Month: October 2019

Added Greenhouse and Trees project summaries

I’ve added a couple more project summaries to the Yellow Cottage Homestead site, for my project of summarizing homestead projects. Still a few left to go, but I’m getting there.

Visit the summary post to see an overview of all of the projects, or the Projects page to scroll through all of the projects, or pick individual ones below. Click or tap on the photo to visit that summary:

Greenhouse

Assembling and updating our greenhouse.

Trees

Planting trees around the property, and measuring the heights of select trees.

Cat update for week ending October 26

For today’s Caturday, I had 359 photos to wade through… though it wasn’t as bad as that sounds, since most of them were shots for the three animated GIFs I made this week. If you didn’t see them (or want to enjoy them again), check them out:

  1. A night in the cat shelter
  2. Afternoon meal in cat feeder
  3. Four cats outside

Anyway, on with the regular photos from this week. There are a bit more than usual, due to some interesting events, plus a series of photos of the cat house with fall foliage. Hopefully not too many!

Pumpkin surrounded:

Pumpkin surrounded

Poppy on the deck, another cat eating, and a third stretching:

Three cats

A new alien cat turned up; at first glance could be mistaken for one of our ferals, but the markings are different, no cropped ear, and looks a bit younger:

A new alien cat

A new alien cat

Three cats:

Three cats

Two cats by the front steps:

Two cats by the front steps

Enjoying the heating pad:

Enjoying the heating pad

Enjoying upstairs:

Enjoying upstairs

Pumpkin vs Paladout:

Pumpkin vs Paladout

The twins on the deck, and Porcini on the awning:

Three cats

Three cats

I was enjoying the fall foliage, so thought I’d take some photos of the cat house and its leafy environs:

The cat house and fall foliage

The cat house and fall foliage

The cat house and fall foliage

A couple shots using the new wide-angle lens in the iPhone 11 Pro Max:

The cat house and fall foliage

The cat house and fall foliage

You can see why I have a cover over the small pond! (I brushed away the leaves from the cover after taking this picture).

Back to the cats… four of them:

Four cats

Two cats on the bench by the field:

Two cats on the bench by the field

A cat walking from the bench to the stream for a drink:

Cat walking from the bench to the stream

Back to the bench:

Back to the bench

A cat on the bench by the fountain; I should put those cushions away for the winter, but they are enjoying them so:

Cat on bench by fountain

Poppy and Pumpkin inside:

Poppy and Pumpkin inside

Poppy and Pumpkin inside

Pumpkin in the feeder:

Pumpkin in the feeder

A screenshot of my iPad cam viewer app, showing Pumpkin on the deck, Poppy in the shelter, and one of the twins in the feeder:

Screenshot of Pumpkin and two others

Three cats:

Three cats

Three cats inside:

Three cats inside

Poppy and Pumpkin happily sharing the shelter again:

Poppy and Pumpkin inside

Poppy and Bill the Cat, I mean Pumpkin:

Poppy and Pumpkin inside

Poppy and Pumpkin inside

Bella peeking around the corner at Poppy on the deck (and another eating):

Three cats

Flock Friday for October 25

It’s Flock Friday again!

Here are the ducks, in a very leafy pond (before I scooped out a bunch):

Ducks

The ducks going after mealworm treats:

Ducks with treats

A couple of closeups of the female buff duck, Gert:

Female buff duck

Female buff duck

The male buff duck, Bert:

Male buff duck

Male buff duck

The female cayuga duck, Gill, with water droplets on her head:

Female cayuga duck

A night swim:

Night swim

The ducks on the lawn, rooting for bugs:

Ducks on grass

Ducks on grass

Ducks on grass

I had fun taking zoomed photos of the ducks. Here’s Bert:

Male buff duck

Gert:

Female buff duck

Bert from above:

Male buff duck

Gert front-on:

Female buff duck

A couple of nice shots of Gill, showing the green iridescence:

Female cayuga duck

Female cayuga duck

On to the chickens.

Unfortunately we lost another of the new chickens; Moana flew up to the top of the run fence, into the old run, and couldn’t figure out how to get back. She flew into the tree above the old run, and hasn’t been seen since. So she is officially missing, presumed dead. But maybe she’s off on some adventure somewhere. We haven’t had much luck with these new ones; we started with 8, and are now down to 4.

Here you can see Moana on the coop roof:

Escape chicken

Here she’s in the foreground of the old run:

Escape chicken

A pity; she was the most friendly of the new chickens.

Some shots of the remaining new chickens slurping up spaghetti:

Chickens with spaghetti

Chickens with spaghetti

Chickens with spaghetti

The old chickens with treats:

Chickens with treats

Finally, hovering room only on one of the hummingbird feeders:

Hummingbirds

Afternoon meal in cat feeder

I enjoyed making the cat shelter GIF yesterday, so thought I’d make a time-lapse GIF for the cat feeder, too.  Both were generated by individually capturing a bunch of photos from the cam viewer, carefully timing them to be evenly spaced, then running them through Retrobatch, an excellent image conversion app for macOS, to read in the files, scale them, combine them into an animated GIF, and write that out.

For the cat shelter one I captured 106 images at 5 minute intervals; for this one I captured 57 images at 30 second intervals.

This was from yesterday afternoon; I noticed they’d eaten all the food, so I dispensed more, and three cats arrived to chow down:

GIF of cat feeder

Cat update for week ending October 19

Like with the ducks, I capture a lot of cat pictures, though mostly from the cam recordings, since I don’t see the cats in person as much. This week, however, I also have some phone photos, to make things more interesting. I managed to narrow them down from 88 to 25 pictures. Let’s dive in.

A queue of cats at breakfast time:

A queue of cats

Pumpkin yawning in the shelter; he’s been spending most mornings in there:

Pumpkin yawning in the shelter

Three cats outside (one stretching on the tree):

Three cats outside

Walking away on the driveway:

Walking away on the driveway

Two cats on a bench overlooking the field; a little hard to see the second one through the slats:

Two cats on a bench

The second one is a bit more visible in this shot; you can also see the side of the cat house on the right, to give some context:

Two cats on a bench

Poppy face:

Poppy face

Porcini looking at the camera:

Porcini looking at the camera

Having a bath on the driveway:

Having a bath on the driveway

Porcini peeking at me from behind the tree:

Porcini peeking from behind the tree

Porcini by the front steps:

Porcini by the front steps

Poppy vs Pumpkin; as usual, she hissed at him, he stood there for a while, then wandered off:

Poppy vs Pumpkin

Bella about to jump onto the camera housing:

Bella about to jump onto the camera housing

Here comes trouble; Pumpkin approaches from behind the cat house while two others are there:

Here comes trouble

A hiss then rapid retreat:

Hiss

Poppy on the deck, Porcini rubbing against the corner:

Poppy and Porcini

A nice afternoon nap:

Afternoon nap

Breakfast:

Breakfast

They sat like this for quite a while; couldn’t eat another bite:

Couldn't eat another bite

Me cleaning the blown leaves out of the feeder area:

Cleaning leaves

Me refilling the water dispenser:

Refilling water

Poppy sniffing the water dispenser:

Poppy sniffing water dispenser

Bella looking at the camera:

Bella looking at the camera

Pepper in the front of the shop:

Pepper in the front of the shop

A rare in-person sighting of Pansy in the back of the shop:

Pansy in the back of the shop

Flock Friday for October 18

It’s time for a confession… I take way too many pictures of the ducks. They’re just so cute! Several times this week I told myself “no, put away that phone, you don’t need any more pictures”, and had a hard time narrowing down the ones to include this week. The new iPhone 11 Pro Max with the fancy machine learning optimizations takes some amazingly detailed photos, too.

Without further ado, the ducks:

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Duck

Duck

Ducks

Duck

Duck

Ducks

Ducks

I haven’t included a picture from inside the duck house for a while; here are the ducks eating:

Ducks eating in the duck house

Ducks with lots of leaves in the pond:

Ducks with lots of leaves in the pond

Okay, enough ducks. Let’s look at the chickens enjoying some rice; one of their favorite treats:

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

The older chickens enjoyed the rice, too:

Chickens

Finally, some hummingbirds:

Hummingbirds

Measuring tree heights

Every year at around this time I wander around the property measuring the heights of select trees, to see how much each has grown. Here’s a post about this last year.

Once again, the incremental growth throughout the year becomes more obvious when compared with measured heights from the previous year.

Here’s my spreadsheet recording the heights (in inches); I’ve added columns to also indicate the change from the previous year, e.g. the “18 ▸ 19 Δ” column shows the number of inches of growth between 2018 and 2019:

Tree heights spreadsheet

This year I used a new tool to measure the heights of trees taller than I can reach with the tape measure. Using this simple tool, I can stand near the tree to be measured, look at the top of the tree through the two sight rings, and use the mirror to see the bubble level, then measure the distance from the tree to myself, and add the height from the ground to my eyes. This gives the height of the tree:

Height tool

As I recorded each measurement (in the spreadsheet on my iPad), I took a picture of each tree, as a visual record. This time, I thought I’d post all of the photos. They are in the same order as the spreadsheet, above.

No doubt this is only of interest to me, but maybe others might enjoy seeing other areas of the homestead that I don’t normally show with the more common animal-focused posts. (There is a bonus glimpse of the ducks in one picture, though!)

A new addition to the measurements this year, the Monkey Puzzle tree (by our bedroom closet). I wish I had measured it before, though I couldn’t until I got the new tool; I think it’s tripled in size since we’ve been here. It’s also the only tree being measured that we didn’t plant:

Monkey puzzle (by closet)

Coral bark maple (by front of shop):

Coral bark maple (by front of shop)

Dogwood by pool (by dog yard NW corner):

Dogwood by pool E (by dog yard NW corner)

October Glory red maple (by dog yard SW corner):

October Glory red maple (by dog yard SW corner)

Field Leyland SE1 (nearest flagpole):

Field Leyland SE1 (nearest flagpole)

Field Leyland SE3 (east of road gate):

Field Leyland SE3 (east of road gate)

Field Leyland SE4 (west of road gate):

Field Leyland SE4 (west of road gate)

Field Leyland SW (corner):

Field Leyland SW (corner)

Field Leyland NW (corner):

Field Leyland NW (corner)

Field fir outside gate (to N property):

Field fir outside gate (to N property)

Field Leyland NE/tall (last tall going E):

Field Leyland NE/tall (last tall going E)

Field Leyland NE (by wooden pole for old fence):

Field Leyland NE (by wooden pole for old fence)

Field dawn redwood (second row):

Field dawn redwood (second row)

Field tulip (replacement) (second row):

Field tulip (replacement) (second row)

Field scarlet willow (second row):

Field scarlet willow (second row)

Field Leyland feature (second row):

Field Leyland feature (second row)

Field apple NE (4th from S); a rather sad specimen, broken by deer and elk, but hanging on:

Field apple NE (4th from S)

Field apple NW (4th from S):

Field apple NE (4th from S)

Field oak (replacement) (“Thorin 2”, center of field):

Field oak (replacement) (“Thorin 2”, center of field)

Behind white gazebo fir (N of gazebo):

Behind white gazebo fir (N of gazebo)

Behind pond fir (middle between orchard & pond), with bonus ducks:

Behind pond fir (middle between orchard & pond)

Next to stream fir (next to pond stream):

Next to stream fir (next to pond stream)

Weeping willow (beyond pond, by cat graveyard):

Weeping willow (beyond pond, by cat graveyard)

Apple honey crisp (next to old coop):

Apple honey crisp (next to bantam coop)

Apple gala (next to old coop):

Apple gala (next to bantam coop)

Apple braeburn (next to old coop):

Apple braeburn (next to bantam coop)

Sweet gum in flowerbeds (replacement tree, center of central path):

Sweet gum in flowerbeds (replacement tree, center of central path)

Weeping cherry (in fountain garden):

Weeping cherry (in fountain garden)

That’s it!

Cat update for week ending October 12

Let’s take a look at the cats; welcome to another Caturday at the homestead.

Poppy on the deck, looking her usual grumpy self, Porcini in front of the camera:

Two cats

Sleepy cat:

Sleepy cat

The alien orange cat, Pumpkin, has been hanging out in the shelter quite a bit this week, waiting for the food to dispense:

Orange cat

Here he is arriving in the shelter when Poppy is already there:

Orange cat arrives

Poppy expressed her displeasure at the arrival with some hissing and swiping, which Pumpkin ignored:

Not happy abput it

After both settling for a while, Pumpkin defended the shelter from raccoons:

Hissing at raccoons

The two raccoons:

Raccoons

Then they settled down again:

Settled

When the food dispensed, Pumpkin was first there again:

Orange cat and food dispensing

Still the same morning, Pumpkin was in the shelter when the gray alien cat, Paladout, arrived:

Orange vs gray cats

Orange vs gray cats:

Orange vs gray cats

A screenshot of the cam viewer app on my iPad, showing Paladout in the feeder, Pumpkin on the deck, and Poppy in the shelter:

Orange vs gray cats

When more food started dispensing, Paladout started freaking out; he wanted to run away, but the entrance was blocked:

Orange vs gray cats

Not happy:

Orange vs gray cats

After a few minutes standoff, Pumpkin lost interest and went back in the shelter, allowing Paladout to leave:

Orange vs gray cats

Pansy, the indoor feral cat who lives in the back of our workshop:

Pansy in the shop

Porcini watching a bird, while another is in the feeder:

Watching a bird

Bella on the deck and Poppy next to the house, both watching a taunty bird:

Watching a bird

When feeding the birds, I flushed both Poppy and Porcini out from the grasses under the bird feeders, and they ran to under our deck:

Under the deck