The first whispers of fall are here, in the form of cooler days and nights, and dew on the grass in the morning. I'm glad for a break from the unusually stifling heat but sad to know that summer will be over soon, and it's a bit of a shock to realize it's August already.
The raspberries have started to produce more, and so have the feral apple trees that we glean from each year -- and while the bounty is great it's another sign that autumn is getting nearer and nearer.
Unlike nature, I've made no progress on any of my real life projects - neither the rabbit cages or the fox skin that has been sitting in the freezer for about two months have been touched since before the trip, and I really need to tan the latter and finish building the former.
I'm sort of stuck like a deer in the headlights on the fox skin thing, since I have absolutely no idea what to do and haven't yet got up the courage to pull the thing out, defrost it, and go from there. The fox was the first and so far only thing I've skinned, and it was at the same time surprisingly easy and surprisingly hard. The skin peeled away from the meat without much fuss in most places, but the hardest part was making the first few cuts into the skin, since I'm not very strong and the skin was. The fox was a young, roadkilled dog and unfortunately his head had been ruined and ground into the asphalt by cars. However, the rest of the pelt was fine so we have a headless, pawless skin in the freezer to tan now. I think I'll call him Vincent. I'm also happy to say that, aside from the pulverized and disgusting head, the only thing that really bothered me about skinning the fox was the smell, though I did feel bad for the fox at least he didn't just rot on the side of the road. Now he's been a good learning experience (and proof for me that I could theoretically butcher rabbits at home, since I was pretty much completely fine with the guts and such) and he'll make a nice little pelt to hang on the wall once he's tanned.
The tanning part is the tough part though. I'll eventually get around to it.
At least I have a good reason for not working on the rabbit cages or the fox skin -- animating! I think I'll restart or possibly just give up on the Sherlock thing, but I've started another animation, this time to "El Paso" by Daniell Ate the Sandwich, a local singer/songwriting here. I've been getting more and more youtube subscribers (I'm at 81 right now) and I hope I can finish the short one minute twenty-five second AMV before or soon after I hit 100 subs, but who knows. At the moment it's just a nice way to get better at animating and I'm learning a lot!
We're also going (more trips, yay >:I) to California in a couple of weeks, so that might throw a wrench in my plans of finishing it before too long, especially at the pace I'm going at which... isn't that fast (on the other hand, I've become a master at procrastination).
The gardens are looking great and they are as wild and overgrown and lush as usual...
...But there's not much to say about them - plants aren't the most interesting of things.
However, there is some chicken-related news...
They are fuzzy and feathery and loud and annoying and we've actually had them for a while now but they are still so cute!
The four new chicks are Baji, Anna, Castiel and Chipmunk; A light Brahma, a Rhode Island Red, a Black Sex Link and an Easter Egger, respectively.
They have been growing like weeds and are already close to pullet stage, and they love running around the yard picking at the grass and clover, though they aren't quite sure about what is good food and what is not - at the moment they all seem to think that dried leaves and bark chips are quite the delicious and rare find, but they'll learn in time.
Well, that's about all that's been going on around here lately, and I don't ever know how to end these, so, uh...
Have a good day, everyone?
-Willow
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