Home of Many Tails

No tails lost this month.  Makes us happy 😉

Bees are beesy. Currants and gooseberries are coming along. Weeds too…but I did not take pictures 😉

Bees drinking water from the wet potting soil. I filled the box with dirt and keep it wet, close to the hives, they like it.

Ducks in their yard

Our grandrats were visiting while Alice was painting her house. I like having them here. Aren’t these little hands and feet just so adorable!!

Phoebe, Cleo and Susie Ewe

Moving into Alice’s new house. Complete with the newly painted front door, mattress that had to be taken down the ladder  from the roof of our house , as the stairs are too narrow, some weird patch of concrete that was under the carpet and the horse trailer full of furniture and stuff.

More garden

Von Fox family, one for each of us. Made by a Russian artist Irina Babaiko. From left to right Vincent, Neville and Penelope.  We were on the waiting list for about 6 months for these litttle guys. Aren’t they special? More on the Doll page.

In Alice’s front yard.

More of our yard and garden and us ;).

Many years ago, back in Colorado. About 2009-2010, I think. Interesting fact, that I never noticed the mountains when we lived there, but they do look inpressive.

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Thanks for reading 😉

Tat

Month of May started really nice. We were able to give home to yet another four legged friend. Meet Cheery, the mini hinny. For people who don’t know (and we were among them until that fine day on May 5, 2018), hinny is an offspring of the female horse and male donkey. Mule is the other way around.

She came from a neglected situation, is very shy and adores our mare Summer. She was estimated to be about 12 years old.

More Cheery pictures.

After such a pleasant start things got downhill pretty quick. In about 10 days after Cheery joined the household, the mare fell ill. The vet said it was enteritis. The cause is unknown and the treatment is a poke in the dark. Antibiotics may or may not have helped. For three weeks I went to the barn every hour, and every time held my breath, thinking Summer is no longer with us.

Ever so slowly she got better, and then a bit more, and another bit better. I would have her in the fenced garden with me not caring that she is eating my strawberry beds, as long as she was eating something. The vets became members of the family during that time. We were poking her with huge doses of antibiotics twice a day. It was bad…

I cried when she started eating and drinking on her own…

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Then just when this whole horse story was coming to an end, Skittles got into an accident and there was an emergency vet trip and lots of stitches.

Skittly is all good now.

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Meanwhile, Suzy Ewe got sheared

New free ducks came to live with us

The apples and the lilacs were blooming.

Honey got squeezed.

Garden beds prepared.

And birthday celebrated before work with the home made birthday log 😉

Also Dino went to Vegas

And Pussy Willows bloomed . And bees were seen getting water from the dirt in the planters.

Rosy came out of the barn. She does need her feet trimmed, time to buy ear plugs.

And Alice got her own little tiny housie poo.

Moby went to live with my Mom, and now is thoroughly enjoying havin a human of his very own.

And just some pictures

Thank you all who read till the end

Hugs 😉

Tat

Will start with the sad bit, as usual. Puzzle went to the bridge this month. She was 12.5 years old, which is very old for the dog of her size. She was pretty sick for the last couple of years and finally we had to make the difficult decision to help her cross. She joined her Dane friends Earl and Elf and the whole pack of smaller friends, all of whom are terribly missed each and every day.

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Spring is coming…eventually

  Hard to believe though…

But here is a tiny tomato plant poking it’s head out. I little reminder that life is very much worth living, no matter how sad it gets at times.

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Meantime in Tucson, AZ, where Frank and Dino spent a few days.

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Possum friend makes herself comfortable in the big shop

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Went shopping  with The Child. Had a great time 😉

Thanks for reading

Tat 😉

This actually was supposed to go into the January post , but I forgot. Some time back this fuzzy person showed up on the front porch. He/she (not sure) was trying to get some stuff out of the compost bucket, poor thing. So we put some food out. After lunch he found the cat bed and made himself comfortable. And so it continues. We put out the food and occasionally the bed is occupied. There is another one I saw in the barn, a smaller one, he occasionally helps himself to an egg. Nice to know they are around. Possums are good people.

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Some more photoes of Alice coming home from Germany that did non make it in last month.

And some more I got from facebook.

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Beautiful picture of Alice in her element. She will be having a recital on April 21st, Saturday, at 1pm.

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Valentine day. See’s chocolates from my husband and a heart shaped pizza from me 😉

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And winter…

And more

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Just pictures…

Life goes on,

Thanks for reading

Tat

Life does go on. And that as it should be. No one can or should stay sad forever.

So this month the huge event happened. The Child went to Germany (Berlin) for the whole month and not only survived the travel and the time there, but passed with flying colors, in our opinion.

I do need to mention, that she did this with only one semester of German under her belt, and this language is no picnic! Apparently people over there were so impressed that they gave her a scholarship. For guts!

And let me tell you, after all the sad things we’ve had going on at home, this was like a little shining star cheering us on.

I do have some pictures from the trip, but hoping that I will get more from her at some point.

She also had to spend her 23rd birthday away from home. But it does look like good times were had by all.

‘Sometimes you just have to go away , so you can come back. It is not the same as never having left’  Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full Of Sky.

Between the worlds.

And this is how it all started.

As always,

Thanks for reading

Tat 😉

This month’s post will have to be in two parts. Because it is difficult to group together things that are so different in nature.

When someone asks you, good news or bad news first, what do you pick?  I always picked bad news first. At least I will have something good to look forward to.  But in reality no one wants to hear sad or bad news. And I am no exception.

So will start with the sad news.

Frank’s Mom had a stroke and passed away a week later. That was rather unexpected. Unfortunately I have no pictures of her.

Within a week of this sad event we lost my beloved old and grumpy pig, Circe, and my gentle horse , Secret.

I am still broken up about all this, so won’t talk much and will only post the pictures.

As always, they will be missed.

Love to all

T

It appears that the previous post has reached it’s capacity  before I was even able to say thanks for reading, let alone add more pictures. So here is the separate post, showing all the little precious preserved moments.

The Child.

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The New Year celebration (ignore Frank’s finger up his nose 😉 )

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Mr and Mrs Santa , he fat cat and the dolls, some of them new arrivals.

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Puzzle in my vest, Zombie cat on warm freshly baked rolls, Hogwarts spatulas, Sirius making dog angels in the snow in -20 degrees weather and Spike and Skittles making the perfect, if somewhat misshapen ying and yang sign.

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Thanks for reading, stay warm

Tat 😉

November, December 2017.

As I obviously neglected to write both in November and December , I will try to recap it all in one end of the year post. The holiday season was busy, like for the most people. And while we don’t have a large family to go visit and buy gifts for, the few people we do have, are treasured.

A few more projects got completed. We loaded our annual big dumpster, hopefully the last one for a few years. Put dirt on the driveway. And we finally took the huge heavy doors from the inside of the big shop, which made plenty of more room inside for hay, straw and equipment.

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We released the male ducks into my friend Marife’s pool. They seem to be happy to be in the croud

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Food and water for the outside people is important. We have since added a water heater to the bowl, should have really splurged and bought the heated bird bath, but they were pricey, so we just made do with what we had. The animals don’t seem to mind.

New addition to the outside family. Possums are a lot cuter than I expected. The body is more like a bear’s and they walk slow and sort of sad, with their noses drooping. She comes up to the back of the house for bird seed and water. We also give her cat food and fruit occasionally. It is cold and they are hungry. I think she lives in the old root cellar.

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Alice had two winter concerts. One at St.Tomas , just for guitar ensemble and one at Minneapolis Orchestra hall, where the guitars opened the big show.  When we watch her play, everything seems right with the world.

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Then there was squeezing of the honey

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Decorating of the tree, a new, smaller tree this year.

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Franks’s birthday, with new Beretta items and a cake that looked magnificent and tasted like sawdust with chocolate.

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And, of course Christmas. With gifts and a much better, if smaller and less fabulous looking cake.

Comfort, the Dachshund went to the Bridge on October 4.

She was estimated to be 17 years old. While it is sad to let the friend go, we are happy to have been able to give her 10 good years of life, especially considering that her first 7 or so years did not seem to be that great.

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Here is Puzzle, Sirius and Phoebe by the barn, just because.

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Garden, cookies and pirozhki.. Found a great recipe and modified it for less sugar and smaller batch. Look for it here: Cookies link ,  Pirozhki link .

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The highlight of the month was out train ride. 1.5 hours on the train to see the fall leaves, talk and eat snacks. Hoping to do a whole day trip in Duluth next year.

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Dino Bambino went for a ride as well. More about it on the Doll page.

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And Phoebe. Just because.

Thanks for reading

Tat 😉