{"id":37588,"date":"2018-07-07T17:17:46","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T00:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=37588"},"modified":"2018-07-07T17:22:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T00:22:39","slug":"a-weekend-ramble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/07\/a-weekend-ramble\/","title":{"rendered":"A weekend ramble"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, a thank you and an apology<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve been having trouble keeping life and the universe together lately, putting me behind in some crucial communications.<\/p>\n

I’m a week overdue to say thank you to SK and D3 (who know why). So thank you, D3 and SK, and I apologize for my belatedness.<\/p>\n

I also owe quite a few emails, which I may still be a while getting to.<\/p>\n

Into the woods for berries<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

While working on a prospective writing project today I got a last-minute invitation from Furrydoc to gather early-season ground-creeper blackberries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I usually wait until August for the berries that grow on big brambles. They’re more seedy and less tasty than these early guys, but a lot less work. These hide in grasses and under thistle bushes. Thank heaven for gloves.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s a patch we already picked from. With these tricky little berries you’re lucky to get a few cups in an hour, but they do make delicious baked things. I had a wild blackberry cobler this week that was from heaven.<\/p>\n

Because I left the house without much forethought, I was ill-equipped. Bad me. Both of us always pack guns when we go into the woods. Today, neither of us did. Bad both of us. That’s when Furrydoc tells me …<\/p>\n

Cougar confirmed<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

When Neighbor J lost her tough old outdoor Garden Kitty a few weeks ago we suspected something unusual. Two more cats on our street quickly disappeared, confirming a new apex predator. Not just a coyote; we have those aplenty but they don’t prowl around people’s houses unless they’re starving. More cats are disappearing in town.<\/p>\n

Sure enough. Furrydoc — who gets all the animal news before anybody else — tells me a cougar’s been spotted twice. Once sitting in a man’s boat just over the hill from my backyard. Another time hanging around outside an apartment building on the edge of the woods a few blocks from here.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to be forgetting my gun any time soon.<\/p>\n

Old dogs<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

We brought our dogs on the berry-picking expedition. Annabelle and Ava will both turn 13 this fall and we discovered that neither of them could hear us if they were out of sight.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t just a case of the girls having too much fun and deciding to ignore us. Both have always been people pleasers and happy to obey. They really couldn’t hear us unless they were looking at us. So sad. Too old, too soon.<\/p>\n

And in other news …<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cat says get your hankie ready for this short save the whale video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

MJR thinks some of you gentlemen might be interested in bespoke suits<\/a> from Grayman & Co — outfitters to the finest spies and contract killers. (I haven’t checked to see whether the site is for real. I prefer not to know.)<\/p>\n

And Nathan Barton contemplates the phrase “the government should …”<\/a><\/p>\n

There you go. That ought to keep you busy while Furrydoc and I go off for a day of farmers’ market shopping and Costcoing on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The June Gloom has been thick this year and summer has yet to arrive. A getaway from the dreariness is better than anything the doctor ever ordered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, a thank you and an apology I’ve been having trouble keeping life and the universe together lately, putting me behind in some crucial communications. I’m a week overdue to say thank you to SK and D3 (who know why). So thank you, D3 and SK, and I apologize for my belatedness. I also owe quite a few emails, which I may still be a while getting to. Into the woods for berries While working on a prospective writing project today I got a last-minute invitation from Furrydoc to gather early-season ground-creeper blackberries. I usually wait until August for the…<\/p>\n

Continue readingA weekend ramble<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-guns-and-gun-rights","category-rural-and-small-town-living","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37588"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37602,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37588\/revisions\/37602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}