Yearly treefall

Every year one of the hippies' trees falls on our fence, almost always this time of year. They are really good about it though, before I could even start to blog about it, they arrived to clear it up. J is with them to make sure they take care of our wooden fence street-side, which is slanted now because of the pull from the tree on the wires. That won't do.

Mercer came with me today to take photos and inspect the damage. She sat by the fallen tree as if to say, "This won't do at all!"



Our pasture is as lush as early Spring, with the lack of animals on it. Bellis is mostly feasting on high quality hay and then nibbling on our grazing strips and they are holding up well enough that I don't feel I have to let her out onto the entire pasture. When/IF we get a horse I'll open it up. But not with a tree on the fence!



"Did you notice this horizontal tree?" - Mercer Right above the cat you can see the metal stabilizer pin for the telephone pole, that is what worried J, that maybe the tree slid down that cable.

There are a few other dead standing pines down the slope that are threatening to fall on our fence soon, in fact, they are only still standing because blackberry vines are holding them up! One is at a 45 degree angle, almost touching our fence, and the blackberries are doing their job, not letting it fall somehow.  Hopefully the hippy will figure out what to do about those as well.

As I was disconnecting the wire, or trying to, because the electric rope connectors were completely fused with rust, and the wire was under so much tension from the tree that I couldn't move the wire to reach the screws so I had to put my pliers between the wire and the rail and work them somehow in that space. It was so frustrating, and then suddenly the whole thing popped loose and I could have lost an eye, the whole wire flicked away, metal connector still fused on, faster than I could see what was happening. Bellis did you see that?





The worst thing about electric fence is the rust. The connectors rust, the wires themselves rust, and then fray and then burn up and spark and are useless at conducting current. I learned to only buy the best quality wire, but even then where you connect pieces, those become points of failure eventually.

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Today I saw two refugees walking down the sidewalk at noon drinking beers. I though, "Way to go, enjoy Germany's freedoms! However I have no idea if wherever they come from has ridiculous alcohol laws like America.

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Bellis is still pooping at her pile and not in her stall, after what, 3 weeks? Amazing. I believe she's also peeing on the pile because it smells really bad. So much better than in the barn, good girl! I spoil her with kitchen scraps and apples or bread every day, and she really demands this now.

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It's December 2 and I still have not heard a single Christmas song. It's kind of sad, honestly, because they don't play Christmas music on the radio here (or not that I can find) and not in the stores, and not at the doctor's office today, nor the pharmacy. You almost could MISS Christmas entirely here. Except that I have lights in my yard, yay, and finally a 3 foot high potted Christmas tree with miniature bells and ornaments, because normal sized ornaments would like ridiculous on such a tiny tree. We plant them in our yard every year after Christmas.


We had our first snowfall and it was absolutely perfect. At first I thought, oh, some chimney ash or dust in the air, then it was clearly snow, and then abundantly. It snowed just enough to be gorgeous, but the snowplows came regularly so it didn't hinder J from getting to work.







I love my green lights. And my blue lights. And my white lights. I didn't like my red ones so I gave them to the neighbors who also like colored lights (very strange for Germans). They thanked me profusely. I kept thinking with red, our yard looked like the Italian flag. Or the French flag, depending on where I put the red. BTW it's really hard to find a string of blue or green lights in Germany. They stand steadfast by their "white only" tradition.


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I lost my hoof pick. I'm very disturbed because I don't lose things. It was one of those simple ones with the rubber coating on the metal, nothing else, it was perfect. I'd had it for 20 years I think. I recently gave away a few hoof picks that I never used, and now I seem to have none. I think it is in Hannover, because for some strange reason I thought it might be fun to bring my own grooming kit to Hannover and groom Majour. That didn't work out so well, his coat was so frayed and dandruffy, grooming him was futile. My hoofpick may have fallen out and is forever in Niedersachsen.