Havin' a heat wave

 Happy New Year’s Eve! Everybody ready for another trip around the sun?

We’re citizen scientists! The Environmental Defenders of McHenry County got a grant to provide educational programs to our community. As part of the grant, we got some air quality monitors. Because I am on the Board, I had the opportunity to try one out. This little device measures the air quality and sends it to a national database. I can access the results online.

Air Quality monitor (right) with power supply on top of the electricity meter

I’m sad to say our air quality is not that great. Right this minute, it sucks, and I wonder if it is because Terry has been driving the Gator around hauling the Christmas tree and branches that he has pruned or picked up after storms back to the fire ring.

As the previous sentence implies, we took the Christmas tree down yesterday. It always makes me sad. The cats are also pining (see what I did there?) for their missing play companion. Bingo in particular was fond of breaking off twigs and scooting them around all over the floor until they were at last lost under furniture or throw rugs. I’m sure we’ll be finding them for months.

Where's the tree? What will we do now?

We’ve been giving the cats access to my study as we have gained confidence that they won’t chew on wires. Banjo has laid claim to the top of the cat tree in there. What must it be like to have a spine as flexible as this?

Banjo's new favorite perch in the study

My, what a difference a week makes in the weather. When I did my last post, we had wind chills of -40°F. Yesterday, the temperature exceeded 50°F. As one of the meteorologists pointed out, this is a change of 90° in a week!

On Thursday, the snow finally melted from in front of the coop door. The girls went outside, but still weren’t enthusiastic about standing in the cold mud. It gave me the opportunity to change the wood chips in the coop, which had gotten very poopy from the hens being cooped up in there during the deep freeze.

The air isn't so bad, but the ground is still cold.

We gave the hens a pumpkin from Jane’s house that hadn’t frozen. That enticed them off of the windbreak. They knew what to do with it right away.

Pumpkin! Oh boy!

The Wyandotts are the only chickens who will brave the snow. Here’s a picture of Dottie doing a little foraging on her own. She knows how to avoid competition.

Whatever I find in this mud is ALL MINE!

Yesterday, most of the snow was gone. Happy day! The sun even came out for a bit in the afternoon. One Dominique still sat grumpily on the windbreak.

I'm not getting MY feet dirty.

The other hens scratched around in the mud, enjoying the lovely afternoon.

Scratch and peck

A possum also came out to eat sunflower seeds beneath the bird feeder. I’m not sure what was left after the juncos, house finches, and goldfinches were done with them, but he or she snuffled through the hulls for a long time.

Nom, nom!

That’s all for this year! I wonder what adventures I’ll have in 2023.

Bitter cold

Those of you who aren’t from around here may have seen news of our winter storm and wondered, “Is it really that bad?” Unless you are in North Dakota, my answer is yes, it’s really that bad. If our weather station had more emojis than happy and sad, today’s would have a frozen tear, dripping nose, and chattering teeth. Yes, that does say MINUS 11 degrees. It doesn’t show the 35 mph west wind and blowing snow, which is why the few cars that are out today are driving slowly.

The weather station is REALLY sad today

I’ve gotten in the habit of delaying the chicken chores until it warms up a little on these cold mornings. Not today. I bundled up at first light to go out and unplug the automatic chicken door before it opened. The hens are unlikely to venture out in wind chills of -40°F anyway, so I might as well do what I can to keep heat in the coop. I don’t want any frostbitten combs.

Nothing is ever easy. When I got to the coop, I saw that the door I use to get into the coop had a drift in front of it. Why wouldn’t it? It faces east, and of course the snow accumulated in the eddy. Yet I had not thought to bring the snow shovel. I trudged back to the garage, got the shovel, and cleared the door. The cold, wind-packed snow came out in two chunks.

Drift against the coop door--not huge, but more snow than I wanted in the coop.

Most of the chickens were still on the perch. Blackbeard kept her feet warm by sitting on them. Two others stood on one leg with the other pulled up next to their bodies. I changed the water and filled the feeder. Even with the outside door shut, wind and snow were coming in the coop. I shut the inside door, which I usually use only to keep the hens out while I’m cleaning, for more protection.

Hens still perched trying to keep their feet warm.

There were no eggs in the coop, and I’m not expecting any today. The girls will likely use all of their energy to stay warm.

Before I took off my coat, I looked out to see if the paper was in the driveway. It wasn’t. There was a rectangular object with an orange end on the other side of the road. Through the binoculars, I could see that it was the paper in an orange bag. The paper had not only blown across the road, but over the snow-packed ditch, and about 20 feet into the corn field. It had stopped when it hit the thin stem of a dead weed. Not wanting it to blow the rest of the way to Chicago, I hastily put my boots back on and went after it.

Walking east to get the paper wasn’t bad. Coming back reminded me of my winter in North Dakota. The metal frames of my glasses funneled the cold to the nosepieces. Ouch. The road was a mess. The water that melted out of the salted snow yesterday had combined with today’s blowing snow and frozen into largely invisible and irregularly spaced patches of ice. Not a good day to be driving.

I am now in for the day. Maybe for the winter, I don’t know. To be honest, I considered not getting out of bed this morning. It is SO COLD. The wind is supposed to stop howling tomorrow morning. I hope the weatherpersons are right about that.

Cookie time

We had a cold couple of days Sunday and Monday. The weather station was sad yesterday morning. I’m not sure why LaCrosse felt the need to put an emoji on the display. It’s almost always sad because only rare combinations of temperature and humidity make it happy.

Sad, sad little weather station

It’s hard to get motivated to do my chicken chores on these cold days. I sometimes get my mittens wet when I change the water in the coop. On Sunday, my wet mitten froze to the metal feeder when I picked it up to fill it. Not a day to be putting your tongue on the flagpole. I thought that the chickens would hunker down in the coop during these cold days, but they spend some time outside. It was the first time we’d seen the sun in over a week, and it wasn’t windy. It seems they hate wind more than cold. Don’t like their feathers ruffled.

Sunday was cookie baking day. This is what happens when you stock up on supplies at Costco. I didn’t even know you could get powdered sugar in 7-pound bags!

Giant bags of cookie supplies from Costco

Jane and I always end up making too many cookies. Tough decisions have to be made. I could live without the sugar cookies. “But they’re so good!” Jane protests, so we make them. I like chocolate sugar cookies and caramel pecan bars. (I use a bison cutter for the chocolate cookies--it is structurally more sound than reindeer with their skinny legs and fragile antlers.) Terry’s faves are Mexican wedding cakes. Jane found two new recipes to try: orange cranberry shortbread and chocolate Mexican wedding cakes.

We agreed that we would skip piping frosting on the sugar cookies. We used sprinkles, jimmies, and colored sugar instead.

We started at 10:00 and ended at 3:00. It was a lot of cookies.

The orange cranberry shortbreads were delicious and Christmasy. That recipe is a keeper.

Orange cranberry shortbreads

We also decided to keep the recipe for the chocolate wedding cakes. Terry said, “I could eat the whole batch right now!” (I am not including a picture of the standard wedding cakes because they look the same.)

Chocolate Mexican wedding cakes

The pecan caramel bars are probably the least fussy recipe. Everything gets put in the pan and baked. Messy though, all that sugar and corn syrup.

Caramel pecan bars

We ended the day frosting sugar cookies. And frosting, and frosting, and frosting.

A table full of sugar cookies--Christmas bison, trees, holly leaves, bells, and stars.

Then we sat down with our feet up to wait for them to harden enough to pack them up. Jane took as many as she thought she could eat or give to her neighbors. I put most of the rest in the freezer. I intended to give some away at my Board meeting on Wednesday, but last month we decided to Zoom it because of all the diseases going around. Then I thought I could get rid of some at my book club on Thursday, but that plan is up in the air because of Winter Storm Elliot coming in that evening. In the end, we will probably have Christmas cookies in the freezer until Easter, as usual. Maybe half batches of sugar cookies next year.

 

Christmas in Chicago

 We took our annual trip to Chicago on Wednesday. The weather was quite possibly the most pleasant we have ever experienced, temperatures in the 40s and very little wind. We took a new strategy for lunch at Chistkindlmarket. Instead of eating one thing each, we shared a brat (no sauerkraut, which Terry feels masks the excellence of the brat), currywurst, and potato pancakes. I was in charge of procuring the food while Terry got the beers. We ended up having two courses. As shown in the photo, the window for sausage was separate from the window for potato pancakes, which was fine as I only had two hands. While some of the food vendors had long lines, these two did not. 

Side by side potato pancake and bratwurst vendors

I had the food before Terry got back from his mission. By some kind of miracle, I was able to colonize an empty table just as he appeared in the distance with two cups. It was a good day to be wearing a red coat as he spotted me in the crowd right away.

After lunch, we walked up to Michigan Avenue. We didn’t even bother with the windows at the store formerly known as Marshall Field’s (now Macy). So lame. We entered the store at the perfume department by mistake. It always makes me sneeze. The upside was that we admired the Tiffany ceiling before escaping to less contaminated air.

Mostly we stop by Macy to use the restrooms. One of Marshall Field’s brilliant marketing innovations was to make restrooms available to patrons, reasoning that ladies would stay longer in the store if they could pee. I was grateful to Mr. Field as I carried on this century-old tradition, although to be honest, we only stayed long enough to go to the 7^th floor to see the tree in the Walnut Room. The 8^th floor viewing area closed during Covid, more’s the pity. The 7^th floor had its usual assortment of ornaments and other decorations. I liked this star and nutcracker. This year’s theme was “Give Love,” which on one hand, is a lovely sentiment, and on the other is a cynical marketing theme. Stuff does not equal love.

"Give love" and nutcracker at Macy's

On to Centennial Park, where we were welcomed by the City of Chicago Christmas Tree, a 55’ tall Colorado blue spruce. Each year, an individual in the Chicago area donates the tree. This year’s tree came from Morton Grove. Harvesting the tree is a big deal. All the news stations send out crews.

55-foot blue spruce in Centennial Park

The ice rink was going to open at 1:00, about 15 minutes after we got there. We watched the Zamboni drive around in circles. I’m not sure why it took two men to do this task. I waited to take the picture until I could get Cloud Gate (a.k.a., “the Bean”) in the background.

Preparing to open the ice rink

Here is Terry walking toward me as I took a picture of the city reflected in the Bean.

Terry and the Bean 

And here he is posing for a photo. I’m in the background in the red coat.

Terry and I on the Bean

When we passed the Tribune Tower, I was intrigued by a sign for the Ice Cream Museum. We walked down the south side of the building, reading the captions to all the pieces of mostly ancient structures from around the world (e.g., the Parthenon). This one was relatively recent.

A recent addition to the Tribune Tower. So sad.

The Ice Cream Museum was secretive. Nothing but the gift shop was visible through the windows. Terry engaged the woman at the entrance in a brief conversation in which he learned that admission included all the ice cream you could eat and some of said ice cream was booze-infused. Price tag: $36. I could not imagine ever eating enough ice cream to make that worthwhile, but Terry thought it might be a fun place to visit in the summer. We’ll have to save up.

We walked all the way to the Hancock, where we had a beer in the Signature Lounge on the 96^th floor. I had a Top View Brew, a wheat ale specially formulated for the Signature Lounge by the Crystal Lake Brewing Company. I’ve gotten familiar with the brewery as a Covid destination because they have outdoor tables. I recommended the Beach Blonde for Terry, and was proud of myself for remembering the name. I usually have to ask the bar tender for their lightest, least bitter beer. Like most micro-breweries, they make an inordinate number of very hoppy IPAs. Bleah.

Top View Brew and top view

No visit to the Signature Lounge is complete without a trip to the Ladies’ room. Best restroom view in the city. So sad for Terry--the men’s does not have windows.

View from the ladies' room on the 96th floor

We walked down the other side of Michigan Avenue to get back to Christkindlmarket, where Terry had another brat, I had potato pierogies with bacon, onion, and sour cream on the top, and we had two more beers. I bought a chocolate croissant for the ride home. I shall eat no more forever.

There were no tables available, so we had to walk around with our food and beverages. One cannot leave the market with beer. We passed a stall selling German beer steins as well as these hoodies. If it were up to me, I would divide Germany between the R and the M.

GERM_ANY hoody

We barely made the 3:45 train back home. It was a fun day.

Jack Frost Nipping

The week began with a foggy Monday morning. The temperature was well below zero, which always puzzles me. Why doesn’t the humidity all freeze out of the air? Puzzlement aside, I love cold, foggy mornings because the whole world is turned into a crystal fairyland.

Frosted river birch

The bright blue sky made the frost on the old oaks particularly beautiful.

Oak branches against the blue sky

Each berry of the Michigan holly was bedecked with white sparkles.

Michigan holly berries

The frost burned off soon after the sun hit it. It is an ephemeral pleasure. Much of the rest of the week was awfully windy. Terry put up the bodies of the reindeer in the lawn, but he can’t put on the antlers because they just blow off. Thus, we have mostly bald-headed reindeer, which look a bit weird.

Bald reindeer

We got our Christmas tree put up. It took three days to find the time to decorate it.

Decorated at last

For the first time in seven years, we sorted the ornaments into sturdy, damage-resistant “cat ornaments” and the more fragile ones. The cat ornaments are providing endless entertainment to the boys.

Fun with ornaments

The Dominique hens are still slackers. Haven’t laid one egg among the three of them for over a week. What’s the deal with them? I know this because the only brown eggs are pullet eggs, which much be coming from the Wyandott pullets. If one or more of the Ameraucana are slacking, I’d never know because we are getting big blue eggs and little blue eggs. As a matter of fact, we got one enormous blue egg this week.

Extra large egg

When Terry saw the egg, he asked, “Are you raising emu?” Ha ha. All I can say is, “OUCH!”