Quadruped caretakers

KittyBumpkins

: Gideon

Phoebe:

Abby (Absinthe):

This quartet.... 3 cats and a dog, are or have been on staff here, helping us in a variety of ways. Phoebe, Kitty Bumpkins and Abby, on rodent abatement duty, have done a fine job of getting the place under control. Abby brought her formidable skills to bear here for about a year, but has now moved on to greener pastures. Gideon is our vigilant sentry, announcing comings and goings, and keeping a friendly smile and bark for all guests.

Townsend's Warbler

This little bird flew into the greenhouse glass today, and, while momentarily stunned, was picked up by Angel. Angel brought him to show me, and as we were taking his picture and checking his vitals, he flew up into the tree above where I'm building a fence. Hence, I dubbed him fencefinch. But his actual ID is Townsend's Warbler. After a few more minutes catching his bearings in the tree, he flew away.

Closure on the fence repair episode

So, the wind had finished breaking off the base of three fence posts after some years of rot had weakened them.

Rather than remove the concrete, I just removed the rotted wood left embedded in it, leaving a post-shaped hole in a large, buried mass of concrete. The cavities were over 2 feet deep.

Rough redwood posts vary in their dimension, and the newer posts were slightly larger than the old, so I made adjustments accordingly. Once you start to slide the new post into the old hole, it has to fit right the first try. It gets wedged in quickly, and I treated each post with "copper-green" to retard rot and termites, so I wasn't going to be trimming these posts to fit after soaking them in poison.

The 2x4 rails are fitted into 2x4 holes notched into the posts. Here's how its done: layout the notch; score around it with a chisel; break out the top layer of wood with the chisel; plow out the rest with a drill and chainsaw...from both sides...

Here's a new post ready for the rail & fence sections to be re-fitted:

All finished:

Pacific moonset at dawn

All saints

These 3 photos are from the Carmel River lagoon, where we have some friends we stopped by to see today as the sun was lowering in the sky.

This last is the view from the backyard, and it is dedicated to all saints, this being November 1.

Sainthood is commonly thought to be earned, an award for the few high achievers who make perfect grades in difficult extra credit projects. For those who do think so, I commend the quote I've recently added to the bottom of this page. Happy All Saint's Day.