More snow

We had two sunny days Monday and Tuesday. With the sun’s heat and a gentle wind, bits of ice fell from the tree branches in a rain of diamonds. It was magical.

Another storm, this one unnamed, rolled through toward the end of the week. We had light snow on Thursday.

Light snow on Thursday

The forecast for Friday night was for up to 6” of snow. Terry said he’d be happy with an inch and a half. “You put your order in, dear,” I told him. “See how far it gets you.”

We watched the weather anxiously yesterday afternoon. “Every hour that it doesn’t snow is a victory,” Terry said. As often happens when snow is on the ground and temperatures are above freezing, a thick fog developed toward nightfall. 

Fog Friday evening

By 8:00, snow was falling in clumps. I knew we’d had significant accumulation when I woke up at midnight to absolute silence. By chance, the inside of the house was quiet. The refrigerators, freezers, and furnace were all in the “off” part of their cycles. Neither Terry nor Skippy was snoring. All outside sounds were muffled by a blanket of snow. 

When the sun came up, we saw that like Isaiah and Jacob, we did not get hammered with as much snow as predicted. We had 3” instead of 6”, but it was heavy, wet, heart attack snow. It was also spectacularly beautiful, the sort of snow that stuck to everything and piled up to seemingly impossible height on small objects. It made it impossible not to get “Winter Wonderland” stuck in your head.  It was also hard to not photograph every single thing that I saw when I went out to do the chicken chores.

First, I shoveled the snow from a patch of ground outside the coop door because the girls do not like to walk in the snow. I sprinkled the scratch grains, and out they came.

The girls enjoying their scratch grains

Here are some pictures of the landscape.

The fifth oak

The apple orchard

The pine trees

The young oak by the driveway

The snow accumulated on the empty seed heads of (I think) purple coneflowers.

Remains of native flowers from last summer

Snow on purple coneflower seed heads

Terry used the snowblower to clear the driveway. He was pleased that it did not get stuck in the chute. The temperatures today hovered at nearly 35°F. It continued to snow off and on, but much of it melted. Between the wind and the warm temperatures, all the snow was gone from the trees by the end of the day. There’s still snow on the ground, but everything else just looks damp and dreary.

I’ve started doing the crossword in the newspaper. The easy one, not the one from the New York Times. This afternoon Skippy helped by batting at the end of my pencil. Here is a picture of him standing in his water dish, licking water from his right paw. I have also seen him use his left paw.

Skippy standing in his water dish

Every time Terry or I get up, Skippy runs to the door of the cage, ever hopeful that food will be coming. He does not like dieting, but who does? I tell him that if I put food in the bowl, he has to stay in the cage for a while, but he doesn’t care.

PLEASE! SOMEONE FEED ME!

As the end of January approaches, we are cautiously optimistic that we won’t have severe cold this winter. Terry thinks that if we make it to February 1, we will definitely not see temperatures of 20° below. I, on the other hand, remember that the three coldest weeks of my life, when temperatures were -40°F every morning (80 to 90° below with wind chill) were in February. But that was in North Dakota, so maybe Terry is right. If he is, we might have peaches this summer! Peaches!

Jacob

Winter Storm Jacob wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Two storms in a row we got lucky. From Friday afternoon to Saturday morning, we had 3” of snow with ¼” of ice on top. In places, such as the driveway in front of the garage, the wind blew away all the snow so that the cement was glazed with ice. It warmed up as the storm moved through. To Terry’s delight, it stayed above freezing until he got all the ice off the driveway. We had light snow through the morning. When I went out to brush off the solar panels, I discovered that all the snow before the ice had blown off. A half-inch of light snow was on top of a layer of ice. I brushed off the snow on the bottom 3 rows of solar panels. The sky was overcast, but enough light/heat was getting through to form a layer of water next to the glass.  We weren’t at peak capacity, but the panels I brushed off were making about twice the Wh as the ones I didn’t.

It was 0° this morning. I fed the chickens and changed their water. It was too cold to open the coop door for them. To keep them from getting bored while they were “cooped up,” I put their scratch grains in an old Coke bottle with a few holes cut in the sides and hung that from the ceiling. It makes it more of a challenge.

Other than that, I decided to hunker down inside. It is a beautiful sunny day, but I’m too much of a wuss to go for a walk when it’s so cold. (It's not even that cold anymore--22°.) Since I have nothing else to blog about, I’ll post some cute cat pictures. Skippy has gotten too big. He’s on a diet, which he does not care for much. Jane got him a ball with holes in the side, not unlike the Coke bottle for the scratch grains. He rolls it around on a boot tray to get the food out. It slows him down and gives him a little exercise. I should get one for me!

Skippy with his food ball

I wanted to get a picture of him in his water bowl, but he is not cooperating. He is one of those cats who prefer to drink by licking water off his paw. It’s a mess. I fooled him last year by putting the water bowl high up on the cage. He waved one paw below the bowl while he drank. It was hilarious! This year, however, he figured out how to stand with both paws in the water. Then he likes to hop up on my lap with his wet paws. Fun!

Right now, he is in his favorite spot, sitting on my left arm in front of my laptop. So helpful.

"Helping" with my blog post

When I’m done with this, I’ll put my computer away so he can stretch out on my legs. He’s mostly very cute. We still can’t trust him to not chew on electrical cords when left alone, which is why we still put him in the kennel when we can’t watch him.

Stretched out on my lap

Not much happening here this week. Time for football!

Dodging Isaiah

Winter Storm Isaiah was predicted to be a terrible storm including, but not limited to several inches of rain and a foot or more of snow by Sunday morning. As the weekend approached, the predicted precipitation diminished—perhaps only and inch or two of rain and 3 to 6” of snow. The big question was how much would be water and how much ice. If the temperature dropped while it was raining, rain would turn to slush, and slush would freeze into a glacier that would be slow to thaw.

We were lucky. We got 0.9” of rain between Friday night and Saturday morning. When I went out to feed the chickens, there was only a thin, but nevertheless treacherous, layer of ice on the ground. The wind still carried freezing drizzle.  I had to put my shoulder to the coop door repeatedly to get it open. When I got back in the house, I told Hilda she was grounded, explaining that it was “as slippery as snot on a doorknob.” I would take care of getting the eggs in the afternoon and putting the girls to bed.

At 10:00, I went out to get pictures. I underestimated the wind, even though I could see the mist blowing horizontally over the field. I was only out a few minutes, but I should have worn a hat. As soon as I stepped out the door, I could hear the delicate clatter of ice-covered branches knocking against each other.

Only a little rain had been cold enough to freeze. I took pictures of pine needles…

Ice-covered white pine needles

Spruce needles…

Spruce

And goldenrod.

Goldenrod

I shut the coop at 2:00 when I went out for the eggs. The girls were all in anyway and not likely to venture out in the terrible wind. I saw something furry in one of the nest boxes. My first thought is that it must be something that came out of a chicken, and whatever that thing was, was NOT normal. I tentatively reached for it. It flew to the floor of the coop and turned into a sparrow. It had been downy, not furry. My bad.

Ten hens and one sparrow. What to do? I made one unsuccessful grab for the sparrow and decided it would just have to stay with the girls overnight. I wondered if the girls would kill it. I’ve read reports of them taking out mice.

We waited for the snow. Terry was prepared to fire up the snowblower. We were lucky again. First, there was a dry period while the temperature fell below freezing. The snow, when it came, fell on frozen ground. No slush! Furthermore, we only got an inch of snow, and it blew off the driveway in front of the house. Terry was practically giddy! He could shovel the rest of the driveway quickly and without having a heart attack.

A mere inch of snow from Isaiah

The step outside the side door of the garage had much less ice on it. Terry had put down sand and safe salt Saturday. The ice had melted and blown dry in the cold air. I was able to get to the coop easily. Alas, the sparrow did not make it through the night. I couldn’t tell if it had died at the beaks of chickens or had simply been too cold without compatriot cuddle buddies. It looked like it had been pecked at some point, but the lack of blood suggested that it was post mortem.  I tossed it on the lawn. At least it was a non-native English sparrow and not some cool rare native bird.

I ungrounded Hilda, who was delighted that she could resume her usual duties. It is supposed to be in the 40’s by Tuesday. Terry thinks the driveway will be clear by tomorrow, especially if the sun comes out.

In other news, Skippy has come for his annual visit while Jane is in Florida. He is, at this very moment, staring at me from his cage, begging to be let out. If he would just settle into his cat bed on the futon, he could stay out while I’m working, but he always wants to be on my lap, preferably between me and my laptop. This is how we look most of the time he’s out. He’s very cute, but difficult to type around.

Selfie with Skippy

Soon it will be time to watch football, and Skippy can sit on me and purr. He’ll like that.

Holiday farewell

“There’s something dead in the backyard,” my mother said on the phone.

I looked out and saw three tom turkeys and a heap of feathers behind them.

“No, wait,” Hilda said. “It’s just one of them lying down.”

Tom turkeys--the one lying down is just visible behind the one stretching his wing.

The allegedly dead turkey got up, stretched his wings, and sauntered off with his cronies to see if there were any more acorns under the fifth oak.

Terry and I took our Christmas tree down Friday. Terry did an experiment in which he stopped watering the tree a few days before. He was testing the hypothesis that the tree would weigh less and therefore be easier to move out of the house. That hypothesis was not supported by evidence. Even though the tree was not noticeably lighter, it was certainly drier.

This year’s tree was the last of the Christmas trees from Terry’s first planting. Not surprisingly, each tree has been larger than the tree from the year before. Last year, the tree put a mark on the ceiling. This year, Terry had to trim the top to get it in the stand. It was also broader than all previous trees, taking up approximately one quarter of our small living room. We had to rearrange our recliners so Terry could see the television. To facilitate the removal of the tree, Terry cut the top off. With each stroke of the handsaw, more needles fell to the floor. By the time Terry got the bottom part out of the door, there were great piles of needles everywhere. We cleaned up as best we could but continue to pick needles out of the rugs, chairs, slippers, and socks. I haven’t found one in the bed yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

That night, we got a dusting of snow. The tree looked sadly forlorn, which added to the lonely feeling of the empty living room. The holidays are over. Now we must hunker down for the rest of winter.

Our Christmas tree lying forlornly in the snow

The fifth oak looked pretty in the new snow.

The fifth oak in the snow

The weather turned unseasonably warm shortly after that. I took a walk Sunday. In spite of the balmy weather, there was still snow and ice around the periphery of our land where the ground is shaded. I didn’t take my cameral and wished I had. I saw footprints of mice, rabbits, deer, a cat, and either several coyotes or one coyote that walked back and forth a lot. The coyote prints were jumbled up in one spot, suggesting a tussle with prey. I didn’t see blood, fur, or feathers, so maybe it was something small that went down in one gulp or maybe it was two coyotes wrestling with each other. I am always amazed at the amount of activity that goes one during the night after one snowfall.

2020

Happy New Year!

Last Saturday, we continued our holiday eating by making New York Style Pizza, one of America’s Test Kitchen’s top 20 recipes. I made the dough on Friday. The two-day rising developed good flavor and gluten. Despite following the directions for dividing and resting the dough before stretching it, we had trouble getting it to relax. As a consequence, the pizzas were thick crust rather than the thin that they were supposed to be. Still, we found them delicious. I thought Terry might object, as he is more of a thin crust kind of guy, but he seemed happy and cheerfully ate most of the leftovers.

New York style pizza

The weather continued to be unseasonably warm up through the weekend. Monday was cold and windy. Tuesday brought snow and more wind. Terry reported that half the property had no snow and the other half had 6 inches. The half with the 6 inches included the driveway. He fired up the snow blower for the first time this winter.  

New Year’s morning was a brisk 14°F under clear skies. Small rodents (mice or voles) had been busy in the night digging tunnels to leftover seeds under our bird feeders. I guess the turkeys didn’t get them all.

Mice/vole tunnels under the snow beneath the bird feeder

I made caramel rolls for New Year’s brunch. Jane joined us and brought a couple of 300-piece jigsaw puzzles.

Pecan caramel rolls

After brunch, Hilda asked if we should see if Pat and Nancy had plans for supper. They are normally so busy that I had just assumed that they did. Not having any evidence, though, I sent Pat a text. She replied that Nancy had worship team. A moment later, she said that she could come. When I told her to come anytime and that Jane and I were working on a jigsaw, she asked what time we were planning dinner because Nancy could come too as long as they were on the road back home by 6:00.

Well! Dinner was going to be at 4:00, so we had a very fun day indeed! Jane and I finished one jigsaw and were getting the second one out when Pat and Nancy arrived. We finished that one, except for one piece that had gone missing. The puzzle was new when we started. It’s probably somewhere in the house, but a thorough search did not turn it up.

The next order of business was to open the Christmas crackers that Hilda had forgotten about at Christmas. We all put on our paper crowns and read the jokes and trivia questions. 

Hilda and I in our paper crowns

Each cracker had a wind-up penguin in it, and the box had a race track in the bottom. The penguins had wheels underneath to move them and their little feet flapped to the sides. So cute! We made several attempts at racing, but the penguins were disinclined to go straight. My penguin took a face plant right off the bat.

Wind-up penguin

After the penguin races, we played Mexican train. We had time to finish all 13 rounds of Mexican train and still have a leisurely dinner of pork and sauerkraut to give us good luck in the new year. It was a good day.