Posts Tagged ‘landscape’
Critter Tracks
Monday night we received barely a half-inch of sticky snow, after which the temperature dropped steadily throughout the day yesterday. When I got home from work and took Delilah out for a walk before feeding the horses, there was a very clear display of fresh tracks in the snow that obviously had been created within the roughly 16 hours prior.
The vast majority happened to be easily identifiable as rabbits. I was actually surprised by the significant volume of activity attributable to the little rascals. What do they eat in the winter? Whatever it is, we must have a lot of it and they must be thriving this year.
I was about to declare rabbits as the only animals moving around yesterday until we reached about three-quarters of our travel to the barn and came upon some tracks from much smaller feet. I’m thinking they were probably squirrels or chipmunks.
Then we came upon some wonderful artistry from a little mouse or mole that was splitting time between treading lightly on top of the crust and burrowing some vivid designs through the snow.
I wonder what he was trying to spell out.
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As we turned the corner around the back pasture on our route to the barn, I noticed how the sky revealed the departing weather system that had delivered the small amount of precipitation we received. Behind it are the clear skies that make way for our descent into very cold temperatures.
The next few days will involve single-digit highs and below zero lows.
It’s a little bit like what January is supposed to feel like around these parts.
I may have to start wearing a coat again.
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Octember Feeling
Our weather this weekend is feeling more like September than October, with temperatures warming near 70° (F) for the highs. The morning-scape today was beautiful, as the sun just started igniting the colors in the distance.
Delilah and I trekked the full circumference of our property before stopping to serve up morning feed for the horses. The air was alive with the traffic of bird sounds and the occasional distant dog.
Our sweet puppy was in a more subdued mood and refrained from answering any of the calls, which I greatly appreciated.
It was a precious autumn morning of the kind that soothes whatever ails you.
The kind you wish would never end…
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I am pretty sure chances for more of these kinds of mornings are waning, regardless the ongoing warming-ization of our planet. As early as tonight, the forecast includes the words “showers” and “thunderstorms,” and then by the end of the week, the predicted high temperatures drop significantly.
Of course, the impending transition to cold weather is what makes mornings like today’s so incredibly precious.
And it is why we soak them up with such thorough all-encompassing exuberance.
We know Octember is not going to linger much longer.
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Making Changes
On Sunday, in our 4th spring on this property, I took on the annual re-installation of the pump and filter in our landscape pond. For the first time in all those years, I went so far as to re-engineer the tubing that had been left by the previous owners, which is what I had used all the other times. Even though I knew little about it, I always felt there was room for improvement.
Initially, the pond was just one more thing on top of a multitude of issues with which I had little experience. Slowly, year by year, I began to gain confidence as I grew more familiar with the minutia of tending to our animals, acres, machines, and nature.
For the past 3 years, I simply connected a pump to the existing hose and filter and turned it on. The year we moved in, I left the filter sit, with water still in it, all winter long, not even knowing what it really was. The second year, I opened it up and figured out the charcoal media deserved to be replaced.
Sunday, I was smart enough to pull the filter out of the garage where it had been stored all winter —clean and dry— and assembled it on level ground, before connecting to the hoses below the pond and filling it with water. Got it sealed on the first try, which never happened any of the other years of putting it together inline.
Setting Stones
With the extra tubing removed, I wanted to rearrange the rocks on the back side of the pond to accommodate a shorter route from pump to waterfall, and then cover it from view. There is an aspect of this creating that goes against my natural inclination to leave things the way they are.
To build up the rocks enough to cover my latest setup, I needed to go find them from other locations, and something about doing that feels to me like breaking eggs to make an omelet. I initially found myself hesitant about removing rocks from existing locations and leaving holes in the stony landscape bordering our house.
However, after 4 years, I am getting better at seeing how quickly the landscape scenery adapts to our alterations. It will only seem like a hole for a short while. I might know it, but others walking past probably won’t notice the difference.
I’m about halfway done toward achieving what I hope to create. The plumbing appears to be all in working order, so that just leaves a few more stones to turn before I’ll be ready to cross this off the project list.
Not that the list will notice the difference of having one less thing on it.
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Peripheral Views
During one of our walks around the outside of the hay-field fence over the weekend, I paused Delilah so I could take some pictures. I like how the two I have selected to post here, have noticeably different coloring, even though they are taken from the same vantage point. I zoomed in to focus on the horses and our buildings for the first one, and then took in a wider view with a sliver of blue sky for a highlight across the middle.
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I like how the slope of hill influences the wider view, and the clouded sky ends up looking almost like a reflection.
The shot with the horses is one of my favorite perspectives of our place, because you can see the house (barely) through the trees. It gives a reference for the spacing and location of all our buildings, which is not easy to achieve.
Happy February! Before you know it, there will be groundhogs all over the place, trying to decide whether they can see their shadow, or not.
I’m sure that winter is patiently awaiting their verdict, so it will know how it should proceed for the next couple months. I’m not concerned. We have enough hay for whatever amount of winter remains this year.
I think.
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Image Option
There are times that I discover I have no story to tell when I sit down to write a post for the day, and frequently those occasions produce poems. Today I’ve got neither. That’s not unprecedented. I have been known to pull out a 3rd option when words come up short. A photo fills in nicely. I recently captured our Lamium purple dragon perennial ground cover with lingering flowers maintaining color amid the encroaching brown of fallen tree leaves. It does well to depict the straddling of seasons currently on display within our landscape. I like how the shadows at the bottom produce hints of dragon-like shapes.
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Photo Essay
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winter snow sunlight afternoon shadows at Wintervale
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Relative Something 