Relative Something

It was a quiet but beautiful Sunday yesterday at Wintervale. Between watching Olympic Curling and Hockey, I got outside for a midday walk with Asher and, back indoors, tweaked some leaf photo files in my library from the previous week.

That last one was notable for the surprising amount of shredded leaf matter beneath a large oak that had no leaves in its branches to shred. It was baffling. The mess appeared one morning and continued to intensify over several days, just beneath this particular tree. Did a squirrel that was nesting in the tree decide it no longer needed as much insulation?

Ya got me.

By early afternoon, the meltwater was flowing down the drainage swale that passes across our fields. It’s an unsettling reality in February. I haven’t seen any news reporting the crazy weather occurring in the UK lately, but our friend, Ian Rowcliffe, in Portugal, informed me of their ongoing doses of heavy rain causing flooding.

The region is receiving strong storms because of the warmer atmosphere holding more moisture, and the jet stream positioning is holding the high and low pressure systems in place for the moment. The weather is swinging between drought and flooding from one year to the next.

It has me not wanting to think about what’s in store for us next in the Midwest of the US. Hopefully, the summer of ’26 won’t bring down as many large trees as we were forced to deal with last year.

I’m afraid we are just going to have to hang on and find ways to cope with whatever outcome is delivered. It’s hard because weather is one of the few things that sending love doesn’t seem to influence.

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