Thursday 13: Catching Up

Since I haven’t posted anything since March, a Thursday 13 seemed like a great way to catch up on what has been going on since March.

1.    A cat picture is always a good way to start one of these, so enjoy this one of Mortimer.

2.     We have hot water!  The water heater installation was finished on time, and it has been worth every bit of disruption.  Showers that don’t become progressively colder are so much more pleasant!

3.    We did a lot of decluttering while we were getting the house back in order after the water heater installation.  We reorganized some things and got rid of a lot of stuff. 

4.    Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the process, but here’s one of Theodore in one of the storage cubes. 

5.    Speaking of Theodore, he had a vet visit for a cough last week.  After x-rays, they determined that he most likely aspirated some fluid while coughing up a hairball and developed a slight infection.  He’s on Laxatone for hairballs and got an antibiotic shot for the infection.  He goes for a follow-up in two weeks, but has already stopped coughing and seems to be feeling fine.

6.    Part of why I haven’t posted in a while is that I was working on a big project at work.  It was the second part of the December project.  Our deadline got moved up by about six weeks, so everyone had to put in a lot of extra hours for a while.  It is finished, though! 

7.    As usual, Caroline felt the need to be heavily involved in my work. 

8.    I’ve learned not to say I’m expecting any kind of break from projects with tight deadlines!  There isn’t one at the moment, but I’m expecting at least a couple more this year. 

9.    It hasn’t been all work during my blogging break.  We have done some fun things, including going to Greenville to see a performance from the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus.  It was a great show!  I haven’t been able to find a video of the show, but here’s the promo video.

10.   The groundhogs are back!

11.   There are at least three baby groundhogs this year.  I just love them so much.

12.   I’m working on catching up with everyone’s blogs, so I’ll be visiting you soon.

13.   A cat picture is always a good way to end a post, so enjoy this one of Charlie.  

Groundhogs

As soon as I signed up for the A to Z Challenge, I knew that my G would be groundhogs.

We had several groundhogs move into our backyard last year, and I absolutely love them.  They’re so much fun to watch. 

We set up a little critter corner, mainly for the groundhogs, but we have also had other visitors (some of the other letters in the challenge will be about some of the other visitors).  I put out food and water for them, we set up a trail cam, and I love watching the videos of the groundhogs enjoying their snacks.

They like bananas a lot.

They love broccoli.

And corn is one of their absolute favorites. 

I know a lot of people consider groundhogs to be pests, but they’re not hurting anything, so we’re peacefully co-existing with them.  I love that they’ve chosen to live in our yard.  

Thursday 13: Groundhogs and Flowers

1.    At least one of the groundhogs came back! 

2.    I saw one outside yesterday and put some veggies out.

3.    I’ve been putting critter mix and peanuts out for the squirrels.

4.    The groundhogs seem to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables, so I’ll start putting those out, too.   

5.    The batteries in the camera died, and we didn’t reset the time, so the time and date are off.  From what I can tell, the groundhog(s) came back sometime this week.

6.    I am so happy they’re back!

7.    I suspect we may see some baby groundhogs at some point. 

8.    The hyacinth from last week bloomed this week. 

9.    Here’s another picture of it.

10. The daffodils next to the carport look like they’re going to bloom very soon.

11. Some other daffodils have bloomed a little more.  It was insanely cold last night and today, so I’m not sure how long they’re going to last, but it’s nice for now. 

12. Here's one more groundhog picture because they're just so cute.  

13. A Thursday 13 doesn’t seem complete without at least one cat picture, so I’ll leave you with this one of Theodore in the box he has claimed as his very own. 

How was your week?  

Thursday 13: The Bonsai Tree Edition

This week’s Thursday 13 comes from running out of storage on my laptop.  We’ve set up a trail camera to see the groundhogs eat, and those videos are taking up a lot of space on the laptop.  (If you want to see the groundhog videos, here’s a link to see them.)

So, I started looking through the files on my computer.  I have so many pictures and videos!  I’ve been slowly uploading things to my Google Drive, and in the process, I’m coming across things I meant to post before. 

These are from a trip to the NC Arboretum in the spring of 2022.  Better late than never, right? 

We usually manage to go when it’s too cold for the bonsai trees to be outside, and we only get to see a limited display inside, but this time, we timed our visit better and got to see all of them outside.  So, here are thirteen pictures from our visit to the bonsai tree exhibit. 

This one was my overall favorite.  I love how it's covered in little pink flowers.

Here’s a closeup of the flowers.  I think they look like tiny azaleas.  

I liked how these two looked like tiny little forests. 

 I liked how these two leaned over.  It seems like, normally, only very large trees lean like that. 

The exposed roots on this one were interesting.

Here’s a closeup of them. 

 Here’s another one with pink flowers. 

Finally, four more that I thought were pretty since I’m showing you thirteen of them.

How do you store and organize your videos and photos?  Do you ever forget about them once you save them to your computer?  

Groundhogs & Bananas

 Did you know that groundhogs like bananas?  I didn’t.

Last week, Nick and I checked the produce clearance section (buying produce for all of the groundhogs isn’t cheap!) at the grocery store.  The only produce on clearance was the bags of very ripe bananas.

I wasn’t sure how the groundhogs would feel about bananas.  I hate bananas, so I tend to think that everyone else does, too.

Nick loves bananas, so he tends to think that everyone else loves bananas.  As a banana lover, Nick advocated buying them and seeing if the groundhogs would like them.  He predicted that they’d like them. 

Nick was right.  The groundhogs love bananas! 

I took this plate out, with three bananas broken into chunks.

And this is what the plate looked like a few hours later.

Here’s a video of one of the groundhogs enjoying the bananas.

Would you have guessed that groundhogs like bananas?  And does your guess have anything to do with your opinion of bananas?  

Thursday 13: Around the Yard

Between flowers and the backyard animals, there’s a lot going on in the yard right now, so this week’s Thursday 13 is a little look around the yard.

1.     We’ll start with some zinnias.  I don’t think I’ve ever had zinnias before, but this year, they’re one of my favorites.

2.    Here’s a closeup of one of them.

3.    And here’s the yellow one. 

4.    These are all in pots on the front porch, along with a pink geranium. 

5.    There’s also basil, that looked like this on Wednesday morning.

6.    The basil looked like this by Wednesday evening.  I have no proof, but I suspect the groundhogs feasted on the basil. 

7.    We also have a shepherd’s hook with two hanging baskets of petunias and a suet feeder in the front yard.  

Here’s a closeup of the flowers.  

The suet feeder is very popular.  It was eaten down this much in just a little over twelve hours.

8.    A friend gave us these beautiful hydrangeas.  We have a white hydrangea, but I’ve wanted pink and blue ones for a while, so I was very excited to get these.  We’re still deciding where we’re going to plant them.

9.    Here’s a closeup of the blooms.

10. I put mums in the pots on the porch during the fall and two of them came back.  I think of them as more of a fall flower, so I moved both of them to this big pot.  I’m planning to tuck it in a corner of the backyard and hope that the mums are big and blooming by the fall.

11. In the backyard, the blackberry bush has lots of berries that aren’t quite ripe yet. 

12. There’s also a second blackberry bush now.  I suspect the birds are responsible for planting this one, which I appreciate. 

13.   And no yard tour would be complete without a groundhog video, so here’s a video of one of our groundhogs enjoying a peanut butter cracker.

What’s going on in your yard now?