Bad Hair Day

10 Reasons Opossums are Cool

I've always loved opossums and thought that they are totally cute little creatures, slow, gentle, and relatively harmless. A few years ago I caught an opossum in our live trap that I was using to trap and relocate the squirrels and who were wreaking havoc on my strawberries, melons, and squash. (Those squirrels literally would go through my 50 foot strawberry bed, pick  every half ripe strawberry, take one bite out of it and then throw it on the ground.)

 I belonged to a gardening forum at the time and posted about the possum I had caught. I was stunned and sickened by the amount of raw hatred that most of the other members had toward opossums. I got a several dozen comments about how I ought to drown the poor animal, beat its brains out, shoot it, or run it over with a car. What the heck do possums do that make them deserve that amount of hatred?

Not much. They do eat eggs and while they often get blamed for chicken deaths (maybe because they are slow and rather obvious?), they don't go after adult chickens very often. They do eat chicks and other baby birds. They will eat pet food if you leave it outside. Frankly, I think they do much much more good than harm and they are welcome on my little farm any day.

10 reasons opossums are cool to have around:

1. As mentioned above they are very cute.

2. They are the only marsupial in North America. (The babies are born at 11 to 13 days gestation and are so tiny you could fit 10 of them in a teaspoon.

3. They eat mice and rats, moles and voles.

4. They eat earwigs, slugs, and cockroaches (what's not to love about that!).

5. They eat carrion--which means that they deal with dead animals and I don't have to.

6. They rarely carry rabies--in fact they are more resistant to rabies than any other mammal--possibly due to their low body temperature. They are also immune to rattlesnake venom--and they eat snakes.

7. They rarely eat ripe fruit, but they will clean up rotten and over ripe fruit that has fallen to the ground.

8. They are the ultimate pacifists--rather than fight back or even try to escape when threatened, they fall over and pretend to be dead.

9. They are clean animals and will spend lots of time grooming themselves just like a cat.

10.  Opossums are among the oldest, most primitive mammals. Some scientists call them "living fossils" because they have survived relatively unchanged from ancient fossil records.

Junco Tracks

Juncos are friendly little birds who are primarily ground feeders. Click here to read about them.

Little Stone Bridge

It has been a long three weeks...four weeks...five weeks? I've lost track of the how many weeks it has been since I've had a real day off where I didn't have to go out to see at at least one patient and wasn't scrambling to finish paperwork late at night. It has been several weeks of lots of driving, long days, and coming home dead tired.

But this weekend I have two days in a row completely off and I'm not going to go anywhere. I'm going to turn my cell phone off and stuff in under the couch and not turn it back on until Monday.  

 My goals for this weekend are  to winter sow all my hardy flower seeds, as well as plant some apple seeds for rootstock to graft in a few years. If it is warm I'll clean the chicken coop. Maybe I will even cook some meals to freeze, so if the hectic pace at work keeps up, we will have something to eat besides canned sardines and crackers for dinner every night.

I became a nurse knowing that I wanted to be a home care nurse. After graduating from nursing school, I did the mandatory  year and half on a busy med-surg unit, then switched to home care. I love it, but never dreamed it would be much harder in a lot of ways than hospital nursing. It is the sort of job that you can't just walk away from at the end of the day. There is always paper work to finish, phone calls that you are waiting on to be returned,  patients to follow up with, visits to be scheduled, looking up medications or medical procedures that are new to you. It is one of those jobs where you can't start at a prescheduled time each day and end at at presceduled time. You start the day when you first patient needs you, and end your day when your last patient has been seen. All visiting nurses complain that we we can't fit all that needs to be done into an eight hour day. It all depends on how much driving you had to do, how sick your patients are, or if they have lengthy procedures that need to be done.

But there are things that make it all worth while. You see one patient at a time. You get to focus completely on that one patient. You can make him feel as if he is your most important patient. You don't have call lights going off, your pager beeping constantly, or the person in the next room screaming for pain meds. You can tailor you care and teaching to exactly what each individual patient needs.

 You get to see your patients as individuals complete with their interests and personalities and and quirks. You get to see all kinds of interesting things--like one patients amazing collect of antique ivory that he inherited from his great grandfather, or another patient who raises parrots and hatches out the little parrot babies from eggs, or another one has poured her life and soul into the most amazing 5 acre flower garden ever and now her son has taken over most of the work.

If you are a home care patient, your nurse thinks of you by name, not by a room number and a medical condition.

A big benefit to home care nursing is that we aren't cooped up all day in one place, never seeing the light of day. I do a lot driving, and while I am not exceptionally fond of driving, I do love seeing new place and and exploring the country side in the 60 or so mile radius that I cover. I am someone who tends to stay home and not go out much if I don't have to. My job forces me to get and explore. I wouldn't be doing that working a a hospital. And then, there are some days when you do get your work done early and you do get caught up and you can go home early.

So any way, earlier this week, I drove by this little stone bridge--a thing of beauty, out in the country, nothing else around. It didn't even seem to be connecting a trail. It was the day of the ice storm and I stopped for a second in the middle of the road to snap one picture.  Another car was coming up behind me so I didn't stop long, since I didn't want him to slide into me.  I thought the photo turned out pretty well, given that it was the only one I took, and it wasn't in the best of circumstances.

Today I drove the same road and since it is no longer icy, I was able to park for a few minutes and take a few more photos. The photo at the top of this post was taken as the sun set behind me--you can see the glow from the setting sun on the trees.

Ice Storm

The area I live in was spared the heavy ice that hit much of Michigan on Monday, but I got to drive through some of it anyway. It hit hard 40 miles south west of us. In spite of the ice and snow, I saw a full load of patients on Monday and drove about 150 miles all together. It was some of the scariest driving I have done on the job since becoming a home care nurse. The ice on the trees and bushes sure was pretty though, even if it made for slow dangerous driving.

Snow and Sky

Stopping to smell the flowers

I look forward to little clay pots of tete te tete daffodils going on sale at Kroger's supermarket in February and March every year. I always have a pot of them on my window sill until my own daffodils start blooming. When spring comes, I plant the bulbs in the garden and so can watch them re bloom every spring.

And it looks like I am not the only one who appreciates spring flowers...Shadows seemed to be enthralled with them as well and spent several minutes sniffing them ever so delicately.

(An hour or two after I took these photos yesterday afternoon, it started to snow--we have about 10 inches on the ground and more coming down.)

Swan

Swans are back in the thawed lakes and rivers. I saw at least twenty yesterday while driving through the country seeing patients. I'm wondering what they are going to do when the water freezes again. Temperatures are dropping again and we are supposed to get more ice and snow by this evening.

Full Moon at Dawn

The full moon was luminous as it set in a rose colored western sky this morning.

An hour earlier, Venus had been just as stunning in the predawn eastern sky.

Tombstones From Nature

Maybe I am strange , but when I die I want to buried in a quiet corner of my land with a boulder as a headstone. On the the land I grew up on, there was a little cemetery with five graves--the husband and wife who where the original owners of the land, their son who died at 10 years old, and later the son and daughter in law who took over the farm are also buried there. (The farm had long been abandoned by the time my family bought the land and the farm house and barns where little more than crumbling foundations.)

Today in between seeing patients I slipped off for half an hour to explore one the oldest cemeteries in our area and I found the perfect headstone. A boulder mostly sculpted by nature, but with a few refining touches added by the stone cutter. Now I just need to keep my eye out for a boulder like this in our woods.

The inscription reads:

 Peter Peterson

 1782 -1861

Elizabeth

His wife

1789-1860

Though I would settle for one like this:

The inscription on this one reads:

Latham Kessick

Mary S. Kessick

(no dates.)

Actually, I think we do have a boulder that is very similar to this one.

Mole Patrol

Shadows has been catching a mole a day in my flower beds all winter. Here he is hiding in the lavender plants waiting for a fat juicy mole. Hopefully this means that most of the bulbs I planted last winter are intact. Today I noticed the first green shoots of crocuses poking out of the soil.

Can I call this the first flower of 2011? Or is it a remnant of 2010? All  I can say is this little pansy has survived a tough winter and is smiling brightly at our 55 degree temps today.

Valentine's Sky

On the eve of St. Valentine's Day, the sun went down in a thunder of scarlet sky and crimson snow.

(Photo is unedited other then very slightly adjusting the highlights.)

One of our new neighbors....

February Thaw

Bare trees reach twiggy fingers

through the liquid fog

to touch the face

of the rising sun.

The air smells of dampness and warmth,

 the promise of spring,

and of the fading snow

of a February thaw.

Smoky Sunset

Jet trails mix with the light from the setting sun.

Sunburst

The sun bounded over the Eastern horizon,

Bursting through the tree line, like a flying saucer.

Sledding Hill

Molten Sky

Reblooming Amaryllis Bulbs

My amaryllis is in full bloom and is brightening these gray winter days. I've been looking into caring for the bulb so that it will bloom again next year. I did keep the amaryllis alive that I bought last winter, but didn't research how to take care of it properly. I basically put it outside in its pot and watered occasionally. It is still alive on my window sill, but no flowers this winter.

So how to care for your amaryllis bulb so it blooms again next winter? I've read several articles on the subject and this is what I have come up with...

The key to flowers next year is healthy foliage this year. Strong healthy leaves are a sign of a strong healthy bulb. To encourage leaf growth, cut off the faded flower stems and repot the bulb in a high quality potting mix, using a pot that is just an inch or two wider than the bulb. Water the bulb regularly just enough to keep the soil damp. Make sure it has plenty of light. Feed with a liquid house plant fertilizer every two weeks. When danger of frost has passed it is fine to plant your bulb outside in dappled light. Keep feeding it every two weeks.

The bulbs need a fall rest period in order to bloom again. There is conflicting information on exactly what this fall rest period should entail. All sources agree that in before the first frost, the bulb should be brought indoors and allowed to dry out in a cool place. Some sources say the bulb should be put in the dark, others say it should continue to receive full light. Either way, the bulb should be kept at about 50-60 degrees and not watered at all for about two months. The leaves will yellow and die back. Everyone does agree that once the leaves have died back, the bulb should be stored in the dark (again 50-60 degrees) until you are ready to repot it for blooming.

Warmth and light signal the bulb to start putting out a new flower stalk. Six weeks before you want the bulb to bloom, repot it in a high quality potting soil and keep it in bright light with temps between 70 and 80 degrees. Water thoroughly initially, then keep the soil slightly damp. Once your amaryllis has finished blooming, the cycle can be repeated.


I plan on reporting back next winter on how this worked out. If anyone has rebloomed an amaryllis, I would love to hear your experience. I also learned that amaryllis multiple by putting out small side bulbs--similar to daffodils. I will have to examine the bulbs for little bulblets when I repot them.

Venus at Dawn

Winter Evening

The view from our mailbox...

Rainbow Sunset

Snow Flakes

The blizzard of the decade wasn't so bad in my part of Michigan. Originally they were projecting about 15 inches for our area and we ended up getting only about 7 inches of snow. Lots of drifting though. For the first time since I have been a visiting nurse, we had a snow day. I got to stay home and take lots of pictures of snow. These are my first attempts ever of taking photos of individual snow flakes. I wish I had the new camera that I had send back. It turned out they decided to send a refund instead of exchanging it. I'm back in the market for a new camera and want to make it a SLR next time. Just waiting for the right camera at the right price to come up.

I hope every one else weathered the storm without difficulty. I know other parts of Michigan and the country got hit far harder than we did.