Here are my Instagram photos for April, May, & June. There are waaaaaaaay more than usual because of sheltering at home during the Covid pandemic. I haven’t been blogging much, but I’m doing SO MANY PROJECTS. There will be many upcoming posts. All is well here, and I hope all is well with you too!
It’s been surprisingly nice working from home! Jim enjoys it too. I work upstairs from the girl cave and he works downstairs in the dining room. The space is necessary because he has a lot of conference calls/Zoom meetings, and I get a few phone calls a day and have 1-2 Google Meetups a week [Zoom isn’t allowed on government computers]. There’s always a cat nearby while we’re working. They’re going to be so mad when [if?] we ever go back to the office! I will be posting about WORKING FROM HOME in the near future.
Darwin & Birdie are tolerating each other much better [or maybe we’re just home to see it more now]. However, as you can see from Birdie’s face, she’s not entirely thrilled by the proximity. We often see them sitting or laying within 2 feet of each other; fish tank & wine:
When I first got home I had to make a special shelf in the upper girl cave window for the ponytail palm that usually lived in my office in Gloucester. Darwin is FIXATED on it. He won’t leave it alone. It’s been outside for the past few months, but when I first brought it home it was too cold outside so it had to be segregated:
And then in late March our “caught in the basement in November & living in hamster cages until it’s warm enough to release them” pet field mice [who I thought were both girls] had BABIES:
SOOOOOOOO CUTE:
I will be posting about MOUSE DRAMA in the near future.
My SIX FOOT TALL orchid cactus had CRAZY flowers this year:
I took many walks in the Spring, enjoying the beautiful flowers:
My favorite pair of work shorts started to rip; I gave myself my first COVID haircut:
The 4 mice babies [darker brown] loved spending time with their mom [red brown] while Dad was sequestered in a separate cage:
Darwin watching the squirrel on the feeder outside the dining room:
ADORABLE mouse babies. My friend Rick said at this age they’re all head and butt with nothing in the middle – so true:
Ipswich River; Darwin letting it all hang out:
A pigpile of sleeping mouse babies with a happy sleeping mouse mom on top; Darwin enjoying a tub of grass I grow for him:
A frog [toad?] Jim and I found on our walk by a pond; the ENORMOUS bags of cat food I accidentally ordered online [I thought they’d be normal sized…]:
Darwin on his harness leash, completely appalled by the may 9th snow storm; a squirrel at the feeder:
More Spring flowers, including closeups of lilac blossoms:
Poppies in my friend Barbara’s garden:
The mostly empty mouse cage. I released the Mom and 3 babies in mid-May. One of the babies had escaped when I was trying to clean their cage the week prior, and I couldn’t find him. I thought he’d gotten back down to the basement. A few days after releasing his Mom and siblings, I caught him in the dining room. I tried to release him but he hid in the cage while I sat on the grass, so I decided to keep him, like his Dad. The Dad was never released. He lived under our fridge for 6 weeks [oops] and had become so domesticated that he didn’t want to go:
Playing with the little macro lens hubby got me for my Google Pixel phone [see photo descriptions for more info on what each shot is]:
More macro lens playing around:
I finally was able to get petunias at the nearby nursery to put in the back yard:
The Mouse Baby! And Darwin & Birdie sleeping a couple of feet apart:
Darwin being silly on his upstairs hall cat platform above the door to the girl cave:
The new normal [mask from BlackCraftCult.com]; we buried Winston & Killy, and finally spread General Bonkers‘ ashes:
A cedar waxwing made an appearance outside the living room window for a few days and Darwin went NUTS:
That’s so cute about the mice! You’re a good rodent mama! 🙂
We don’t have any pet rats now, and Jim wants to wait until there’s a vaccine to do any non essential errands, like the pet store in NH where we get them. so for now the mice are my surrogate rats! This is the first time in 18 years I haven’t had pet rats. The mice aren’t nearly as social, and I can’t handle them [a. they’re wild mice and b. they’d never let me] but they make me happy and keep me entertained and I love spoiling them. I’m still catching them in the basement, I just released basement mouse #6 this morning. I hope all is well with you guys!!!
We are doing great, thanks! I forgot to comment on that gorgeous cedar waxwing … great picture! We have them here in WA, but not in our neighborhood, unfortunately. Stay safe!
Thanks! The berry bush beside the house grew really big and was wrapped around to the back of the house and pushing against our living room window. We got lots of fabulous visitors this spring. The waxwing just sat there, right next to the window. I took the close up by pressing my phone up against the window. He didn’t even move, just watched me. And drove Darwin crazy. Even when Darwin charged the window with his whole [18 pound] body, the waxwing never moved. It was great!
I particularly love your photos of flowers – just beautiful! And the cats ( guess these were all of Darwin) are, as always, entertaining!
And the wild critters ….. cute, but maybe it’s time to let them go so they can readjust before the cold weather arrives.
Great pictures – all!
The single cat pics are all Darwin, yes. He’s very entertaining! In the double cat pics, Darwin is always on the left & Birdie is always on the right. It’s just how they hang. I can’t release the “baby” mouse (he’s not a baby anymore) because when they lived together the Dad beat the CRAP out of him (I felt so awful) and he has a leg injury and is missing the end of his tail. I could release the Dad, but he’s been a caged mouse for almost a year and I’m afraid if I release him he’ll die. He’s used to the posh life. And the one night I left the Dad’s cage door open by accident he sat outside it and ate snacks all night, then went back into his cage to sleep in his loft tower. Definitely happy to be domesticated & spoiled.