountain (there have actually been several Martys). The observatory was closed to the public but I asked for Marty at the door. Here he is. We made a friend. The woman who rounded up Marty showed up at the counter wherever we went.

There was a mountain close to where we were staying that we climbed on 2 different occasions. Briar, Grant, Kristen, Niko, Colton and I went up one day (Gus and Maya started up but Maya got sick). The next day, Gus, Niko, Maya, Grant, Colton, Riley and I made the same climb.

Gus must have taken this picture of the rest of us at the top.

The kids at the top.

The girls frond some tiny, but delicious, blue berries,

We all road the scenic railroad from North Conway to Conway and back. Riley had  ball. She shrieked every time that the train blew it's horn (which was often).

A good time was had by all.

Grandma photobombs a picture of Cooper.

Back at the cabin.

Swimming at Comet Pond.

It didn't seem like this could possibly end well but Riley saw Niko get buried in the sand and insisted on the same treatment.

Grandpa, Grandma and Grand kids picking blue berries at a local Oakham farm.

On other fronts, we've made steady progress on finishing the unfinished room above our kitchen. It now has heat, AC, insulation and lighting. I have drywall coming on Monday so that will be the next step.

-JC-

Oakham Town Block Party

I talked about Oaktoberfest last October. Someone mentioned to me then that Oaktoberfest was a biannual event but I didn't quite understand why. Now I know. On alternate years Oakham has a Town Block Party. The Oakham Town Block Party was last Saturday.

Before the Block Party, we attended Maya's dance recital in Worcester. Saturday was Briar and Gus' 11th anniversary so we took Nikos and Maya home with us after the recital. Good timing actually because they were able to join us at the Block Party.

It was definitely a small town event. The quilt show was over before we got there. The Congregational Church was selling strawberry desserts so we all had strawberry shortcake. We took in the car show and voted for our neighbor Jim's souped up Ford Falcon (not your typical choice for a muscle car).

They had some activities for the kids.

Maya enjoyed the juggler (Niko not so much).

No Oakham event is complete without an Otters concert.

Maya and Niko were more interested in playing badminton.

We had noticed in the flier for the Block Party that they had a magician scheduled in the same time slot as The Otters. We wondered how that would work out but he showed up at our seats while we were watching The Otters. All of his magic was right in front of our faces an Niko Nd Maya have been refering to him as a,real magician (not like those other ones).

Then came the strangest event of the night. It didn't start until 8pm so Maya and Niko were getting ready for bed. The flyer for the event had mentioned a "Burnout Contest". I had an idea of what that might be but that didn't seem likely. Sure enough, up between the town hall and the library,there was an event to see how badly people were willing to destroy their tires.

Apparently, the contestants disabled their rear brakes so that they could lock the front brakes while spinning the rear tires. They have 30 seconds to make as much smoke as possible. They wet the road down between vehicles to make it easier to slip. Crazy. The whole area, including our house, stank of burning rubber.

 

On other fronts, we've been moving ahead with finishing the unfinished room over the kitchen. The plumber finished today and we now have heat in that space. He added an additional zone to our boiler and baseboard radiators along the long North wall. In between the rough plumbing and the installation of the radiators, I installed drywall on that wall. There's still a ton of work to do but we're making progress.

Some of you have heard about our chipmunk issues. They're awfully cute but they are more abundant this year than ever and they are doing damage. They prefer do dig under foundations and many structures have suddenly dropped into the ground. It's war!

I've been using rat traps and a pellet gun and have managed to eliminate at least 21 of the varmints so far. Amazingly, they continue to be a presence.

-JC-

Our Massaversary!

Yes, it's been a year since we arrived in Massachusetts. On June 1, 2015, we rolled into Pine Acres Resort in Oakham, MA. We started our house search the next day. We found our new home by the end of the week and closed by the end of July (with furniture still en route).

We've never regretted our decision to move East. We'd had no experience with the changing of the seasons and have loved it. We've documented the changes in this blog and are happy to report that Summer has returned with a bang. It's just amazing how we went from no leaves to dense leaves overnight.

Here are pictures of some of the changes that we've been making:

I've mentioned our windmill before. It replaced the wishing well that was over the wellhead.

I've also mentioned our raised vegetable planters. We added the fencing when a groundhog started showing interest (groundhogs are murder on vegetable gardens).

We've always had 2 nesting boxes at the back side of the lawn. I've just added 2 more across from the kitchen windows (these actually get used).

We felt that we needed some garden ornaments. The (not so old) wheelbarrow wreckage that was on the rocks before just didn't cut it. Our first find was this old wheel (we think from a wheelbarrow). $5 at a flea market.

At that same flea market, we found this lobster trap.

We were almost there but needed a bird bath (the birds have been going nuts in it).

Here are all three (plus our feeder) from the farmers porch.

Before any of the above changes, we added the bird feeders. They were supposed to be squirrel proof but the squirrels found a way. We added the cone and have thwarted them so far (though we have seen them hanging from the edge and spinning). The bird variety here has been amazing.

Yesterday, Briar decided to run the rail trail from near  her house to near ours. Because of the many bears that we've seen lately, Kristen volunteered me to ride my bike along side her. We saw several beaver dams along the way.

One last sign of summer: The marquee at Oakham's town square has been updated to show this summer's concerts. The Otter's are Oakham's home grown Grateful Dead cover band. The other dates must still be pending. This concert venue is 3 houses up the street.

-JC-

An Anniversary of Sorts

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the date that we crossed the California/Arizona border on our journey East. We had moved out of our house and into an RV Resort the week before. After spending the week dealing with with movers and the various issues related to the closing on our sale, we headed East.

We have survived our first Winter. The leaves are popping out all over and everything is growing like crazy. Kristen got her vegetable gardens planted yesterday and I'm back to mowing the lawn. We've put a couple of bird feeders out on the lawn and have been enjoying the large variety of birds that live locally.

We are continuing to see a lot of animals. Some, we catch on camera but don't see. Others, we see but don't catch on camera. Squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits are too numerous to be of much interest. We saw a groundhog the other day and immediately fenced the vegetable garden (we hear that they destroy vegetable gardens). We had a porcupine picking up seed under the bird feeder the other morning.

This is a different porcupine that we snapped a picture of on one of our morning walks.

Our wildlife camera continues to surprise us.

This beautiful little fox looked like it was posing for the camera.

A possum.

A pair of raccoons.

This is our mystery animal. Bears have been seen in the area and this could be a small one.

Then again. It might be a racoon.

Yesterday, we were on our way home and, about a quarter of a mile down the road, we spotted this bear ravaging a bird feeder.

As coincidence would have it, Briar knows the woman who lives in that house. She forwarded our pictures to her and the woman responded with these additional pictures. A mother bear and 2 cubs have been terrorizing her bird feeder for a while.

-JC-

Spring Snowstorm and a Fox

With the exception of a few flurries, we've been clear of snow for quite a while now. For the past week, the weather forcasters have been forcasting snow for last night and this morning. At one point, they were talking 18" but, over the week, their models changed to the point where we might get an inch.

We ended up with about 8" and large, wet flakes are still coming down. Strangely, the newscasts still are talking about how we got missed and Cape Cod and Plymouth took the brunt of the storm. They are reporting less snow there than we have.

Our StealthCam (wildlife camera) has been possitioned lately on the back of our trailer. I had been starting to wonder if it worked at all and had it pointed at a spot that is frequented by a lot of small animals. We've had a lot of pictures of racoons, squirrels, cats and birds. What I really wanted to catch is a moose. The one that we saw left our yard at the corner where the new windmill is and followed a stream uphill from there.

Yesterday, I strapped the StealthCam to the pumphouse under the windmill and pointed it to where the moose had gone. This morning, I noticed tracks crossing the snow toward that spot and rushed out to get the chip from the camera. Here's the result:

-JC-

My Early Birthday Present

I have never been a fan of the wishing well on the back corner of our lawn. It had a purpose - it was hiding the wellhead - but it was poorly made and ugly.

This "Before" picture is from the multiple-listing photos when we bought the house. Also in the picture is the raised vegetable garden that was quite productive last summer (see the 2nd windmill picture for our new, improved planters).

I have long wanted to replace it with a windmill - not the dutch variety but the kind that you might see on a farm. Kristen ordered one for me for my birthday and it arrived this week. It only had a couple of hundred parts so assembly was simple (NOT).

In anticipation of its arrival, I decided to see how difficult it was going to be to remove the wishing well. My first discovery was that it was just sitting on the ground. I started to tilt it forward and discovered that it was going to hang up on the wellhead. I started to pull it back into position and the front half kept moving forward. It literally fell in half. Wishing well removal complete!

We bought some 1' square pavers to create a level foundation for the windmill. We still didn't want to look at the wellhead so I built a housing from lumber that I salvaged from the wishing well.

Here's the final results. It will look even better once the flowers start to grow up around it.

Behind the windmill, you can see our new raised vegetable planters. Instead of one 4x8
planter, we now have two and they are twice as deep. All we need now is dirt.

-JC-