Owls, ski jumps, and a butcher block...even chickadees in the shower

Its been a slow period, up here in the north.  Seems all I'm doing is waiting for regal fritillaries to go extinct, but I keep seeing them.  I guess, I'm essentially waiting for the world to go back to normal, or death, or so it seems.  There was a story of an 102 year old man marrying a young 19 year old, they went off to their honeymoon driving a late model Ford that someone painted a "Just Married!" sign on the bumper but a couple days later the new bride was seen driving the car around town and the "married" had been changed to "Buried."  

Kidding aside, we've painted the house and I dug a preemptive dog grave at our cabin, I think the one-way trip to the Vet is going to be Tuesday, poor pup, Brighid is like this summer, quickly fading away.

we went up and worked on the family house in Wisconsin, stayed in the RV, filled up a dumpster, everyone got fed up with each other and I broke a glass cupboard door, it was not a good time by the end.  Before that, I pulled out some 40 year old muskrat trapping stakes, like why didn't we do this in 1990, 2000, 2010....sigh.  They were so neat and wrapped up, it was somehow hard to even carry them up and pitch them in the dumpster.

We figured out how many people it took to get a very heavy 1930 butcher block out of the basement, and why was it put in the basement in 1974?  It was one of those auction items my grandparents could resist.....a deal too good to be true....

So now it is in the dining room, and now what?  Anybody looking for one?  It is solid!

It seems too nice to burn as campfire wood...

We went camping this weekend.  Had to make an emergency bird consultation a few sites over and found a photogenic Barred owl in the backyard.

  

Then that night was serenaded by between 3 and 6 of them for a long period, two either on or above our RV.  I then went and interviewed a ski jumper in Grantsburg, as back in the day, ski jumping was a thing where I was from, our first large ski jump was built in 1936, learned a little and picked up my grandfather clock.

Then back camping, spotted an Eastern Comma butterfly on a wall....lit a fire, drank a little...

We are camping "petless." This morning had to go back in to change shoes to play pickle ball and zipped in and out, apparently when Silja returned from a walk we had an intruder

A black capped chickadee in my shower

So my wife had to corral a scared little bird and get him out of "Big Bird."  I came back from pickle ball to get the look...."hey you left the door open."

Yea, me bad, I'm always bad.

Well, Olaf and Silja are still alive, and I guess so is the dog, well for a brief while I fear.  It is going to be a sad week.

Olaf