Christmas Noses

Redbush has a Christmas stocking for her dogs. Beatle loves to grab it occasionally and tussle it about. I'm sure he just loves the fuzzy feel of it, but, on the other hand, he may be checking it out early. She tries to get him to leave it alone because he has torn the noses off most of his other stuffed toys. Noses seem to be the things that Bonzi and him don't think belong. Bonzi tore the noses off a few stuffed toys, and now there is one fox terrier that doesn't have a nose. Redbush hopes all of you are ready for Christmas. She isn't. Redbush has been having problems with her blog site lately, especially loading images. She hopes that the pictures will load this time. She hopes you are all enjoying the month of December!

Who's The Slave?!

Redbush doesn't have an over amount of snow at this point in the winter season, and that makes her happy. The temperatures have been a bit cooler lately, but she knows they could be a lot colder. Even with the five or so inches that has fallen, Redbush still shovels so that she doesn't have so much to remove at one time. If she doesn't remove the snow, Beatle's feet collect every ice particle and are three feet wide when he comes in the house. Although Mr. Redbush would like to help, he has a problem with his lungs, so, Redbush knows that the shovelling has to be done by her. She has some 800 feet of dog trails to shovel, then has to clear the deck and walkways to the back door, and garage. Bonzi and Beatle are reaping the benefits of this frolicing and wrestling their way in front, or behind Redbush as she is shovelling. They tussle with their ball tripping up Redbush, begging her to throw it for them, making her job twice as long. Bonzi barks and tries to catch every shovelful of snow off the deck when Redbush throws it off. They don't build dog shovels, do they? Too bad all this wasted energy can't be harnessed. He! Redbush is sharing a few photos of her work and her lazy buddies. She hopes everyone is having a fantastic December!

Grosbeak Mystery

The days have been warmer lately, so Redbush is happy that it's seeming to make winter a little shorter. She doesn't understand, however, why her regular visitors, the pine grosbeaks have not been back like they usually are at this time of year. Mr. Redbush feeds them their usual striped sunflower seeds, and fat balls mixed with seeds. Redbush's sister has had a busy schedule in her life lately, so, Redbush made a birthday dinner for her a week early. Her sister enjoyed her visit and the meal. You can tell Redbush is at a lack for something to blog about. She has kept all the jobs that she needs to do on hold. She has decided that she should blog instead because she hasn't kept in touch for a while. She hopes you are having an eventful week. She is sharing some photos of birds from last winter, and a few of the recent dinner.

Reminiscent Sketches

Redbush is still reminiscing over her experiences with baby bald this summer. She hopes to sketch and paint the youngster sometime in the future. She is still kicking herself for not having her camera handy when each of the parents arrived to give him food later on when they were camped there. Redbush's camera skills leave a lot to be desired, thus, a lot of her pictures were done on a zoom-in, and are a little fuzzy. Drat! She has some that were just taken as is, so, will hopefully use those as references. Quite a few years back, she did do a sketch of a mature bald eagle from a lake where they were camped. She will share this sketch and more pictures of the baby from this summer. She hopes everyone has a great weekend and wonderful weather this mid- November!

Warm November

Redbush is celebrating the fact that November has come in like a lamb, and hopes it stays like this for a long time. She hasn't been blogging for a lack of a subject, the only one being " raking leaves". It seems since September, the leaves just keep on falling. Some of her willows still have leaves on them. She has had to rake them to pick up all the branches that have fallen as well. The neighbour's huge poplars have been a thorn in her side for quite some time. She and Mr. Redbush have spent weeks raking these leaves and hauling them away. Redbush, however, has also tried to make some time to work on her art for an up and coming art show. Between picking up leaves, and getting rid of them, she has attempted to finish a new art piece for the show. She appologizes for her poorly taken snapshots of it. She hopes you are all enjoying a great November!

Smaller Garden?

Redbush has decided in the past few years to cut back on the amount that she planted in her garden, but, somehow, it just doesn't happen. She and Mr. Redbush have been harvesting, canning and creating dishes with what their garden has produced. In tomatoes alone they have harvested more that 100 pounds! She hasn't tackled doing anything with them yet, but, it should make enough spaghetti sauce for the year! Redbush is wishing you all a wonderful warm Indian summer!

Baby Bald Episode 2

Redbush and family managed to revisit the campsite where baby bald was left previously. They came to find the baby eagle still sitting on his block, but, no parents in view. After watching him for a whole evening, they came to the conclusion the next day that the parents weren't coming back.

The next morning he was seen arriving on the block and making h

is way halfway over to where Redbush and family were camped. Mr. Redbush decided to tak

e a package of moose hamburger out of the freezer to feed it to

him towards evening. He grabbed the hamburger in his talons, and made his way to a spot a little away from where they had given it to him. He dug into the frozen meat and ate the better of most of the pound. That evening, while eating their late supper, Redbush happened to look out their camper window to

see him flying past their unit back to his block. When Mr. Redbush ventured over around 9:oo P.M. that night, baby bald flew off into the horizon and was never seen again for the remainder of their camping trip. Redbush was happy to know that perhaps finally he had found his wings, and would survive. Redbush is having trouble loading pictures at this point because her server isn't working, but will try later. She hopes everyone is having a superb week!

Camping With Baby Bald

Redbush and family have been camping in the wilderness areas for the past while when they haven't been doing yard work, thus, her blogging time has been non-existent. This last camping trip was quite eventful as they had a number of events happen at their camp spot that made their trip worthwhile. After a few days that they were there, a wolf was there trying to entice Bonzi, or Beatle out so that they could have them for their midnight snacks. Fortunately for Bonzi and Beatle, both of them were in their refuge, Bonzi in his kennel, and Beatle in the camper sprawled out on our bed. Mr. Redbush realized what had happened when he heard some coyotes very close to the camper calling out in their high-pitched yelps . Neither dog said a word, but, upon noticing the next morning, Mr. Redbush found the tracks of the coyotes chasing the wolf. Apparently they put the run on Mr. Wolfee because they weren't going to have him take away their chance for easy food. For this reason, Bonzi and Beatle are kept very close eyes on while Redbush and family are out there. The next interesting event was helicopters landing very close to the camper loading up on spray to spray the blocks where the logging company had logged. Redbush still can't figure out why they are spraying blocks out in the wild. It annoyed them, but when confronted, the company's spray foreman wouldn't give Mr. Redbush the time of day about it.

The most interesting part of Redbush's camping trip was camping with the eagle. Mr. Redbush noticed upon the family coming back from one of their outings, that a large brown shape was sitting on a block very close to their campsite. Upon investigating he noticed that it seemed to be an eagle that was very weak. Their were not sightings of the parents, so Redbush and Mr. Redbush decided to relinquish one of their prized suppers to him. They took their t-bone steaks out of the package, and chopped one of them up. He was only to happy to chow down on the raw morsels when Mr. Redbush fed him from one of their cooler lids. They then decided to feed him the other one the next day as he still seemed very hungry, calling out, and all alone. As you will notice from the pictures, you can see some very large sharp talons and a mighty large even sharper beak. Mr. Eagle was there for a few days before the parents started showing up. He didn't seem to be able to fly, so, Mr. Redbush surmised that he must have dropped out of his huge nest a couple of weeks too soon. The parents took turns bringing him the odd piece of food from time to time while he stayed in the campsite morning and night for all the four days that Redbush and Mr. Redbush took pictures and used binoculars to zoom in on him. Redbush missed her chance to get a picture of the father, a huge bald eagle. Bald eagles are very shy, so,he didn't stick around very long after dropping the food off for the youngster. Both parents perched on different snags close to the campsite keeping watch during the day while the little guy (not so little as far as birds go) called out. The youngling would disappear when dark came, so, Redbush concluded that he must have gone down into the brush by the slough behind him to hide for the night. They were glad to see him perched on his block in the morning as they knew that there were lots of coyotes, wolves and such that could have ended his life each night. The Redbush family feel very lucky to have been able to watch this special event and are sure that this will be a once- in -a- lifetime experience. They really hated to come home as they wanted to be able to see him get enough strength up to fly. It bothers them to know that they will never know if he made it eventually, but they have to believe that he built up the strength to. It felt like they were leaving one of their pets behind. She will share some of the over 120 pictures and a few movies that she took when he was still not too fiesty. She hopes you enjoy them. Sorry! It said the video didn't load, but I've loaded two of them. Have a super August!

Summer Colours - Tiger Lillies

Redbush has been avoiding the computer for quite some time as you may, or may not have noticed, not that she wanted to, but other activities have been taking much of her time. She has been weeding, mowing lawn, taking Bonzi to new rally competitions, attending family reunions,and the rest of the time being lazy enjoying some of the summer. There hasn't been much summer as the weather has been quite cool for much of the time, with little needed rain for her plants, thus Mr. Redbush has been hauling water to keep her plants, and Redbush happy. She managed to recently capture some photos of colours in her gardens.

The tiger lily happens to be one of Redbush's favourite flowers. One of her friends tells her that she doesn't like them because as a child she found a snake around one of them, so this is burned in her memory forever. Redbush will share a little research that she found written about the tiger lily that is now burned into her mind. The tiger lily is Saskatchewan's provincial flower. The tiger lily was first described by a famous Swedish botanist, Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) in 1753. His descriptions of the lily:

- helps in suppressing aggressive tendencies in individualsand helps in holitic healing.

-often act as a carrier of viral diseases and so becomes a vector infecting other species.

Bag Lady, this one's for you:

-has some toxic effects on cats, ie; can produce vomiting, inappetence lethargy, kidney failure and even death.

-has edible flowers, and flower buds apart from edible

roots and shoots. These can often have a bitter flavour. When baked, lily bulbs taste rather like potatoes. The Tiger lily is cultivated for its edible bulbs.

- look for dried tiger lily buds in an Asian market. They must be soaked in warm water for about 30 minutes to soften them before adding them to dishes. They can enhance the flavour of egg dishes and salads. (Redbush still has the cat info stuck in hermind, so isn't so sure about the last two bits of edible info).

There is an old legend from Asia about the Tiger Lily.: A Korean hermit helped a wounded tiger by removing an arrow from its body. The tiger asked the hermit to use his powers to perpetuate their friendship after his death. The hermit agreed and when the tiger died, his body became a tiger lily. Eventually the hermit drowned and his body was washed away. The Tiger Lily spread everywhere searching for its friend. ( Redbush will look at wild tiger lilies much differently now).

- a superstition about the Tiger Lily is that smelling it will give you freckles.

- a belief that it stands for wealth and prosperity.

After reading some of these excerpts, Redbush is not so sure about this perennial being her favourite. It was part of her wedding bouquet, however, some decades ago. She still tends to have aggressive tendencies from time to time,especially when her computer is on the blitz,or when Beatle decides to take a 5 minute romp through her slow-growingvegetable garden, and especially when the same telemarketer phones five days in a row (of course it's never a real person, so she can't scream obscenities at them and tell them that nothing is free is this world including their exotic trips). Although she isn't a cat, and doesn't have one, she can't see herself adding any to her egg dishes, or salads. Redbush is still trying to find wealth and prosperity, but, the lotteries aren't cooperating with her. What summer colours, superstitions,memories do you have etched in your mind? She hopes you have had and continue to have a great summer filled with colour!