Rob spotted this little visitor in our front garden on the weekend. Our yard is a bit wild and I love the wildlife that stop by the enjoy it.

We’ve been enjoying a bit of warm weather here today and it reminded of a couple of weekends ago when it was also very warm and Maisie asked to “play outside and then go for a walk”. I’m always trying to encourage her to go for walks with me on the weekend. It was easy to do in the summer and fall but now that it’s getting colder she’s less interested. Any time she suggests it I do my best to jump at the chance to spend time outside with her. So here we are, playing in the frozen garden, walking along the balance beams of ice on the back deck, playing airplane (that big chunk of clear ice was my ticket), and then collecting Abby from inside the house and setting off on a walk.

We found some fun things in the backyard besides the wilting Brussels sprouts and their droplets of ice. A well used squirrel trail ran from the steps to the corner of the shed. A mouse trail - popping in and out of the snow - ran between a stack of old wood and the compost pile. Maisie found a ball that probably belongs to the dog next door stuck in the remains of the rhubarb leaves. She tossed it back into his yard. Maisie did about a third of the walk with Abby under her own steam but requested tying on when we started to walk along the trail around the lake. I’m so glad I can still wear her sometimes. We watched for more animal trails along our walk but the only obvious evidence of activity we found was from the beavers. They - or it, I’m not sure - had chewed through part of this fence earlier in the fall and we can see the lodge well built up again with a fair sized “pantry” of willows frozen into the ice next to it. There were some footprints on the lake ice but it was hard to tell if they were from foxes or dogs. Some of them looked big enough to be people but it’s going to be a bit longer before I’m willing to venture out on the ice.

The garden is in for the most part. I’m planning to do corn against the front of the house where we get a lot of sun and it needs to be a bit hotter, and I need to turn the bed, before I can do that. We have so many new things in the garden this year: okra, cauliflower, zucchini, Brussels sprouts, eggplants and the corn. We’ve got two half barrels with strawberries on the front porch. They’ll probably be joined by a container of flowers sometime but I need another bag of potting mix for that. I’ve got sunflowers and cosmos to put in with the corn for a bit more colour on that side of the house. Maisie is very excited about the strawberries. She’d been talking for months about how we’d have strawberries in our garden. We went out to the nursery earlier than I usually do just to make sure we’d be able to get some. There’s already a berry coming and more on the way.

The back deck is sporting beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, herbs, and eggplants. The lower garden boxes have more peas, radishes, turnips, beets, broccolini, carrots, more tomatoes, okra, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, zucchini, and some onions that volunteered from last year. We had a mild winter and it must have been just warm enough for them to make it. It makes me want to try planting garlic and crocuses in the fall from now on, just in case. The beans are pole beans for the first time. I usually do bush beans because it’s just so easy to not have to provide anything for them to climb but I felt like trying something new. That seems to be my theme this year. My hope is that the bean plants will be able to climb along the deck railings. We put the bean barrel right in the corner of the deck to put as much railing as possible within reach. We’ll see how it goes. I stuck flowers - marigolds, violas and some yellow flowers whose name I've forgotten - anywhere they would fit in amongst the vegetables.
It’s really fun having Maisie around while I’m in the garden. It sometimes means things take longer or that I have to do them twice but her point of view on everything is so different than mine that it makes things really interesting. She asks questions that never occurs to me and notices things that I tend to overlook. She’s also learned the use the nozzle on the hose and is keen to water all the dandelions she can find, usually from point blank range.

The photos above show the garden over a period of about two weeks. I always love watching this transformation. The big white cat belongs to someone in the neighbourhood. It's the biggest most friendly cat I've ever met and almost knocked Maisie down rubbing up against her. Generally speaking I strongly discourage letting cats outside, much to Fred's displeasure, but I've seen this cat chase off a fox so it can get away with being the exception to the rule.