Fox With Sausages

The avocado has been released, and looks none the worse for wear -- compared to the banana tree at lower left, which definitely got a bit frost-burned. (It freezes back every year. We don't even try to preserve it as it will leaf out again in the spring.)

And we had lots of rain yesterday, which no doubt helped freshen up the avocado too.

I stayed inside and made:

Yes! Front-porch squash soup! I only used one of the squashes, the one that looked the ripest (the bright orange one in this picture). I cut the squash into chunks, baked it, scraped it off the skin, pureed it with chicken stock, cumin, olive oil and salt & pepper, and served it topped with dried onions and toasted squash seeds. And in my case, accompanied by toasted rolls with peanut butter, which you can see at right on the floor.

Dave, who had ridiculed my plan to bake a squash that served as a porch decoration for the past month, had some too and agreed it was good, though he thought it needed more "backbone" and suggested I add cream to it. We didn't have any cream but I used a dash of milk instead and that did make it richer.

I was pretty darn proud of myself. I plan to eventually cook up the other two as well, if they look like they're suitable for eating. I won't know until I cut them open.

I spent the afternoon reading, cleaning, the usual stuff. I also downloaded the garden cam and found 358 videos (!), so it was a very active wildlife week in the garden!

I edited those videos down to nine action-packed minutes. Still too long, maybe, but it seemed the absolute minimum.

-- We start with Q-Tip and then Guy Fox, both sniffing the ground right in front of the camera.
-- At 0:40, a brand-new cat! Who is this cat?!
-- At 0:50, pigeon panic.
-- At 0:57, Guy Fox is back, and makes a quick exit to the right. Hunting something?
-- At 1:28 we get a daytime view of Q-Tip, which I always like so I can appreciate the foxes' red fur. He goes over the fence at right.
-- At 1:56, squirrel shenanigans.
-- At 2:06, the beginning of several clips showing both foxes together. Although it looks like night, these clips were taken about 5:40 p.m., which means Dave and I were up and around in the house. If we'd looked out the back door we could have seen these critters hanging out.
-- At 3:27, one of them starts vigorously scratching and you can see fox dander (or hair) float past the camera!
-- At 4:20, Guy Fox again. There's a lot of territory marking in this video, which may account for all the curious sniffing.
-- At 5:08, Blackie saunters past.
-- More fox activity, and then at 6:37, Pale Cat wanders by. Note the temperature: 34º F (about 1º C).
-- At 6:45, two magpies toss aside fallen leaves, hunting for insects.
-- At 6:58, we catch a fox with a string of sausages hanging out of its mouth! Where did those come from?!
-- At 7:06, woodland utopia with pigeon hop.
-- At 7:15, Q-Tip trots past, followed at 7:23 by his bark. It's an ungodly sound so don't let it scare you!
-- At 7:40 we see another cat (Tabby, I think).
-- At 7:48, Blackie walks past the bench, followed at a distance by Pale Cat, who stalks Blackie right past the camera.

OK, that was a lot! I admire you for sticking with it, unless you didn't and I don't blame you for that either. I'm well aware that nine minutes of foxes and cats is not entertaining to everyone. I did try to cut out anything superfluous, while still keeping enough variety to make things interesting. I had so much footage that I cut a lot of clips I would ordinarily have used.

I'm thinking I may be seeing multiple foxes out there, not just two. It's hard to tell.

Finally, last night, I was off to Bermondsey, where I snapped a photo of The Shard looming over this streetlit scene. I attended a birthday party for my co-worker Staci, which took place in a restaurant in one of those arches beneath the train tracks at left. I stayed a couple of hours, chatting with people from work, and had a couple of glasses of white merlot, which I didn't know was a thing. Dave didn't go, and curiously he suddenly feels better this morning. I suspected he'd improve once the threat of that party was past!