A Winter Wonderland?

So, it is a classic method of discussing winter, in my circle, by taking a picture of deck furniture slowly disappearing under its load of white stuff.Well, I do have a deck. But I don't have any deck furniture on it. AND... currently I can't really get to where I'd be able to take a telling photo anyhow.

 But I did feel that we seem to have had enough of a snowload so far this season that I ought to record it in some way. So yesterday I took a couple of pictures. Then for some reason I didn't get around to uploading them. And in the night we had even more snow. (This is well post-'December Ice Storm'. This is just boring old snow.) But there's enough of a change from yesterday to today that I thought I should try to duplicate the shots.

  This first picture is out my kitchen window. Yesterday's load of snow, sitting on top of a plant pot, and on top of the deck bench box.

  By this morning, the heights had increased somewhat. In fact, the snow cap on the bench box (which is only the height of a comfortable sitting surface) is now about as high as my breastbone. And the deck is the same level as the floor in my flat. (Actually the snow depth on the deck looks to be easily thigh deep everywhere!)

 The next angle is the deck railing outside the kitchen, where a previous photo showed my friend Squirrel, eating walnuts. Obviously, if Squirrel had been by recently, we'd know it!

Today...

   the snow is even deeper, and had formed even more of a wall along the one rail.

 But in the living room, the deep window well between the sloping sections of roof is rapidly disappearing!
Yesterday, it was impressively deep:

But you can still see the backyard trees beyond. By today I was hard put to replicate the angle and still show the level of snow so you could tell where it was.

(HINT: look *above* the shelf with the coloured glass!)

It's definitely getting deep out there...

 v

NOT the door into summer!

Up-Helly-Aa 2012

The final installment?

If we're to trust the Mayans, that is.

The Rainy Season

The level of our pond always goes down in the summer, and in fall we anxiously await it filling again with the autumn rains. One season it dropped perilously low, and didn't fill deep enough before it froze. We lost most of the 'big' fish that year.

 Since we introduced some koi to the pond a few years ago, which have been happily thriving and multiplying, and have a fairly happy eco-system out there, with frogs, toads, and turtles, crayfish and clams, as well as several species of fish, we are even more alert to the health of the pond. So it was reassuring to see the level start to rise, though I don't think we expected it to rebound quite so quickly.

In the top picture, taken as we went into the Thanksgiving weekend, the red arrow shows our 'depth gauge', a piece of steel that Darrell planted in the deep section of the pond. I think it registers about 5 feet deep. It's only visible in the summer. 

This picture was taken two weeks later. Not only has the gauge stick vanished under the surface, the entire boundary of the pond has expanded to cover most of the 'summer beach'. So, that's a bunch of water that's come out of the skies in the last fortnight. The fish should be happy, since with a good depth, the water won't freeze all the way down.

What our fish breathe during the winter is more of a mystery...

The Promise Of...

       Coltsfoot, one of the very first signs of spring growth.

              Contrasts. Not just the black cat against the white snow, but the fact that there's somewhere not snowy for him to walk as well!

              Daffs-to-be.

 

Other small sprouting things; more daffs, crocii, and scylla.

                 Wonder of wonders: the rhubarb is already starting, even under ice!

   And okay, this exotic beauty may have suddenly appeared in my garden, but by force of husband, not force of nature. It's a small solar light thing. Though I had to actually go close, and touch it, to be sure!

 And while it may not last for long, the weather forecast for the weekend, as of this aft, is for actual near-summer temps!

Missing Virginia

Who Pulled Down The Blind?

  We redid the roof on the house this fall. In steel. Because it lasts. We'd totally forgotten that one of the results of the steel roofing is that snow builds up, and ices against the metal surface, and then starts to slowly slide off the roof anytime there's a bit of warmth... You then have this thick layer of snow and ice that starts to slowly slide off the roof surface towards the ground.
 In warmish weather, it's a fast, noisy and potentially dangerous thing. If there's no warmth, it's much slower, and far more 'weird'. So, we're currently experiencing the *slow slide* as it passes by the kitchen window. We've already dealt with the first *slow slide* as it blocked the tv satellite!

A Winter's Tale

Nothing like a warm woodstove on a blowy snowy day!

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!

The Brown Hills of Earth

Well, now, that was a fast turnaround. And just as fast gone, as arrived!

Just before Christmas we had a day of unusually mild temperatures, and rain. Of course, what that did for here, with the five foot base of snow, was wash down the surface, and turn it to ice. Which quickly put paid to our Christmas Eve get-together with friends. We couldn’t even get the car up the very mild hill in the front road!

(Though our friends later reported that icy conditions in front of their place had ended them with some cars in the front yard and a hydro pole snapped in half, and a whole living room of firemen and EMT’s! So, we made a mutual observation that it had been wisdom, and not wimpiness…)

But then a day or so after Christmas, it got a bit mild again, and started to rain. And rain and rain and rain… In fact I even heard thunder. Once.
Anyway, it was enough rain to actually do more than damp down surfaces, and abetted by the mild temps, the snow did start to diminish. There was the overnight roar of avalanches as sections of snow slid off the steel roof. (Crushing as it went, mind you…)

[Overall it’s been a kind of destructive winter thus far. The lean-to roof over the coal storage was flattened. The portable garage car port is well and truly squooshed. One of the roof beams of the smelter shelter broke under snow load, and heavy water-drenched snow sliding off the roof has tried to pull the wood storage shed down, and crushed our honeysuckle tree.]

On the 28th we went to head over to family in the Peterborough area, and discovered they’d now closed our road due to flooding. (All this melt water, and the ground still frozen…) In fact we drove past a farmer’s field that was totally underwater, with whitecaps and breakers rolling in from the high winds. Except for the fact it was a strange and unusual mini-environment, utterly out of place, it was a pretty sight. (Sadly, not a camera to hand…)

But by the time we got back early evening on the 29th, it had started snowing again, and has kept right on at it. And then there wasn’t even any point in trying to take a picture. We’re not as deep as we were, but we’re certainly just as white!

v

White...

is the new black?





This is *supposed* to be our deck. With normal height railings. You know, waist high, and you can lean your elbows on them...
Our first staying snow was November 9th. I took these pictures December 9th. It's pretty much snowed the entire time.

And we haven't even reached the official start of winter???

Oops! It's Wareham, It Must Be Winter!

Dang! Winter kind of fell on us like a ton of bricks this year. It came early, and came with vehemence, and while we'd suspicioned there could be flurries, we were still thinking there'd be another break or two.
Nope. It snowed, and pretty much kept on snowing. And we were deep in the midst of it before we'd barely started winterizing. (Global warming, where are you when we need you?)

A short while ago we started looking a bit warily at the accumulation of snow thus far. And at the carport. We have two carports. One is a constructed one. One is one of those temporary garages. We'd originally imagined it as a seasonal thing, but it's ended up being so handy....
Well winter has taken it's toll already, and Darrell has reinforced it with steel struts. (Handy, being married to a blacksmith!)

But I noticed the other day that not only was the structure a bit off true, with a little bit of a list, something that couldn't really be adjusted right now while it was buried in winter, it also appeared that the headhigh horizontal pipes along one side looked to be bowing inwards a small bit.
And as usual, the huge amount of snow was sagging the tarp roof in between the 'rafters'.

Darrell kindly backed the vehicles up, so one was in the real carport, and one was out in the drive.

Today I peeked out again, and oops. We're past the point of just looking a bit saggy!









This is one of the steel reinforcements that Darrell had previously added. Did the clamp fail? No, the steel has simply bent under the snowload!
No wonder I'd like to move to a kinder climate...

Weird Science

Now how did Nature make this?

Oh Dear!

I'd had this theory I was going to take a 'benchmark' photo or two, to show my standard easy shots BEFORE they turned into winter photo ops. There have already been two fast blasts of winter, and they'd gone again. (The second one, more reluctantly....) And I meant then to get some autumn angles to use for comparison over the next few months. (And as cheering reminders that life wasn't always devoid of colour and solidity.) I'm wondering if I'll even get another chance now...


Not that it's deterred our determined black cats, at least. They insisted, though with doubts...

Black Flies, Back Spasms, and Home Invasions

Yes, real, and jumbled, random thoughts.

After complaining for a chunk o’ time that spring was really sucking, (we’d had a glorious start to it, then cold and drizzle and grey and rains and snow showers and frost and all growing things getting very confused), we were finally having some hints of springlike weather.
Which of course, just whupped the black flies into a real frenzy out there. Dang it all! It’s finally mild enough that I could –again- think about trying to do spring-like things in my poor neglected yard, not wrapped up in layers like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and instead I need to be swathed in enough protective screening that I can’t actually see the yard!

(At least black flies are a temporary annoyance. It’s just that they take real chunks out of you. One bit me a week or so ago, on one of their other blossomings, and the spot is still swollen and itchy.)

What is weird is that we had lived here for about 5 or 6 years before I even met my first black fly, and discovered their ‘charms’, in New Brunswick. So, either we didn’t have them, or they were kinder and gentler.
Or maybe it’s like poison ivy? You’re fine till your first encounter, and then it’s toxic ever after?

Also coinciding, frustratingly, with these moments of thermometrically enhanced weather, I’ve had a sudden recurrence of the back problems that plagued me at the beginning of the century. (Doncha love being able to say that?)
Back in 2001, we’d been asked to do a demo at the Museum of Civilization, in conjunction with the Smithsonian exhibit, Vikings: North Atlantic Saga, and I had the misfortune to sleep on a mattress that just did not agree with my back, and instead of just being creaky the next day (and several days after), my back started to spasm and cramp up.
Unfortunately, this turned into a chronic problem for quite some time, no doubt encouraged by the too many years I’d spent commuting too many hours to and from Toronto, and sitting at a computer. (Yet another reason why I bid adieu to my real job in the city….)
But in the last couple of years, my back has been much more politely behaved, and if it acts out, I can usually point a finger at which stupid activity I participated in to set it off. (Like vacuuming without finding the pipey bits! Or playing too much Grim Reaper in the yard.)
This time, I don’t know. I don’t think I did any of my usual ‘bad’ things. But it’s hanging around enough that I’m either suffering from it, and in pain, or it’s lurking and I can just feel a bit of extra tension in all my abdominal and back muscles waiting for it to strike again.
And of course, this is the land of no doctors. When the one local one passed away, the single nurse practitioner was swamped with about 400+ patients. (I think a number of people had been hoping for any other doctor, and had been saving themselves. The recent doctor was not ‘sought after’. (He’s the one, when Darrell tried to saw his arm off and phoned to town, the receptionist said the doctor was about to go on lunch, could Darrell call back later?)

Essentially, when you live in the wilds of rural Ontario, you need to learn to fend for yourselves. (Never knew this was the ‘wilds’, did you? We didn’t either, when we moved up here!)

Speaking of the ‘wilds’… the other day there was some huge mayhem overhead. The up-till-now only thumpy raccoons suddenly had a street brawl. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Darrell went up to have a word.
Well, it seemed that results of that ‘word’, was that the raccoons didn’t come home the next morning, so Darrell has taken advantage of their absence by essentially rebuilding the outer walls of the attic. And commenting that no doubt they’d be back to try and find another way in.

Little did we expect how soon that would be!
Saturday afternoon I was perched on the couch checking times for a movie we wanted to watch on TV that evening. For some reason, I turned my head to look at the deck door, and there coming through the cat portal at the bottom was a raccoon! 2 pm in the afternoon!
Well, I shrieked, and leapt at it yelling. (Stronger men have quailed before a Vandy incensed, let me tell you….) And Mr. Bumbly turned tail and trundled towards the deck stairs. Inopportunely, just as Bear came up them. This, of course, only increased the intensity of my shrieking and frothing. Bear went one way, Mr. Bumbly went another.
I grabbed the cat, and hustled him in, shutting doors after me.

By now all the shrieking had drawn cats from all corners, but at least they were all accounted for.

Mind you, the increased security precautions of locking the cats indoors during nice daytime weather, when we already cruelly force them to be in at night, hasn’t lasted long. Four cats who like the outdoors, beautiful sunny mild weather, closed doors? Not a recipe for peace in our time. No siree!

But it has made a bit of an impact on my peace of mind. Dammit.

Yes, Virginia

There is a spring.
And it might even come to Wareham!

I have crocii bursting forth.


Even unexpected ones I can't remember planting. I know I did, but sometimes it takes a couple of years before I get any results. (Obviously I have to make a major effor to get some other colours established...)


Coltsfoot, one of the earliest and cheeriest signs of spring.


The early nubbins of rhubarb pushing up, which is also hopeful, since we keep trying to establish a rhubarb patch, and have trouble finding a place it will be happy...


And my eternal question, is this woad? I'll have to check back to last year's blogs. I know I wondered then. Did I eventually decide it was unexpected woad, transplanted from Karen's garden, along with the calendula and alkanet?



v

A Small Taste

of my holiday down to Virginia. I still have to sort the photos and organize and resize them, and put together some posts. But just a little bit to keep you going. (And to remind me that there is such a thing as spring, especially when today it's a howling blizzard and no visibility and great mucking huge drifts to mire the car in....)

Lull

In the brief and bright quiet between this winter's perpetual dumpings of snow, Lily and I went out to take some pictures.
Of course, it was so bright out that I couldn't tell when I'd actually turned the camera on. I couldn't see the indicator light on the top, and I couldn't see the display on the back. It also made it virtually impossible to tell if anything at all was in focus, or even if I was aiming usefully.The snow was all fresh and deep and white. Well, and blue, too. Trees cast wonderful shadows.


Lily got a bit crazy, with the sun, and the heat in it, and dashed about, up trees, down, rolling and writhing at my feet in the snow, and then off on another tear-ass. She did pause briefly to pose...


But when we started our walk she had less patience, and wouldn't stay in frame as I headed away from her.


It's still a short enough time after our last wierd thaw, that all the water isn't frozen solid. Or at least hiding under a thicker crust. It looks like our well, which always starts artesianing (is that a word?) in the spring, when the water table is so much higher, has been sending some tentative purcolations down its overflow tunnel, and it gives the slightest hint (possibly misleadingly) of a spring thaw to someday come.


Even the river is doing its best to hint at 'thaw'.


And as we walked back, we could still hear the water noisily roaring along. Of course, there's yet another storm on its way. They're making 'bigger and better' noises about it. So, by later this weekend, maybe all these hints of spring will have vanished under still one more layer of the dreaded white stuff! sigh.

The Really Fine Stuff

that sifts in through the tiny vents at the ridgeline of our steel roofed drive shed.

Only the right kind of fine and persistent snow can cause these weird indoor drifts.
Sigh. Wiarton Willie, you said an **early** spring!

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.

(Or maybe it's the power of the heat from the sun....)

I was actually looking for some kind of quote from Revelations for this, since people who know these cats, know that Lily and Bear do not get close to each other, let alone Lily pillowing her cheek on his back!



But maybe it's not apocalyptic at all, maybe it is just a renewed warmth. Hope, hope, hope....

v