Let's play outside and go for a walk

Posted by: Peanut in MyBlog on Nov 26, 2016

Tagged in: Wildlife , Outside , Our Yard , Maisie , Abby

We’ve been enjoying a bit of warm weather here today and it reminded of a couple of weekends ago when it was also very warm and Maisie asked to “play outside and then go for a walk”. I’m always trying to encourage her to go for walks with me on the weekend. It was easy to do in the summer and fall but now that it’s getting colder she’s less interested. Any time she suggests it I do my best to jump at the chance to spend time outside with her. So here we are, playing in the frozen garden, walking along the balance beams of ice on the back deck, playing airplane (that big chunk of clear ice was my ticket), and then collecting Abby from inside the house and setting off on a walk.

We found some fun things in the backyard besides the wilting Brussels sprouts and their droplets of ice. A well used squirrel trail ran from the steps to the corner of the shed. A mouse trail - popping in and out of the snow - ran between a stack of old wood and the compost pile. Maisie found a ball that probably belongs to the dog next door stuck in the remains of the rhubarb leaves. She tossed it back into his yard. Maisie did about a third of the walk with Abby under her own steam but requested tying on when we started to walk along the trail around the lake. I’m so glad I can still wear her sometimes. We watched for more animal trails along our walk but the only obvious evidence of activity we found was from the beavers. They - or it, I’m not sure - had chewed through part of this fence earlier in the fall and we can see the lodge well built up again with a fair sized “pantry” of willows frozen into the ice next to it. There were some footprints on the lake ice but it was hard to tell if they were from foxes or dogs. Some of them looked big enough to be people but it’s going to be a bit longer before I’m willing to venture out on the ice.