Our winter began arriving in February this year. Everyone in Nova Scotia hopes it will be cold enough to kill off some ticks. For Christmas, before the cold really set in, my husband got me a trailcam, which I hung on a hawthorn tree out in the meadow. It’s my fairy tree as well. I began bringing in the camera card every Friday after work, and I was excited to see things we had not yet seen around. I’ve uploaded a few short cam videos to YouTube on my meadow cam library.
First, the deer. Over the summer we had a couple bucks hanging out in the yard. One was a piebald. This winter we’ve seen two bucks as well, but the piebald wasn’t with them. They were quite large, but I don’t know enough about the bucks, who were also hanging out with a doe, to know whether that was their mom and they hadn’t flown the coop yet or whether that was a doe they were in competition for. They were playing around, butting antlers, and so on, but I just don’t know their ages. Also, deer generally mate in late fall, but they could have been confused due to the warm fall and early winter we had.
Then, we noticed a couple foxes! We had not seen foxes yet.
The most exciting thing to me were the coyotes. At most, we’ve seen two hanging out together. I thought for sure over the summer that as we sat out at the bonfire with friends one night that we heard a yipping in the meadow. But it’s pitch black out in the meadow, and we couldn’t see anything. Both the coyotes and foxes showed up several times on the trail cam.
We also have a big fat—I assume mama—raccoon, and I had not seen one of those yet in the meadow.
Other than that were the crows, the never-ending beautiful crows! All the animals are attracted to the yard by the abundant grasses, insects, and so on. In the fall, of course, they come for the fruit trees but are satisfied with whatever falls to the ground, as they cannot usually reach what’s in the tree.
We’ve also seen a couple pheasants, but so far they haven’t shown up on the camera.
It seems that the animals are attracted to our meadow as well as our neighbor’s property, which has mature trees on it instead of grasses, so I texted them to let them know what we’d noticed so far. They said they also had a trailcam and had noticed the same animals; they were happy that the bucks, which they had seen over the summer, had not been killed over the fall in a hunt.
The meadow cam has not seen as much activity once the snow and cold became more regular, starting last month, so the new YouTube content has been lacking lately. We didn’t see any animals on the cam in the last couple weeks and only the doe by herself before then. As I sit here in our freezing cold house (we heat by woodstove only, an interesting way of life that involves early morning rising and starting the fire on my part, because my work hours are earlier than Morgan’s—and a lot of woodstacking), it’s two hours in after I started the fire, and I’m still chilled. We have another snowstorm warning today. It’s supposed to start snowing this afternoon and accumulate up to 30 centimeters by tomorrow morning.
I love snow and dig this weather. Even the shoveling has been easy as pie this year due to lighter fluffy stuff. And we’ve been keeping the car charged in the garage down the long gravel driveway, which we don’t shovel, and so far have been able to make it up the drive to the street. But I won’t lie…I’m dreaming of my garden as usual and cannot wait to get outdoors more. But I have found that living life whose activities are focused on the seasons requires that one appreciates each season, each storm and each perfect sunshine day.
Ongoing list of stuff!
Flora
- Forsythia
- Wild grapes
- Daffodils
- Poppies
- Roses (several varieties, including a German one)
- Spruce
- Red maple
- Sugar maple
- Norway maple
- Oak
- Pine
- Boxwood
- Dogwood (edging all away around the back 1/3rd acre)
- Apple tree
- Pear tree
- Peach tree
- Cranberry bush
- Burning bush
- Butterfly weed
- Cherry tree
- Viburnum snowball bush
- Dandelion
- Grasses (various)
- Rose of Sharon (hibiscus)
- Himalayan balsam
- Poppies
- Bamboo
- Cedar bush
- Wild strawberries
- Rhododendron
- Wild mustard
- Solomon’s Seal
- Hosta
- Thistle
- Purple clover
- Mushrooms
- Geranium (including Dusky crane’s bill)
- Columbine
- Johnny Jump Ups (violet)
- Dames Rocket
- Maule’s Quince
- Moss phlox
- Forget-me-not
- Spurge (not sure whether swamp or cushion)
- Buttercups
- Tulips
- Peonies
- Black elderberry
- European dewberry
- Trumpet honeysuckle
- Fragrant Plantain lily
- Daylily
- Sunflowers (branching Sonja)
- Queen Anne’s Lace
- Purple faerie foxglove
- Wild lupin
- Black-eyed Susan
Fauna
- Pheasant
- Squirrel
- Shrew
- Field mice
- Groundhog
- White-tailed deer
- Fox
- Raccoon
- Coyote
- Wren
- Goldfinch
- Robin
- Blue jay
- Cardinal
- Crow
- Raven
- Song sparrow
- Seagull
- Hummingbird
- Garter snake
- Beetles
- Crickets
- Ants
- Black flies
- June bugs
- Moths
- Butterflies (cabbage, etc.)
- Frogs
- Spiders
- Slugs
- Snails
- Earth worms
- Inch worms
- Midges
- Beetles
- Grasshoppers
- Wasps
- Hornets
- Honey bees
- Bumblebees
Trees and bushes we’ve planted in 2020
- 3 sugar maples
- 2 butternut
- 3 black walnut
- 3 hackberry
- 2 sour cherry
- 3 plum
- 4 burr oak
- 4 swamp white oak
- 4 Russian white oak
Newly planted trees in 2021
- Pawpaws
- Blueberries
- Mulberries
- Gooseberries
- Haskaps
- Mountain ash (Rowan)
- Lilacs
- Honeysuckle
- Jasmine
Garden veggies and fruits
- Strawberries
- Corn
- Green beans
- Squash
- Onions
- Green onions
- Turnips
- Beets
- Leaf lettuce
- Mountain mint
- Russian taragon
- Lemon mint bergamot
- Strawberries
- Rhubarb
- Sage
- Thyme
- Rosemary
- Cilantro
- Parsley
