Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Thoughts For Thursday. #2
Good morning to all of you! It is another nice mild morning here with a temperature of 7F (-14C). So nice to go out and feed the birds without having gloves on. There was an inch (2.5cm) of new snow out there this morning so I had to clean off all the feeders. The chickadees, redpolls and pine grosbeaks were waiting patiently for me to get things cleaned up and fresh seeds put out for them. And they certainly came down quickly once I was finished! The sun is now shining and the feeders and trees are full of birds right now. The evening and pine grosbeaks look so nice as they sit in the trees with the sun shining on them.
Baxter and Betty, the blue jays, are here this morning too and are spending more time here than they have all this year so far. It is always nice to see them out there. Even though Baxter is so friendly, he still will not come to my hand for food. Very odd. Actually, I have never had a blue jay land on my hand but I have seen many pictures of people with blue jays on their hand. But I have had Baxter and one other blue jay land on my knee to get a peanut while I was sitting out there. Maybe I just need to spend more time with them.
That is a little hard to do in the winter however and they are not around for most of the summer during their nesting time. Well, I made it to the river yesterday! That was my first time down there since the end of July last year. It was a beautiful walk, though it was not an easy walk. The person who looks after keeping the trail open with his snowmobile has only made one trip down there this winter, and only a single track. Usually he makes it double width and makes a couple trips back and forth which makes a very nice trail to walk on. This time however, the snow was still quite soft which makes the walking much harder.
Gives the legs a good workout though and my legs were complaining a lot by the time I got home. My back complained the most however. That is because someone stole the bench from down at the river, so I had nowhere to sit and rest my back. That is quite essential for me so I can walk back home comfortably. Fortunately there is a tree stump there, but it has been cut at an angle so a person cannot really sit on it, more like leaning on it. But it did help a lot, however it was still a hard walk back home.
The beauty of the walk made it worth the extra pain however and I plan to try again tomorrow. I will talk more about the walk on Saturday. The scenery was just beautiful. As you can see in the pictures, there was open water still, though not as much as last winter. Still, it was nice to see, and there were 2 goldeneye ducks swimming and diving out in the water. I did get a lot of pictures along the path which I will be sharing over the next days. Thank you for stopping by to read, I hope you all have a most wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin. (top image showing snow filled trees along the path)
©2022 Steve McLeod.
The Investigators, Inc. Mystery Of The Beginning. Chapter 7.
“By the way,” said Kat, “you still have not told us where we are going.” “Only Muffin and I know, and it is going to stay that way until we get there,” I said, “this is going to be dangerous and I do not want anyone following us. So even our departure date and time will remain a secret until it is time to leave.” Kat did not really like that too much, but she went along with it anyway. Baldwin thought it was a good idea though, especially since they did not catch the person who shot Annelie. That night, after Kat was asleep, I left the bedroom quietly and picked up my backpack from the hall closet and off I went to the front door.
Two little heads poke around the corner from the hallway. Zip, zip! Both were now sitting if front of me before I could open the door. Meow,meow?=Where you go? You trying to sneak away without us? They both have that look on their face. “Okay, come with, but be quiet,” I said, “we do not want to wake anyone.” Instead of taking the car by the chateau, we went down to the garage which was further away to use the car parked in there. “Okay you two,” I said, “check my backpack to make sure there are no tracking devices.”
Meow.=We already check, nothing in there. Meow,meow.=Yep, and we watch to make sure no one add something later. They both smile. I chuckle. I open the front door and Kat taps me on the shoulder. I almost jumped right over the car! She smiled. What could I say? So we all get in the car and off we drove to the airport where Baldwin had a jet waiting for us. Soon we were back on our way across the ocean, not knowing what to expect when we get back to that big old country house from our very first case.
I had Annelie check it out and it had been recently sold to a man named Harold Springer, one of those 2 men that had followed us around before. Which just simply means that John bought the house so it would be available for this encounter. I really wish that Kat had stayed home though, I just do not trust John. I am afraid of what he would do to Kat if he manages to capture her. After talking about things for a while we decide to get some sleep. Who knows when we will be able to sleep properly again?
Surprisingly Kat did not have a tracking device on her. Even more surprising is that we managed to leave without Jennifer and Annelie knowing. The weak link here is Baldwin, he might be tracking this jet and the car we will be using and passing that information on to the girls and Rock. But perhaps that is not a bad idea anyway, if we need help they will be able to find us more quickly. Soon we are all asleep. But it was a very short sleep and Kat was waking me up.
“That went fast,” I said. “Yes, we will be landing soon,” said Kat. After landing we picked up our backpacks and headed off to the parking lot to find our car. Baldwin had given me the key for it already and told me what to look for, but it still took a while to find it. “Interesting that you made all these plans with Baldwin, but would not tell your wife what you were going to do,” said Kat a bit sarcastically. “I really did not want you getting involved,” I said to her, “this could be dangerous.”
“Which is why I should be here with you,” she said smiling. “Okay, you win on that one,” I said, smiling at her. After finding our car it was off on a rather long road journey to the town we wanted, and then that big old country house. “We should arrive late this evening,” I said to Kat. “I sure hope it is before dark anyway,” she answered. I had to agree with that, I would prefer to get settled in before nightfall as well. We stopped at a town along the way for something to eat. “Hmm, maybe we should stay here for tonight,” I said, “it is going to be dark by the time we get to that house and I do not like that idea.” “Good idea,” said Kat, relieved that I had suggested it. The cats were also happy about that.
To Be Continued.
©2022 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 