Friday's Face

     Hi everyone. Another week is wrapping up, and before we know it May will be here. It's been a lovely week at my house weather-wise, and I've been busy with a lot of outside work.

     Today I am joining Nicole's Friday Face Off and also Gillena's Friday Lunch Break. 

     As I mentioned, I've been busy outside. We get these small flying and biting insects called Black flies that come out around May 1 so I'm always in a bit of a hurry to get some yard work done before that. (Although I've already noticed a few that have come out 😒)  Anybody who lives where these 'bugs" come out en masse knows exactly what I mean when I say I don't want to be doing yard work when they're around. Luckily they are only bad for a couple of weeks.

     One thing I've been doing is raking up my gardens. Last fall was a huge year for acorns. I cleaned up what I thought was the worst of them last fall, but no, in some spots there were still a lot of them. Here's a photo I took earlier in the week in one of my gardens.

    I think there was about 100 of these piles in my garden, and the worst of it is that you have to pick up the acorns by hand or with a shovel since you can't scoop them up with the rake. 

   I wonder if the big acorn harvest means there will be lots of baby squirrels this year? Of course, if food is easy to get like at my bird feeders then I guess the acorns will just remain on the ground.  

    Here's my squirrel buddy (?) who has figured out how to get on  one bird feeder that can be reached by jumping over from my back deck. Of all the squirrels that come through the yard, this guy is the only one who  is smart or brave enough to do this. 

    He and I often  have stare offs through the window, and it's probably 50-50 who moves first.

      I was the winner in this particular stare down as he took off after a minute. But as soon as I left I bet he was back to jump onto the feeder. 😏 😐😖

     And the other night I had a stare down with a much larger visitor. It was just around midnight and Mr. Pete started barking and going crazy. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my glasses but sadly left my phone charging upstairs.

     You can see how close to the house the bear was. Just sitting there on the sidewalk, using his paws to pull out the food out of this feeder and have his snack. He wasn't a young bear either but a big older guy. I pounded on the window and told him to leave, and he got up, slowly ambled off across the lawn, looking back a  couple of times, and then disappeared into the woods. And luckily, other than sort of pulling the pole partly out of the ground, there was no damage to the feeder. It's permanently tied onto the pole as it's one of those video feeders, and it had been a gift a couple of Christmases ago from my daughter. 

     It took a good hour to calm both dogs down, especially Maddie who I think scared the bear more than Pete, even though Pete was right in the window. She has that deep more ferocious bark.

     Which she was still barking the next day. I guess when you're blind you want to be sure that bear is long gone.

    That's it for me today. Have a wonderful weekend ahead.