Welcome Fall

Welcome Fall! Will started his first day of kindergarten today. If you can call it that. It was more like a few moments in class, as it only lasted long enough for me to go to the grocery store for a quick shop with the little girls and to the library. He was excited all the same.

Will on his first morning of kindergarten….so excited!

I was going to launch right into my latest creation from our kitchen, (Butternut Squash and Ginger soup with rosemary buns and real old fashion rice pudding) but my gosh, we had some real excitement around the ‘ole homestead tonight. The kind of excitement I was anticipating should we move to the country.

As I was cleaning up the dinner dishes and talking to our daughter Grace about her first full day (a REAL full day) at school, our doorbell rang. It was our neighbour from 2 houses over saying he had just seen a bear.

It was a blonde bear and it had just jumped his fence with ease and was in our direct neighbour’s back yard. He thought we would want to know as he knew our little ones were in the hot tub. (another reason I want to move to the country as our kids are incredibly noisy, although our neighbours have never said anything. I can ONLY IMAGINE what they think)

 

I digress. I told him that in all the years we have lived here, (21) we have only ever had one bear incident that didn’t end well. I had come home from a lovely fall walk with our little little boys (now big ones) and was shocked to see two men on our deck, one with a rifle. They were conservation officers. When I asked them what was up, they said our neighbour had called them. Apparently, she had seen a bear off and on in her yard for a day or two and she thought it was now in the neighbour’s yard below us. They have large apple trees and don’t pick them regularly. The officer asked me when the school bus was due and I looked at my watch and told him any moment now.

With that information, they nodded, left our deck and walked over to the yard where they had spotted the bear. I stood on the deck with our 2 little boys, all excited about THE gun which was a big thing because the only guns we allowed in our house, were ones they made out of duplo blocks, despite the fact that their Dad used to be a champion trap and skeet shooter. Before we knew it, the conservation officers were in the next yard,  and there was a loud explosion. We saw the bear drop from the tree. At first, not knowing my guns, I thought the animal was just tranquilized but then I saw the blood, oozing from under it’s body. A moment later the school bus drove up, stopped, and the neighbourhood kids, plus our oldest two, spilled out, none the wiser.

So that was our last experience with wildlife. Our children’s school is further out, more on our valley bottom and often there are cougar sightings and occasionally the odd bear travels through as there is a creek near the school. Nothing of any consequence though.

Anyway, back to my story tonight.  I zoomed downstairs and told D to get out of the hot tub because of the bear sighting. As he got himself and the little kids out, he was telling me that Barbara, our direct neighbour yelled something over to him about a “bear” but he thought she was making a joke about their bare butts (the kids, not D’s) in the tub and he just laughed it off. As we quickly got the little ones into their jammies, we talked about how rare it was to see any wild life. We told the little ones if  they hurried, they may be able to catch sight of the bear from our upstairs deck.

They were bubbling with excitement as they hustled upstairs and onto the deck. The evening was quickly closing in and dusk was settling. They purveyed the area but nothing materialized. Being cold and disappointed, they came inside still talking excitedly about the bear. As I looked out our kitchen window into the darkening sky, I saw a large owl perching on the top of our 40 foot birch tree. The kids were ooing and awing over this huge owl as our oldest son, Clark and his girlfriend walked in the front door.

As we talked over each other, sharing snippets of what had just transpired, the owl flew off. WOW! It had an amazing wing span. We then went out the front door to see if we could catch a glimpse of anything. As you have probably seen from my pictures, our front yard is really quite secluded. Our drive way comes down to the front of our house and on either side of our property, there are tall pyramid cedar trees giving us total privacy from our neighbours. As we cautiously looked around, calling for our cats to come in, Clark’s girlfriend said, “oh look, a deer.” There on the ridge of the mountain behind our house was the silhouette of a deer.

Wow!

Then before heading off for stories, Will and Grace decided to look for the bear one more time from our upstairs deck. A moment later they were shrieking for us to come and see. When when we got there, the bear had dropped down into the bushes. They said, they had watched him lumber along the pool deck (yes, all of our neighbours have watering holes too) swatting at something in the bushes and then he dropped out of sight. As we continued to watch for while, hoping to catch another glimpse, twilight settled and a curtain finally fell, leaving us to wonder.
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A bear, an owl, and then a deer. Do we have to move to the country after all? This was one of the reasons I had wanted to move. I wanted to see the wild aspect of our world on a daily basis. I’m sure having deer eat my flowers/veggies or having bear get into our fruit trees would get old fast. Also, having hawks and eagles, (both of which we see regularly) pick up my little chicks and maybe even larger chickens too, would be a pain. But, to get up close and marvel at wild life, well that is pretty amazing.

Our subdivision’s motto is “Rural living at it’s best,” and tonight I was thinking how fitting that was.

So sorry if you had wanted to read about my delicious Butternut Squash and ginger soup recipe, you will have to stay tuned…….I got side tracked with real life happening here tonight.

Until I see you again, may you be well, happy and peaceful.

Blessings from Hope