After rain yesterday, today started with a gorgeous sunrise and clear skies. After breakfast, we headed out to the yard to tackle a few chores. We put Mom to work gathering fallen twigs from the big storm the day she arrived while Dan and I squirrel proofed our bird feeders.
When we first set up the birdfeeders, we used clear 2 liter bottles as 
squirrel baffles, but last year, came up with a new and improved strategy. A Slinky over the feeder post prevents the squirrels from climbing the post, and is much more attractive (and vastly entertaining while the squirrels try and figure it out). We piloted one squirrel Slinky last year, but never managed to replace the other baffles with Slinkys on our various feeder posts.
Yesterday, however, I took Mom to Maine’s best department store, Reny’s, and there found Junior Slinkys! I picked up 4, 
one for each pole and a spare, and today Dan and I replaced the bottle baffles with the nearly invisible Slinkys. We attached them to the posts with black 
zip-ties, which were very unobtrusive and easy to use.
After the Slinky project, we all worked on raking up the last remaining pile of leaves, and dumping them on out on our layer of weed-killing cardboard. We’ve expanded the project further along under our fabulous old flowering crab. (Unfortunately, this area is rife with yet another weed, hairy buttercup, we want to kill off.) We covered the cardboard with thick laters of leaves, hoping this will work to prevent weeds from reappearing next spring.
After all that hard work, we retired to the kitchen for my post holiday favorite, turkey sandwiches, yum. Look for a hoop house update tomorrow.
