All Of Our New Friends and Neighbors

About those decorations on the south side of the cabin covering big holes, this is the culprit our camera caught in action this morning. A Williamson's Sapsucker? A Northern Flicker?  The rat a tat tat starts at dawn, and this time of year dawn comes early.
About Fred and George, movement high up on a south side rafter caught our eye Friday morning - one, two, no - five little chipmunks peering over the edge of the support beam for the roof. Over the course of the day they ventured out - retreated - ventured out again and eventually climbed or climbed and fell down to the deck and scampered to their favorite retreat, behind the sliding door shutters. Following close scrutiny and intense research the consensus is that they are Lodgepole Chipmunks. They're sharing the deck with the red squirrel, grey squirrel, and birds nesting in both the east and west side rafters, and of course the woodpecker and bats or ravens. That guano has been cleaned up - again.

SNOW

SNOW   

Ann, Lou and Jane drove in on bare ground Tuesday seeing only a few patches of snow under the trees.  But then overnite it snowed and by Thursday am we had this beautiful scene.
The weather station works again and now so does the rain gauge. And also we have a webcam so we can see the snow. Although Jane bought a package of 2 webcams, only 1 seemed to work.  After HOURS of trying various ways to get it working. 
So all is well. More snow is on the way, which is a good thing.

Wildlife

Next up - maybe a Spotted Owl or a Pacific Kingfisher.

Autumn Changes

Window information

The windows are under lifetime warranty.  Should there be any problems in the future, the contact information is
Sierra Glass & Screen
366 W Hanford Armona Road
Lemoore, CA 93245
559-924-4488
Cell # of Ron's contact Victor is 559-805-8240

Appliance Information

 Come to find out GE washing machines and clothes dryers have different fuses, depending upon the model. So, say the dryer stops working the Appliance Repair service needs to know the model of the appliance. Well, here's the information for our appliances.  See you on the next visit Mountain Appliance Repair.

August in the Woods

Arriving on the evening of Aug 7 and making the last turn on our road before arriving at the cabin - oh no! wait! that's a log across the road. Actually it's the top half of a rotten old fir tree. Aha, not to worry because someone has blazed a trail around the log. Thanks Ron Matteson for not only replacing the failed, foggy sliding glass doors, but breaking in the new road around the tree. More thanks to Patrick who brought his chainsaw and cleared away the tree for us on Friday.

Gooseberry season has arrived. Burn piles from logging have covered up our usual gooseberry harvest spot up behind the meadow so we kept going up the same road and found gooseberries, the UC Merced climate study site, yellow jackets, and Patrick who was part of a tour visiting the UCMerced project.  Here is Janice Friesen Bay knocking off the berries for stage two in the gooseberry syrup making process.