Welcome To The Zoo – Page 15

Shall we dance?

No business like snow business

Record snow fall these past few weeks – Connecticut hasn’t seen this much snow all at once in a hundred years. It’s stunningly beautiful, and a royal pain in the a** too. We’re about to get clobbered with another Nor’Easter on Tuesday – and no one knows where they’ll put it. Our country roads in some places are down to one lane, people entering and leaving driveways aren’t visible because the snow is banked so high – roofs are caving in… two horse barns in a nearby town had casualties after their barn roof collapsed, and I got a frantic call from another barn owner today – looking for people willing to climb on a barn roof because it was about to collapse and the heavy wet snow needed to be removed. Our previous home that is not yet sold burst two pipes and my MIL’s roof is leaking. SO… husband & son and his crew have been on snow removal duty and house damage repair for five days now and I think most are sitting on their very last nerve. Our good friend Tim has a new solar panel installed on his property – a brilliant idea!..but comes with a heavy price, quite literally, when there’s heavy snow fall. TIM, are you still with us?….

So what have I been doing? I’m taking pictures, cooking and eating too much, taking care of critters, stocking the woodpiles and whining just a little. Most of these pics were taken with my iphone today while out walking with Ben… some with a little touch up from picnik –

We’ve seen some of the most amazing sunsets on the back hill…

Tonight I’m looking at this…

The natives are restless, time to go rustle up some grub. Stay warm my Northern friends.

Flying the Coop

…oh, how I wish I were… to the British West Indies or St. John or The Maldives… you know.. someplace where they don’t grow snow.

But what I’m really blogging about today is chickens and flying the idea around to see what I come up with. It looks as if the Mr. is in approval of the idea. Now I have had horses and dogs and cats and rabbits and birds and fish and a goat, hamsters, gerbils, mice and even a rat – ever so briefly. But I have never owned poultry so I’m treading in unfamiliar waters here.

I’ve been looking at coops…there are a zillion of them online – and here’s what I like so far in the way of design.

I’ve researched the hearty egg-laying chicken breeds, and these appeal to me –

Black Australorp (sp?)

Buff Orpington (SP???)

Rhode Island Red

Brahma

Skyline Hen (lays blue eggs! How cool is that! )

I researched hearty breeds because of the cold temps here in the winter. Have I whined enough about the three feet of snow with six foot drifts we have outside? And did I mention the nor’easter that is threatening to arrive next Tuesday? Am I crazy to want to shovel out to a chicken coop on top of the dog bathroom run we already shovel in this kind of weather to chip out frozen water feeders?

And then there were Two

So I told you about the new fish, and the demise of poor Henry. Today it was a miserable 15 degrees by the time the sun warmed everything up and I had it up to here with the hybernating we did over the weekend. So… I got to thinking…. I had an old fish bowl that we used in the Artisan Gallery sitting under the sink…and I also had a need for something GREEN to counter all that WHITE outside (more to come….hey Al…what happened to global warming??).

I hopped in the car and gravity pulled me right down to the TJMAXX parking lot. Once I’m there I might as well go inside…and so I did. I found these awesome crackled flower pots for $7.99. Perfect size for my two Christmas cactus that were in need of more breathing room. Then I got back in the car and that darned gravitational pull kicked in again. This time I found myself at Pier 1 Imports!… might as well go in. And I found this awesome wooden tray, my most expensive buy of the day at $30. Back in the car I go heading home, and wouldn’t ya know…gravity – right at the doorstep of JoAnns fabrics – where I found this awesome moss and moss covered rocks for $3.99. Joann’s is right down the street from an aquarium supply store….well I couldn’t leave a fish bowl empty…and I had this plan, you see.

To make this…

The two kings in their side by side kingdoms have already exchanged sentiments…..

If I could only find a mini three inch version of one of these….

A Fish Tale

I have a confession to make. I killed Henry, it’s that simple.

Every few days I gave Henry fresh distilled water that I keep under the sink. I carefully tip the bowl just enough so that water flows over the edge into the sink (you see where this is going already, don’t you) getting rid of the food, plant and fish waste that sinks to the bottom. Someone distracted me for a second the other day, I turned to answer a question and Henry… flopped…out. I quickly scooped him up and placed him back in his bowl….only to find that my pinky finger had jammed into his gill in doing so and it was perpetually OPEN. I stroked it, trying to get it to lay flat again, but it was clear he was drowning. Wasn’t a darn thing I could do. You’re welcome for the visual.

I felt sick, heartbroken, really…. to know I had done this to a living thing. Now you may be thinking he’s just a fish….but Henry had a personality, you know. He got to knowing when it was feeding time and would swim in a frenzy when he saw that I bent over to the place where I keep his food. His happiness in acquiring a larger living environment was evident in the way he displayed his fineage.
RIP, Henry.

Fast forward ~~an hour~~ a day or so, and I can’t stand looking at that empty bowl on the kitchen island next to the christmas cactus. It screams ‘MURDERER’. So off to Petco I go to rescue another Betta from one of those tiny little tupperware-like containers they keep them in.

He is known as a Half-Moon Betta – his fuschia and deep red colors are so vivid. I have not come up with a name yet and I’m asking for your help in finding something suitable. My guilt runs so deep I bought THIS guy a castle.

He has sort of an angry expression on his little face – I think he knows what I’ve done.

See what I mean?

Holy Snow!…and then some.

That’s Mike blowing a path at 6am so the dogs can go out to the bathroom.

Ask me how much he loves me when he has to do this kind of thing.

Not.

If you haven’t entered your ideas for flavors in the previous post, please do! We’re getting great ideas, the more the merrier.

Runs with the big dogs

Our little white mutt is the one who has battled cancer this past year. She’s a tough cookie, this one -right now she’s in remission. Bailey weighs 13 lbs. to Bens 185, yet she is the boss, hands down. I have never met a dog with more tenacity, must be the terrier in her.

Notice she’s got him against the fence…

She frequently takes his toys away…

This time she didn’t.

Was I the one who wanted snow? ME??…..

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Hammonasset in Winter

To stand at the edge of the sea

to sense the ebb and flow of the tides

to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh

to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept

up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year

to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea

is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal

as any earthly life can be.

– Rachel Carson

For the Love of Dogs

For those of you who have been following along here with me for a while, you know I take pictures almost daily. Recently I was asked by a dear friend to take pictures of her three month old niece. This baby was the most beautiful thing, she has strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes – and the holiday outfits made her look like a true Kris Kringle baby.

Out of respect for the family I won’t share their full portraits, but I did get permission from my friend to show you the picture I liked the most, seen below. Our photo session was held at her house, and she was so generous in letting us dismantle her living room for pictures. While she and her pup, Izzy, observed patiently on the sidelines, Izzy fell asleep in her “mothers” lap.

If this isn’t a portrait of real love, I don’t know what is.

It’s a Pisces thing

I was born in the sign of water

and it’s there that I feel my best

The albatross and the whale

they are my brothers.

(one of my favorite songs ever)

I have always been drawn to the water, perhaps having been born on an island under the Pisces sign has something to do with it. This Old House has certainly fulfilled a dream of mine, but I have yet another…a little bungalow on the edge of the water somewhere warm. One of these days…. if the right fixer upper comes along…..

My dad had fish tanks years ago and for a while raised his own stock. One of my favorite tag-along errands with him (besides the gas station to suck in all those awesome fumes) were trips to the fish store for supplies. He almost always let me bring home a new fish for his finned community. He used nautical navigation maps for the backgrounds of the tanks with rocks, plants and driftwood for decoration. Most people have seen those aerated treasure chests you can still find today… he had one of those sitting among the rocks and for a brief while I believed they were our cleverly disquised “family jewels”.

Over the years I have had several tropical fish tanks, gold fish bowls, betta tanks, and for a very very brief time, a salt water tank that, quite frankly, tanked. A word of advice for those who are contemplating a salt water aquarium… DON’T DO IT! They are surely the most beautiful of aquarium environments and the array of fish are stunning – HOWEVER… Unless you are truly committed to one whopping responsibility consisting of near constant temperature checks, salt level checks, alchalinity, ph-balance, a back-up generator in case your power goes out, and just in general real-cramp-in-the-a** upkeep… it ain’t worth it.

So… when we moved to This Old House we had one remaining tropical tank in my sons old room. He no longer wanted the responsibility of taking care of it and I felt the same way. The tank was dismantled and the fish moved to my husband’s big tank at his office. We’ve been here almost six months now and I’ve been missing the fins. There may have been an impulsive stop at Petco last week and I found the missing link.

Meet Henry.

He sits on my plant shelf over the kitchen sink.

Why “Henry” ? I have no idea…

He is what is referred to as a Crown Fin Betta

Bettas are a relatively easy fish as long as you give them what they need. It breaks my heart to see them in those tiny little containers at the pet stores. Sadly, more often than not customers are told and truly believe all they need are those tiny little bowls. While it’s true they can survive for years in that condition, so can a prisoner in a 10 x 10 cell, to make a fair comparison.

Henry’s home is just a small goldfish bowl with gravel and a live plant. It’s not the tank I’de prefer to see him in, but for now it’s five times the little plastic container he came in and already he’s livelier and spreading his fins like he’s courting the ceramic chicken sitting next to him. I’ll be sure to keep the water temp around 75 degrees away from draft and I’ll do a partial water change with distilled water every five days or so to keep the ammonia level down. A water change in this type of bowl is simple with a filled gallon water jug kept under the sink. It will be room temperature and distilled when I’m ready to use it. Betta food is easy too, just don’t pollute the tank with too much of it by following feeding instructions on the container. I also like to buy brine shrimp and blood worms on occassion to supplement their diet.

Bettas come in all colors and a variety of fin shapes…

These are called half-moon Betta