Yard, Gardens, Birds and Critters

All my friends on Facebook know all about my problems with my dogs and squirrels and raccoons, if they read my posts. I just had to write this up, just in case there is someone out there that reads this blog that is not on Facebook. My older dog, Chief, is part Basset and part Labrador.  He has the Basset bark and howl. Imagine, if you would, being sound asleep, all cozy in your bed and all of a sudden you hear this deep-throated, loud bark! BARK!  Then a few minutes, and I mean a few, if I make it to 3 minutes, it's amazing, I get another BARK! This is my signal to get the heck out of bed and put the boy outside.  I have two other dogs. Lacy and Rosebud.  Sometimes both go out with the old boy and sometimes not. Sometimes it's just Lacy.  If Lacy goes out, she usually goes potty and comes right back in! If Rosebud goes out that doesn't happen! Take this morning for instance.  All three went outside at 3:25 a.m.  Lacy was back in by 3:28 a.m....

The weather can change to spring anytime for me. I am way passed ready for days of warmth. We have had a "real" winter this time and it started way back in November of 2018. We have had so much cold weather and snow!  Unfortunately, my weather station doesn't measure the snow.  I resorted to my ruler a few times.  One snow in January was at least 11 inches and maybe a tad more. Temperatures below 0°F many times and lots of times in the teens and twenties.   I have been feeding my birds through this winter and because of the many Starlings and House Sparrows I run out of food quickly.  The other reason I run out of food, yep you guessed it, the squirrels.  I looked out this morning and 3 of my feeders are gone.  The squirrels have learned how to knock them down and so they do. The one feeder is smaller than its original size because they chewed through the wires and created a hole. Hubby fixed that so I could still use it but now they continually knoc...