Saturday Work On The Back Yard

After three weekends of rain, we finally had a Saturday that was nice and had 4 yards of topsoil delivered. Four yards doesn't sound that bad, until it's dumped in front of your house and you realize what a big pile that is!

It doesn't look so big from this view, better get somebody working on this right away! Lets see, who can I trick into doing this?

Ahh, what a soldier...rolling up her sleeves and getting right into it!

Annette is showing off her artistic side as she arranges the dirt around the shrubs and trees

So where did all that dirt go? Hard to see it as it seems to just disappear. We raised all the garden areas by 5-6 inches of which the first couple of inches will compact with the first good rain

New topsoil requires new garden lights - here big flower lights will shine at night

The left over topsoil is parked on the patio waiting to be tucked in a few corners here and there till the last of it has disappeared.

Sunday night this guy decided to take an apre-dinner stroll through the neighbourhood....good thing we were all finished in the yard and the BBQ meal had been cooked and the grills cleaned off so as not to attract him to the house.

Black Bear in Our Back Yard

We had a young black bear come visit us after dinner tonight; he was a bit late for dinner at our house, but he was just in time to raid some of the garbage cans in the neighbourhood.

Annette and I were just running out the door around 8.30 PM to do a couple of errands, when we seen a lady across the street on her cell phone, looking at our house. As we came out she shouted "there's a bear in your yard"!, nothing new there: we have had several visits over the years since we've been here.

We went back in the house and looked out the windows into the back yard; the bear was standing on the back fence. As we have a short yard, he was only 40 feet or so from us, so we could tell it was a male!  :)

The noise we made opening the back door must have scared him, as there was garbage in our back yard that he was evidently dining on. He was now on the fence, balancing on the fence like a ballerina. Annette tried to get a picture, but he jumped down into the neighbour's yard behind us and sauntered over to their garbage cans. At this point I ran and got my cam corder and started taking some video.

He dined on the neighbour's stuff for a while, then the noise from the neighbourhood on the front street scared him, so he walked back to our fence, looked over at us 40 feet away, and then jumped up on the fence and walked along the fence into the neighbour's yard behind us and one door over. There he found some more good eats in their garbage cans, and dined there until the noise again scared him away.

Back up on our rear fence, he tight rope walked the fence and then dropped into our neighbours next door. He checked out their down stairs door, then decided he had had enough of the neighbourhood talking about him. He went along the side of the house into the front street, and then ran across the street into the ravine area across from our house.

A couple of screechers from a neighbour probably got him moving further into the ravine and away from the neighbourhood. A good example of a surprise for the neighbourhood, and why the Bear Aware program is important. Easy meals will keep this guy coming back until he can't find good eats around here.