Dreaming of Warm Days

It's cold here today. It's gonna get colder before the week is over but last week gardening catalogues arrived in the mail. Things look a bit bleak in my garden at this time but soon, very soon there will be crocus peeking thru and the cold will give way to warmer days and more daylight hours. This spring, I hope to get in lots of herbs and some vegetables. Just as soon as the weather warms I'm putting in raised beds. Had plans to do it all last spring but just never got around to doing so. Not sure how much I will harvest or how much the critters will devour but we shall see. There was a fairly good size herd of deer in the woods the other day and a couple of them were down close to the house because they left tracks in the snow. Nothing else looks like "deer tracks in the snow".

Looking out the kitchen window late the other afternoon I saw the fox. She was on the hill behind the house looking as if she were surveying her "kingdom". This time of year we often here them barking but January thru March is mating season for the red fox. They can have up to 12 pups but I've only seen this one with two. They are really neat animals.

Their only real enemies are cars and humans but distemper, rabies and mange may also cause them concerns. Once trapped for their fur and killed by farmers because of their attacks on poultry the red fox took a heavy "beating? Now with no more bounty payments for their fur and most poultry farms more or less "safety proof" from predators the red fox is expanding. The Coyote seems to be one of their biggest competitors and like the fox it is expanding it's field. So far we have neither seen nor heard Coyotes for that I am very thankful.