Boats on the Mobile River

We had an invite to a ship commissioning - the USS Independence, recently constructed in the Austel dry docks here in Mobile. . ..we didn't go! (because...it was raining - by the bucket loads!)

Here she is out on open water trials

and from above, very futuristic!

Here she is alongside one of the two Hawaii super ferries that were also built by Austel (800 passengers & 200 cars). Both ferries were delivered to Hawaii, to be used for inter-island ferry services, the first delivered was used for almost a year. Long story....short.... trouble in Hawaii began when the Hawaiian Supreme Court overturned a ruling which allowed the ferry to function pending an environmental impact study. The ferry company couldn't run, so shutdown, ferries were repossessed and returned to Mobile.....the ferries have now been turned over to the military. My mum down in NZ mentioned that they had watched a documentary about the building of these ferries...I don't believe it has been on the TV here, our paper would have mentioned it surely, I wonder if the connection to Australia (Austel) is why it was on TV down there??

And yes, a US military boat commissioning would have been a once in a lifetime event me!

Winter Colour

Our first Camellia - eight new bushes planted along the back fence in late autumn.

A Magic Towel!

During the coldest nights last week I was covering some of our plants to protect then from frost. I was using old beach towels to cover some new ferns at the base of the big tree.
Each morning one of the towels had been moved. The first day it had uncovered half of the fern, the second day it was completely off the fern, the next it had started to climb the tree!!! We were amused by it's progress, and no amount of watching rewarded us with any live action.
On the fifth day the towel made a huge effort and travelled up to the second fork - it required a ladder and a rake to get it down. Fortunately the night temperatures warmed a bit and I could bring the towels in.

There must be one very frustrated and exhausted squirrel up in that tree!! We have never heard of squirrels doing anything like this - maybe it was Baby-Girl Squirrel, as she knows how cuddly fabric can be.

A Curious Squirrel

We haven't been outside much with the recent cold temperatures, so today when it warmed up a bit I couldn't resist taking my knitting out to a sunny spot out on the back porch. I have been knitting up some pink baby hats with the wool I was given last week. I have had a bit of a cold so wasn't feeling the urge to knit something that required me to think nor to put down four needles instead of two when I needed to stop and blow my nose ;-)

I wasn't out there long when Baby-Girl Squirrel stopped by for a visit.....she was happy with the treats I had in my pocket and soon decided that there had to be more somewhere ....maybe even in the interesting bag of pink stuff....she eventually settled down to chew a hole in my tape measure.

I have a darling video but am unable to upload it here for some reason, so I have taken snapshots of the video for you instead.

A Pair of Sox

I wore my socks today!!!

I finished the first one while on a road trip....back roads through rural Mississippi and Alabama are interesting, but I still need to be doing something, so out came the knitting. I had a bit of a struggle with the sixteen stitches above...the grafting at the tip of the toes. The instructions were not helpful at all, they completely confused me, so I ended up following a video over the Internet....after that I managed to graft sock #2 on my own.

Now thanks to my friend Sandy who let me raid her wool/yarn supply, I have a few more balls of wool waiting to be turned into socks.

Yes it is cold!

Just in case you don't believe me.... on Saturday we were as cold as Copenhagen

and then this morning we beat them. I know it is nothing compared to what my friends in Atlanta are suffering through.

Come on Auckland you can do better than that !! (I will give you credit for the fact that it was 1 or 2 am your time)

The tale of trees

The tree that Baby-Girl Squirrel is climbing in is huge. It’s top branches reach out and meet up with branches of other trees and a squirrel could travel from one tree to another for 20 miles or more.
On a trip to Biloxi, Mississippi last year we came across an old tree with a sign on it that stated the tree as being 2000 years old…wow!! We thought our tree was not much smaller, so came home and did an on-line search for a way to age a living tree. After searching we came across a formula for the type of oak we have, you take the measurement around the trunk at 4.5 feet from the ground and use that to calculate the age. Our tree measured 17.5 feet around at the 4.5 foot height – it calculated as being 989 years of age….not bad!! But rather young when compared to the tree in Biloxi.



The Biloxi tree is on the grounds of an old restaurant, which is a fairly interesting place. Many of the surrounding trees have long gone - casualties of hurricanes and construction. Outside is a slab - the only remaining part of the building next door (hurricane damage), across the street is the new Beau Rivage casino where we were staying for a concert, and inside there are signs showing water levels during several hurricanes.




If you can't get this photo to enlarge the top sign is the level for Hurricane Katrina 2005 and the lower level is from Hurricane Camille 1969.
The Beau Rivage is on the waterfront now - with a large beach and marina. All the old casinos were big barge type boats, tied up to piers that were technically "off shore" to get around gambling laws. They were all damaged by Katrina and new laws were passed to allow for casinos in the State of Mississippi.

Baby-Girl Squirrel on a big adventure.

I am a little bit behind on the tale of Baby-Girl and need to bring you up to date. She has been free now for well over a week, she comes home for brief "feed me" visits and then heads off again. After a few days of irregular visiting hours she has settled down to two daily visits. One soon after sunrise - the first stop in her day I guess and the other around 4.

It seems that she has captured more than my interest, as each day, as a family member walks through the door they ask if Baby-Girl came for a visit.

The photos below are from her visit yesterday. She took a pecan from my hand, sat on my shoulder for a minute or two then leaped to the screen and hung there to eat in safety. It wasn't me she was safe from, more like Chester!

I am looking up - she is normally up in that tree.

now a little zoom



from the side



and through the screen.

For those of you who are following her story: her adventure begins.......

Last week Baby-Girl took full advantage of an open cage door and headed straight for the "wild" - actually, one of the trees in the backyard. Up she went and watching from below, she quickly disappeared. We watched and watched hoping for a flash of movement, finally we see her (we think it is her) at the end of a branch on a completely different part of the tree. We tell her to move back up the branch to the main trunk and hopefully back down to the safety of her cage. She doesn't listen, and disappears again, it is another 10 minutes before we see movement. It is two squirrels, one chasing the other at lightening fast speeds, and then while on the underside of a branch the squirrel in the lead falls! We think it has to be her because a wild squirrel would know how to hold on. The branch she fell from reaches out over the fence to the driveway 20 feet below - that's a whole other world out there, so we run hoping to find her and only just catch a movement near another tree by the neighbours fence before she is gone again. Life inside our house gets put on hold while we move out to the driveway watching trees! No movement or squirrel sounds are heard, we wait and watch.....eventually things like lunch have to be tended to, so with heavy hearts we head inside.

It is several hours later which included several trips to the driveway when a neighbour rings the bell. She has a Christmas tin with goodies for us and casually asks if we still have our squirrel. I tell her the saga of the last few hours and she mentioned that there is a squirrel in her back yard that seems unafraid of humans, and would I like to check if it is Baby-Girl. I quickly grab a little fabric bag, some sunflower seeds and head over, accompanied by James and Christopher.

There she was, looking into their house, her children talking to her through the glass, she sees us and jumps up, lays very calmly on James' shoulder while I give her some seeds and sneak her into the bag. That night the rain and wind were fierce, but Baby-Girl was safe and warm in her cage.

The next five days were forecast to be fine but cold, so I knew this was the time to let her go. We opened her door, out she ran, up the tree and never looked back. Around sunset when squirrels
generally return home to their nests I was out there watching. I had never really noticed just how many squirrel holes/nests there are in those trees. Many times we have watched the nightly ritual, but this time it had a bit more meaning. As it got close to being very dark I even saw two raccoons climb out of holes that I had no idea were there, they stretched their limbs and headed off for the night. Baby-Girl didn't come home for three days!

A Day in the life of Baby-Girl Squirrel Part 6

Play time!

A day in the life of Baby-Girl Squirrel PART 5

Climbing practice

A Day in the Life of Baby-Girl Squirrel PART 4

Got to hide that peanut !

The Gig Green Giant - not!

While walking off our big Christmas lunch last week we came across this very green, very little snake. I wanted a better close up, but for me, this was as brave as I was going to be!!