Posts Tagged ‘melting snow’
Just Behave
It’s been a lot of days in a row with temperatures above freezing. I’ve lost count at this point, but there has been enough melting that the labyrinth is now half uncovered.
The melting also finally exposed the dead raccoon that Asher buried in the snow down by the road long ago. Cyndie has been wanting to get rid of it, but was mistaken about its location and couldn’t find it when she brought me down there with a shovel a few weeks back, as things first started to melt.
It’s all bagged up now. When Asher originally caught the raccoon, Cyndie wondered why the critter was out during the middle of the day. I’m wondering why no other roaming predators had taken interest in the carcass when it started to be exposed by the melt. Maybe it was sick, and that’s why nothing was messing with it.
When I walked Asher past that spot with the telltale striped hide peeking through the snow earlier in the day, he was very good about obeying my “LEAVE IT!” command.
He was also very good when we made our way down there again in the high heat of the afternoon and happened upon a neighbor walking her two dogs along the road. We have no confidence about whether Asher will react aggressively with unknown dogs or not, so we do our best to avoid coming into contact with them.
I was able to have a brief long-distance conversation on the subject with the neighbor, Heather. She politely checked to see if Asher would be okay with her dogs, and I was able to express that we just don’t know for sure. Happily, the dogs all behaved while coming within maybe 10-15 feet of each other, and followed commands to focus/refocus on each of their owners every time we asked.
It was comforting that the mere sight of the dogs didn’t send Asher into a tizzy. Heather understood that Asher might be protective of his property and possibly of me, as well. It was the second close encounter in two days with them without incident, so there’s hope it could become a non-issue in time.
Speaking of protection, we are happy that the Visa credit card company contacted Cyndie yesterday by both a phone message and a text with a fraud alert of $8759.00. Always wary of phishing scams, she responded by calling the phone number on the back of her card.
Sure enough, it was a fraudulent transaction. Cyndie had just used her card earlier in the day at a restaurant in Woodbury for lunch. She called the manager to alert them of the unauthorized transaction, in case there was any connection. She had been seated at the bar, so they didn’t even have a server other than the bartender.
The manager was very helpful and looked up her receipt, offered to review the surveillance video, and volunteered to cooperate with any police investigation. Adding intrigue, the $8759 was charged to a cookware supply company. Hmm.
Cyndie chose to contact the Woodbury police by email with all the details. More information will be provided as it becomes available.
It’s kind of sad when dogs behave better than people do.
.
.
Recent Images
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.
.
.
Watching Changes
Each afternoon that I have been up at the lake has brought melting temperatures, and yesterday was the warmest so far. It climbed to 58°F and turned the surface of the lake from white to wet.
That buoy I photographed the day before took on a whole new appearance.
Taking advantage of the mild conditions, I worked on a wood sculpting project on the deck in the bright sunlight. When it came time for a break, I laid down and faded into a nap on the deck boards, waking with my face in a puddle of drool that signaled a good sleep was had.
I stayed down on my back on the deck and listened to every sound I could detect, including the faint hum inside my head. Blood flow? A version of tinnitus, maybe. When I finally stood up and surveyed the surroundings, it became clear that I was watching the swift change from winter’s snow cover to exposed ground that was heralding the coming of spring.
Most of all, I was immersing myself fully in the pleasures of not needing to do anything by any specific time.
Mission accomplished.
Eventually, I will need to wash some dishes. I’m going to take advantage of staying in this lazy mode for one more day. Tomorrow, I will set things in order here to leave no trace and drive home to Cyndie and the animals. She leaves for Florida on Thursday and I will be in charge of the dog and horses for the week she is away, following their daily schedule of needs.
Having had these few days away on my own will go a long way toward making Cyndie’s next absence less daunting, especially since I love the routine of animal care just as much as I love these little breaks from it. When we finally end up at home together for a stretch of time again, it will be like a bonus.
Luckily, I love my time alone just as much as I love living together with Cyndie.
.
.
B’bye Snow
After two days of 50°F temperatures during this final week of February, the snow has performed a quick disappearing act. Just four days ago, the American Birkebeiner ski race was held for the full distance in Hayward, WI. They lucked out with a couple of periods of snow falling in the nick of time so they didn’t need to shorten the race. Then, on the day after the main races, the warm weather moved in.
Our hay field at home now looks like it did back in November. Afternoons are becoming a muddy mess in the paddocks. At least I won’t get my quilt-lined Carhartt overalls dirty. No need to climb into our space suits this week. Heck, I haven’t even needed a coat in the middle of the last two days.
I watched a broadcast of the Minnesota Wild hockey game last night, and the commercials for Northland Ford and Toyota all-wheel drive vehicles to combat the snowy winter conditions looked rather comical, given the reality outside now. They could have been selling more motorcycles than trucks and SUVs.
Even the natural world is looking confused by this warm spell.
This furry little woolly bear caterpillar was slowly making its way across the driveway. I guess hibernation ended early this year.
It’s almost like the climate is undergoing a change or something. Ya think?
.
.
Random Snippets
Oh my gosh, we must have a large wolf traipsing across our property! Wait. No, that’s Asher’s pawprint. Never mind.
The ground is thawing during the day, and what little snow is left is getting pretty soft. It refreezes overnight and leaves some perfect prints in the morning.
The fields are almost clear of snow now.
The warm weather has triggered some fresh raccoon activity, and Asher has figured out a family is living in a tree just beyond the edge of the yard that he can see out the bedroom door to the deck. Shortly after the sun drops below the horizon, he starts barking in protest of their existence. It goes on for a good half-hour while they busy themselves in full view on the branches up high doing whatever it is they do before setting out for their regular overnight routine. Fixing their masks, maybe.
I haven’t figured out where I put my new pruning saw yet. It wasn’t in the next place I thought to look.
In the category of things I can’t seem to finish after starting, I got out the trail cam recently and then brought it in because there were no new tracks, and the temperature dropped to insanely cold levels for days. Since then, there have been a lot of new tracks, and the weather has warmed dramatically, but for some reason, I can’t bring myself to set the camera back up.
Maybe that’s because I figure I’ll just get a bunch of pictures of the raccoons, and I’d rather not see how many there really are. Ignorance is bliss.
That bitter cold delivered the first significant crack in our once pristine new asphalt driveway that isn’t so new anymore.
It’s like getting the first scratch in a new car. You wish it would never happen, but you know it will eventually. Unfortunately, as soon as we got the first one, a second appeared closer to the house within a day or two. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Snippets, all of them. Random, too. Take that, Universe. It might even make sense if one keeps the bigger picture in mind. I don’t actually know. I just write ‘em.
.
.
Special Communication
The mess of melting leftover snow didn’t go through the usual overnight pause last night because the temperature never dropped below freezing. I read yesterday that the blanket of white covering the ground melts from the bottom up. When the air gets cold enough overnight, it is easy to walk on the old snow because a frozen crust is created. It wasn’t easy this morning.
The wash of chunks that rolled off the plow blade beside the driveway is melting in its own interesting ways.
…I enjoyed a special interaction with Light in the paddock this morning. After I had filled their hay nets and the horses finished gobbling up all the feed from their buckets, I still had some housekeeping to finish. Light approached and pushed her nose toward my shoulder. I chatted with her while continuing to look down toward my task on the ground.
Light made a little “chomp” at the air by me and I questioned her about her intentions.
“Were you thinking about biting me?” I asked without changing my energy or activity.
I expressed my disapproval of such craziness as Light wandered up to the overhang.
Then I experienced an insight about a possible different motivation behind Light’s original gesture. Maybe it was a “love nip.” Maybe Light was indicating her appreciation for my efforts.
I vocalized, “You’re welcome,” to the air in her absence.
Then I heard Light pooping up under the overhang.
You may draw your own conclusion, but I smiled a special smile as I scooped up behind her in finishing my efforts tending to the mares for the morning.
.
.
Cracking Cones
With spring-like weather showing up way too soon, we have changes going on that are very un-February-like.
The moisture of the melting snow rises in the morning to create a mystical haze in front of the pines in the distance.
The remains of the melting plowed snow on the edge of the driveway are smeared with the dirt that got scraped up by the blade.
Most uncharacteristic of February is the clicking sounds of pine cones popping open in the warm sunshine.
My poor brain is wrestling over reveling in the luxury of the gentle weather at the same time as fretting over the complications this odd warmth could bring about.
In the moments between mental wrangling, the craziness offers plenty of opportunities for me to busy myself taking pictures of scenes that catch my eye.
.
.
Unusual Winter
Once again, our hero finds himself writing about the weather. I’m sorry, I can’t help myself. Most people on the planet are, by this time, well aware the climate is in transition, so it’s probably not big news that January 29, 2024, was so uncharacteristically warm where I live. However, for me to open the door and hear songbirds singing, see flying insects swarming, and feel the lack of cold air hitting our faces, it makes my head spin. Truly. It’s disorienting.
This is how it looked outside yesterday afternoon:
In January! No snowshoes required. There is a snowmobile club that grooms a trail along the edge of our property. In the fall they drive the trail on ATVs and pound in signs to mark the way. That trail got marked but we never received enough snow to groom and not a single sled has passed by.
The extremity of our warm winter doesn’t grab attention like out-of-control wildfires or destructive flooding that has ravaged other parts of the world but it feels rather alarming to me. Not that being alarmed will have much impact on the rate at which people of the world continue to pump greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere.
I wish I could avoid ever flying in a conventional commercial jet or driving a gas-burning car anymore but that’s not likely to happen. I wish I never bought anything plastic ever again. My lifestyle has yet to shift to perfect environmental stewardship and I don’t foresee a strong enough change in my behavior to solve the dilemma any time soon. I just add a little more personal guilt each time I start the car and roll out of our driveway.
Around these parts, there are a lot of folks who plan on winter income from plowing snow for businesses and homeowners. Store owners sell snow-clearing machines and tools. Companies sell snowmobiles, skis, snowboards, sleds, and skates. Experts will likely tally the numbers and report on the financial hardships faced by all the people who make their living from the winter activities that used to be ubiquitous in the region. My heart goes out to them.
On the flip side of that situation, I will offer no complaints about the lower expense of keeping our house warm, the minimal amount of shoveling and plowing I’ve needed to do thus far, and how easy the conditions have been for the horses.
There remain a few oak trees I was planning to trim but I’m wondering if the thaw makes doing so ill-advised. That’s usually one of my January/February projects. This year, nothing’s usual about our winter.
.
.
Snow Shortage
There are plenty of reasons I lament the disappearance of snow, especially when it happens in JANUARY! Obviously, the inability to make a decent igloo is high among them but the onset of melty temperatures brings an additional complication. As the ground softens in the paddocks, we enter mud-saster season. For a period of time at the end of snow season, being able to scrub boots clean on the way to the house after horse chores is a real plus.
Too bad the mud always outlasts the snow. By all indications, we will likely lose the majority of our snow-cone-quality crystals by the end of today. A few stray piles will remain along the edges of areas shoveled or plowed which will allow for scraping boots. They become treasured resources for a dwindling few days.
It’s little things like this that we allow to make special moments in otherwise routine days.
.
.
Getting Coffee
We are not comedians and are not in cars but I’d like to pretend you and I are out together for coffee just like Jerry and his guests on his internet series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” I’ve been binging the series lately and it’s got me missing the days of idle banter with my various accomplices in the fine art of waxing lyrical about all manner of minutiae.
I would describe the futility of cleaning hay bale shrapnel out of winter boots.
When a new pair of boots I ordered arrived recently, I struggled to decide what to do with the old pair. They had been repaired once, but now the rubber base was cracked and ripping away from the upper leather. Feeling they were beyond repair, Cyndie advised me to throw them in the trash.
The laces were worth saving, so I pulled them out. That helped me to notice the leather was in really good shape and could be used for some future project, I was sure. I decided to cut the threads holding the leather to the rubber.
That is when I discovered how much of the nooks and crannies were filled with hay remnants. That new consciousness led me to try to empty my new boots yesterday after hauling nine bales from the hay shed over to the barn.
After dumping all the hay out of one of the new boots, I took a picture to convey the futility of trying to get it all.
A while back, I wrote about how the horses, Swings and Light, drool food over each other’s heads when they eat close beside each other. Yesterday afternoon, Asher and I showed up at the barn after Cyndie had finished serving up the feed.
Cyndie described the challenge of getting the filled buckets clipped to hang as quickly as the horses preferred. She decided to let Swings have a first and then she bent over to hook the handle of the bucket. Do you see where this is headed?
She said, “Now I have a bunch of slobbered feed pellets down my neck.”
While Asher and I were making our way along the north loop trail I was impressed by the power of the low-angled winter sunshine to melt snow despite our daytime temperature remaining below freezing all day.
Is it obvious which direction is south? In the picture, Asher is facing the direction of the setting sun. It never gets high enough to shine on the whole path, but the areas that receive direct sunlight are completely clear of snow.
Based on the present weather forecast, the rest of the snow doesn’t stand much chance, even in the shade. Temperatures will rise well above freezing for the next few days.
By the way, I don’t drink coffee. Make mine a chai latte and bring on the humorous back-and-forth wisecracking about our perceptions of this crazy world in which we live.
Say goodbye, John.
“See ya later, gator!”
.
.
Relative Something 