Animals of the Swake

We watched the sun peak over the tree line from the east and light up the opposite side of the swake this morning.  It is a reassuring and wonderful thing to watch the day dawn new, reminded of God's hand on creation.  The geese began arriving about a week ago, staking out their territory for nests.  What a racket they made this morning as they flew low overhead, skidding to a stop on the mushy ice of the swake.

Kanti is rather unaffected by the return of the geese.  The doggie memory must have registered that the geese belong here and that there is no need to get excited and chase them away.  However, the moose are a different story.  Moses the moose or one of his relatives, wandered into the yard at about 6 a.m. while Kanti and I were outside enjoying a bone and some coffee.  Kanti had the bone, I had the coffee!  Kanti got all excited, barking the biggest deepest bark she possesses.  Ears and body alert, staring off at the driveway.  Greg came out to see what the commotion was about and spotted the moose wandering down off the driveway along the treeline.  That was it, Kanti was off like a rocket, tail wagging but all the hair on her back standing straight up.  She had the good sense to stop a safe distance from the moose, continuing her greeting or challenge we aren't quite sure which from afar.   NEWS ALERT - THE MOOSE IS BACK  I had to interrupt the writing of this blog because the moose has returned.  We aren't sure if it is a Moses or Martha, apparently the bulls drop their antlers.

House-wise we had a week of people working here again.  Mike did a fabulous job of the range hood, and his handiwork was followed up by Brad and Colin doing the backsplash.  It came together quite nicely.  The stairs to the basement are a saga that hopefully will resolve itself this coming Tuesday.  We now have twelve out of fifteen stair parts installed.  For some unknown reason the stair company keeps redoing the wrong ones, wrong!  Go figure.


Lots of little things were fixed up this week.  The fan in the master bath was fixed, mirrors arrived so Greg doesn't have to go downstairs to shave, and the plumber fine tuned the in floor heating to help with some hot and cold spots we were experiencing.  The HVAC fellow came to finalize some of the wonders of the mechanical room.  He kept telling me how he loves our home, and the setting.  He's told us that from day one.   But this time it struck me that he had used the word 'home' not 'house', and to me that is a wonderful compliment because from the beginning it has been important to us to create a home and not a house.