Snow. Again.

Here we go again. I woke up at 4:00 to snow and intermittent power failures, just a second or two, but enough to make my printer noisily reboot. I held out for almost an hour before deciding it was never going to end. I left my warm, cozy bed and unplugged the stupid printer. I finally fell back to sleep until 6:30.

My fear that we would have a long power outage was not realized. We had 6” of snow and electricity when I got up. No internet though. I wasn’t in a hurry, so Terry took care of some other things before he brushed the snow off the satellite dish. All has been well since then.

Six inches of new snow

The birds were going nuts at the feeders, which is common during a storm. Our cats spent a great deal of the morning stalking in vain behind the windows and sliding door. Bingo lay very flat on the cat perch in the living room, swishing his tail rapidly and eyeing a cardinal on the deck railing. The tail swishing seems maladaptive. He’s low to the ground, presumably so he can’t be seen, but here’s this big ol’ tail waving like a flag. I don’t get it.

Bingo stalks a cardinal

In a burst of springtime enthusiasm, I took my onion seedlings out to the glass greenhouse last week. With predicted temperatures of 20°F tonight, I took them back down to the kitchen in the basement this morning.

Onion seedlings reinstalled in the basement kitchen

Somehow, I didn’t get the door to the garage shut all the way. Sure enough, both cats escaped and had a gay old time crawling around under the cars. When I was done moving onion trays, I coerced two cobweb-covered cats back into the house with treats. The garage, therefore, is a little cleaner and the house is a little dirtier. Also, the cats have probably learned that they will get treats if they sneak out to the garage. This is not a good situation.

This afternoon, the boys kept me company in the study. They often nap in parallel positions.

Parallel cats

I overplanted peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes for the high tunnel because the seeds were getting old. The pepper seeds were too old and sprouted not at all. The cukes and tomatoes had 100% germination. Now I have a dilemma. Thin them now? Let them get four true leaves and repot them all? What to do? I can say for sure that I do not need 9 cherry tomato plants. I will lose my mind harvesting the hundreds of cherry tomatoes nine plants will produce. I can barely manage two.

Too many cucumbers

WAY too many tomatoes, but no peppers (middle row)

Yes, it has been a mild winter. Yes, the new snow is pretty on the trees. Nevertheless, today I am sick of it. So ready for spring.

Sapcicles and Thanksgiving Observed

 In our last episode, I saw sap dripping from the cut limbs of damaged box elder trees. Last Tuesday, the temperature at 6:00 a.m. when we got up was 8°F. Brrr. I went for a walk later in the morning. It was warmer but still brisk. More branches had been dripping sap than I first realized. Sapcicles hung everywhere. This is the same one I posted last week. It was still dripping. The sap was much sweeter, almost as sweet as maple syrup.

Boxelder sapcicles--look at how long the one on the left is!

The sap was so much sweeter because some of the water froze out of it on its way down the sapcicle. When ice crystals form, they tend to squeeze out everything except other water molecules, which concentrates whatever is dissolved in the water. One method that First Nation peoples used to make maple syrup was to put the syrup in a hollowed out log and let it freeze overnight. In the morning, they removed the ice that formed on the top. By doing this repeatedly, they increased the sugar content in the sap that remained. Alternatively, they put the sap in a sac of leather or birch bark and added hot stones to make it boil. They did not have metal pots to boil the sap down over a fire until the pasty-faced Europeans came along.

This one was impressive in sheer magnitude

An article in the newspaper resolved an issue that I brought up in my last post—why don’t we make syrup from box elders? It is because box elder sap has half the sugar of sugar maples. Both are in the maple (Acer) genus. Now I wonder what selection pressure caused sugar maples to have such sugary sap.

Here are some more examples of sapcicles. As long as there is some intact xylem to move the sap up from the roots, the sap keeps flowing. When I checked yesterday, the sap had stopped flowing at last.

This one went all around a lower branch

Several sapcicles from one long wound

Sapcicles scatter through the woods

The tulips are coming up, although they did not grow much last week, cold as it was.

Tulips wishing the weather would make up its mind

Yesterday, we celebrated Thanksgiving Observed because one turkey dinner a year is not enough. We had seven guests, and a good time was had by all. I took a picture of the turkey when it came out of the oven.

Thanksgiving Observed turkey

And a picture of the table, although the light from the door messed with the exposure and focus. As I prepared to take the picture, Kate said, “Wait until I put the bowl of potatoes down so it doesn’t look like I’m going to eat the whole thing!”

Dinner--Chuck is not visible on the other side of Kathy (in blue) and Terry is not paying attention

I made both pecan and pumpkin pie and forgot to take pictures. The pecan was the clear winner, although just as many people had half a piece of each. Only Terry had just pumpkin, and that was because he broke a tooth and is waiting for an implant. He can’t chew nuts well at the moment. At the end of the evening there were two pieces of pecan and 5 pieces of pumpkin left. This could be a story problem: how many people had only pecan pie?

With Thanksgiving Observed done, I’m ready to focus on garden prep. Summer will be here before you know it!

 

Winter Storm Ricardo

Bingo loves to hide in small places, likely because of his insecurity. It is unfortunate because he has gotten to be a large cat. Last week he found a new place—in the TV cabinet. In addition to being in a snug, safe place, the location also offers two remote controls on the shelf below to play with.

Bingo's green eyes looking out from his new lair

The ground dried out enough for Terry to get the Gator out. He had already done much of the chainsaw work around the edges of the field to cut up the fallen limbs that Olive left behind. He cut up around the fire ring on Monday. I helped him pick up the pieces Monday and Tuesday. Some we loaded in the Gator; some we threw in the adjacent woods, and some were stacked up around the fire ring. 

The tidied-up fire ring area

Terry has not gotten out a ladder yet. There are still some “widow-makers” hanging from the trees. The limb on the left is holding on by the bark. Terry predicted it would come down on its own in a week. Last time I checked, he was wrong. The one on the right will probably require an intervention with the chainsaw. 

Hanging branched

The day after we finished cleaning up, the big box elder branch was leaking sap. Four days later it was still leaking sap. The third time I saw that it was still dripping, I had the nerve to taste it. It was, indeed, sweet. I expect it develops off flavors if boiled down to syrup, or else maybe it just has a lower sugar content than maple sap. Whatever the reason, you never hear about box elder syrup, do you? 

Sap dripping from a broken limb two weeks after the ice storm

Tuesday evening at suppertime, I saw nine or ten deer on the far side of the field. They refused to hold still so I could get an accurate count. Seven of them circled the willows and came out by the house. Yes, I was able to verify that some of them stayed behind. We see the group of seven fairly often and think it is three does and four yearlings. We know one of the does had twins last year. As I walk around, I see tracks of deer that are smaller than I think they ought to be by now, but when I saw them all together, I could tell that the yearlings were not yet full grown. 

Seven deer coming out of the birches and willows

The young ones are excited about spring. Periodically they would chase each other around. Maybe the guy who wrote “Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer” knew something about young caribou besides that “games” rhymed with “names.” There do seem to be white-tail deer games. 

The exuberance of youth

Look at how far they lean in the curve! You’d think they’d tip right over! 

Banking the corner

After awhile, they wandered on. I went back to making dinner. 

Moving on

Winter storm Ricardo went through Thursday leaving 8” of heavy, wet snow in his wake. Terry used the snowblower. Good thing. He is no longer young enough for me to not worry about him giving himself a heart attack shoveling snow. 

The deck shows the depth of the snow

The southwest view shows the beauty of the snow

Blackbirds perch in an apple tree, wondering if coming back this early was a good idea

It didn’t take long for the birds to knock the snow off the feeder. They were too small to clear off the deck rails. In this photo a goldfinch is sitting in the snow on top of Mr. Long Arm®. 

Finches on the feeder and one perched high atop Mr. Long Arm (yellow)

Speaking off, I hardly had to use Mr. Long Arm at all to clear the solar panels. Most of the snow slid right off. I had to shovel out the pile of snow at the bottom of the panels so the rest would have some place to go, but that took little time compared to sweeping the panels. 

In a world that was mostly black and white, it was nice to see a bright red cardinal. 

A male cardinal provides a splash of color in a dull world

I shoveled a little bit of the run for the girls so they would not spend all day in the coop. A

Mmm--snow! Best Thing Ever!

s usually, they didn’t want to walk in the snow, but eating it was the Best Thing Ever! 

Ricardo’s snow settled quickly. It was down to a couple of inches before Sage put two more inches on top. The sun is out today, although it was 14°F this morning. If it really does get to 40, we’ll see more of the bare ground. March is indeed a weather roller coaster, but I’m glad this little cold snap has slowed the buds down. We can be absolutely sure we haven’t see the last frost yet.

Geese on the lawn

 The ice hung around for four days after the storm. We expected it to melt because temperatures got above freezing every day. It turns out that a few hours at 40°F just ain’t warm enough. It took an inch of rain on Monday to get rid of the last of it. Only the top inch of soil was thawed, so the ice melt and rain could not soak in. On my Tuesday walk, a large flock of geese was swimming in the south field. It wasn’t until I looked closely at the picture that I saw a male mallard among the geese.

Geese, and one mallard (left), swimming in the south field

I tried to get close without disturbing them. Good luck with that. Shortly after I took the picture above, they were off, with a great deal of honking and flapping of wings.

Up, up...

And away!

Two geese stayed behind, likely a mating pair. Signs of spring. The robins and blackbirds are numerous enough now to create a raucous morning chorus.

From the house, I did not think that the creek had flooded. There was evidence, however, that it had overflowed a little. Leaves, twigs, and box elder seeds had been shoved together by running water.

Sticks, leaves, and seeds swept into a pile by moving water.

I could make out the path of the water between the piles of debris.

The path of the water outlined by piles of debris

The creek was cloudy and higher than it had been, although no longer close to overflowing its banks.

Muddy water

A tributary flowed down from the train tracks.

A small creek flows down from the train tracks

Early in the week, the forecast for the weekend called for up to 10” of snow. We were not excited by that. The meteorologists said all along, however, that the system was hard to accurately predict. In fact, by midweek, snow was out of the forecast, and we were supposed to have an inch of rain. As it turned out, we got nothing at all! Terry was excited. He’s been waiting for the ground to dry out so he can use the Gator to haul the fallen branches back to the woods by the creek. He doesn’t like to leave ruts.

I saw more signs of spring on my walk yesterday. The winter aconite is blooming.

Winter aconite

I heard a familiar sound and searched the sky until I found the sandhill cranes. There were 30 of them, and they were kind enough to fly right over me.

30 cranes flying north

We are sore afraid that the buds are going to pop prematurely. It may get up to 60°F tomorrow. It wouldn’t matter if we were sure it would never freeze again, but probability is against it. As Terry pointed out, “Can’t stop it.”

I have started the onion seeds in the downstairs kitchen. That’s a great space for indoor gardening, big counters by big windows. The onions are now up. I probably posted about this last year, yet it bears repeating. Onions are epigeal, which means “above the earth.” The root develops first, then the leaf forms a hook and drags whatever is left of the seed above the soil. This picture shows the seed coats at the tip of straightening leaves with hooks of plants with the seed still in the ground behind them. The one in the center really looks like it’s struggling. I wonder if it’s grunting at a frequency outside human hearing. I have to resist the temptation to help, as I invariably will break something.

Sprouting onions

The Christmas cookies are just about gone. I could finally make a cake yesterday. The larger purpose of cake making was to clean out the odd bits of frosting that had been languishing in the refrigerator. Let’s face it, there’s so much sugar in there that it can never go bad. I call this creation Cake with Frosting Through the Ages.

Frosting through the Ages: Buttercream and chocolate frosting from Christmas (left and right respectively), and caramel frosting (middle) from chocolate/pecan sandwich cookies, from God knows when.

Still tasted good!