Posts Tagged ‘snow’
Opportunity Aplenty
Here are some of the issues that are crowding my realm of possibilities this morning:
Our male cat, Mozyr, has fallen into the behavior of peeing on our bed. I’ve been told that once that gets started, it is unlikely to change. We must deal with this immediately. I hate that stench.
We are getting more than enough urine smell from our manure pile. I had no idea what was involved with manure management, and I’m thinking now that the spot we selected seems undersized. I still feel like the location we selected is good, even though the smell sometimes wafts up toward the house, but I fear we may need to take out a few additional trees to expand the square footage.
Speaking of taking out trees, I now have all the equipment to do some serious lumberjacking and there is a dead tree on a corner of our property by the road. It is a chore that is overdue to have been started. Every day that goes by, the task feels more delinquent.
We spent time yesterday testing out the Grizzly ATV for assisting with cleaning up manure in the paddocks, with mixed results. The manure is frozen in multiple layers and much of it covered in snow. We tried both dragging the rake and pushing with the blade. Each seemed to make improvements, but manure that gets collected still needs to be scooped up and moved. That remains and laborious and lengthy endeavor.
I’m supposed to be clearing out our storage corner in the basement. In my search for a solution to the fractured triangular window beside the fireplace, I have connected with a local builder who stopped by to measure for the replacement. Over the phone I mentioned that we also were interested in having a storage room built in our basement. That seemed to go a long way toward enticing him to take on the window replacement. Now I need to get that space ready for the basement work to commence.
It is now nearing the middle of January and I never got around to preparing engines for winter storage. I understand that the primary reason engines fail to run well, or to even start, is leaving old gas in them over the off-season. I am my own worst enemy there. I have a hard time keeping my engines running properly, because I have a hard time getting myself to prepare them for the months of storage.
I took the mower deck off the little Craftsman garden tractor last fall, then flipped it over to be cleaned and to remove the blades for sharpening. It remains where I placed it, untouched.
I’ve got a half-built fence awaiting my attention down the hill from the house. The first snow of the season put that project on hold, but when it’s not bitterly cold, there is progress that could still be made there. I’m afraid the fence has gotten lost in the blur of other work that needs attention.
Meanwhile, we have plans for a Wintervale web site to market Cyndie’s services as a leadership trainer and to offer seminars and retreats here. The “under-construction” image is as far as we’ve gotten.
I’m sequential in nature, so I’d like to go back and get the first things done, so I can move on to the next few, but life doesn’t work like that. I’m back to playing “Whack-a-Mole” with whatever pops up in the moment.
Yesterday, since I had the Grizzly out, I ran it up and down the driveway to clear off the drifts that had developed over the week of historically cold temperatures. It was pleasing to so quickly and easily “whack” something from the list.
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Two Views
Winter here comes with a variety of looks. I captured two recently that reveal the dramatic difference possible from one day to the next. Not surprisingly, the temperature swings can be just as dramatic.
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Horse Play
Sometime before Christmas, Cyndie brought home a “present” for the horses. It was like one of those exercise balls that lie around unused in so many people’s basements. One night while the Morales family was staying with us, Jose and I decided to inflate it, but we didn’t set it out right away. I forgot all about it until Cyndie was taking down the Christmas tree and tidying up the house. At that point, it stood out distinctly.
Yesterday, I took the ball with me as I walked down to clean the stalls in the barn. As I approached the paddock, I set the ball down in the snow and it began to roll toward the fence. The horses had already demonstrated being on alert when they saw me coming with the strange looking red orb, but now the alertness morphed into a playful interest. I let the ball stay against the gate where it came to rest while I stepped in to clean the barn.
After a short time, I came out to find all 4 horses still standing by the gate, staring at the big red ball. That was good enough indication for me that it would be okay if I put it inside with them. It rolled downward as soon as it reached the ground and Legacy set off after it immediately.
It was a hit. I took some pictures of them and then tried to capture some action on video. What I got was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t of them playing with the ball.
To my surprise, when the camera came on, Dezirea suddenly made a bee-line toward me to see what I was doing. That distracted Legacy’s attention away from the ball and he started up toward me to see what was going on.
It was all great fun out in the bright cold sun, while the ball lasted. By the time I came back to the barn to get things in order for the evening feed, and to bring them inside for the night, I found the ball in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the paddock. It appears that one of them pulled the plug. Unfortunately, it was a white plug, so if they didn’t eat it, it is lost in the snow for now.
Looks like the exercise ball games around here will be on hold for a while.
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Cold Balance
While we were up at the lake last weekend, I captured this interesting scene. On warm winter days, the copper tops on the posts heat up just enough in the sunlight to melt the snow that rests upon them. The resulting moisture creates a slippery junction that allows the snow cap to slide toward the direction each post cover leans. As the sun descends in the afternoon, the copper cools and the junction re-freezes, leaving the sculptures teetering in place at unlikely balances, like this one:
We didn’t get to see if this snow cap eventually fell off on its own, because the temperatures never made it back up out of the deep freeze again prior to our departure for home. I expect they are locked in place for a few days more as we are now headed into what is predicted to be historic levels of cold temperatures for the next few days.
Oddly, we awoke this morning to temperatures above freezing (33°F) even though our predicted high for today is 24°. If it makes it down all the way to the low forecast for tonight, that will be a 50° drop in a day! Since we haven’t seen temperatures go this low in almost a decade, this could be the coldest weather that two of our horses, Hunter and Cayenne, will have experienced in their lifetime.
The barn is prepped and ready for the herd to spend extended hours under shelter of a roof and out of the wind. We have buckets with electric heat in the base to keep their water from freezing. We are hoping no pipes freeze and no more windows shatter around the house. This will be the kind of cold that tests everything: people, animals, trees/plants and machines. I haven’t heard how deep the frost has reached into the ground this year, but I expect it is getting deeper than it has been for a long while.
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Ideal Day
Yesterday we experienced a perfect northern winter day. We were told that there is more snow up here at our lake place now than this region has received during December in over 20 years. Making the deep snow even more spectacular, it had gotten foggy overnight and the moisture was forming long whisker crystals of ice on every surface. The landscape was flocked in a silvery white sheen. The scenery was storybook perfect. I don’t think we could have provided our guests with a better winter experience than what this weather allowed.
The temperature was hovering near the freezing point when we ventured out into the deep snow to play. First order of business was creating a sledding path down the hill onto the lake. 
At the bottom, the boys put a “turn” (what has become our code word for: jump) which worked better and better as the day went on.
Then we started work on building an igloo with my framing device. At the same time, shoveling began to create a small rink for boot hockey. Cyndie and Dunia passed by on snowshoes, and after returning from a long adventure, they initiated rolling snow into large boulders. Soon, the classic form of a snowman appeared, adorned with a scarf and carrot nose.
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Snow Fun
‘Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house… (speaking in my silly vernacular) we is sleeping in and recovering from the hardships of non-stop eating, visiting, and all the frivolity of holiday celebrations with friends and extended family. We had plenty of Christmas snowfall, which gave me an opportunity to go out and play with the Griz. While my camera has been out for repair, I have been blessed to have others supplying me with pictures to post here.
With that, I want to give credit for yesterday’s picture, because I failed to note that I did not take it. That beautiful image of our horses was taken by our friend from Guatemala, Marco Morales. He has a good skill of capturing images. While we were out clearing snow, I asked if he if he would take a picture of me plowing.
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Doesn’t it look like fun?!
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Disrupted Normalcy
What routine? My days have become a blur of disrupted normalcy. Of course, on the one hand, that is a fantastic blessing. On the other, it means doing my daily writing has become a challenge of stealing time from either sleep, or choosing to miss out on some of my favorite time lounging by the fire with the precious souls currently sharing our home. Add to that, the occasion of Christmas and all the scheduled events related to it, and I’m finding it hard to even remember what all my normal daily activities were.
I hope bills are getting paid. What day is it again?
I am even without my camera, which is usually in one of my pockets to help me capture glimpses of my days. Although I still have my phone for taking pictures, it doesn’t work as well for me, and I often forget that I even have it. It’s curious that I tend to remember when I have my camera, but never seem to think about the phone which is always with me. Happily, I have received notice that my camera has shipped from the repair facility, so it will soon be back in my hands.
I wished I had it with me the other day when I spotted a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers outside our front porch. I was able to get the attention of everyone in the house in time for them to see at least one of the two before they flew away into the woods. That was a real treat. I did what I could to capture them with my phone, and I’ve marked up the image to help you spot them.
Our weather seems to be stuck in a pattern of light snowfall, just enough to be a nuisance, but not enough to make significant impact, and temperatures that bounce from the relative warmth of near-freezing down to serious levels of cold below zero (F).
There has been a lot of transposing between Fahrenheit and Celsius around here lately. I have been telling everyone that if it gets cold enough it won’t matter. The two scales cross over at -40° so the reading is the same in both at that temperature.
It would certainly be abnormal for it to get that cold, but it would be fitting, since not normal has become my new normal around here lately. We are loving every crazy minute. We are richly blessed this Christmas.
We hope those of you reading here will find your own blessings revealed in the days ahead! Christmas eve is a magical time.
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Leading Legacy
I have devised a way to check whether you are aging, or not. It is nothing particularly complicated, even though the subject in and of itself can often be ridiculously complicated. It doesn’t hurt to have the availability of someone approximately 40-years younger than you to aid in setting up for this check, but it’s probably not required.
All you have to do is go outside and engage in routine outdoor winter activities like you have done your entire life without difficulty. Next, go back inside and sit down for period of time, something along the lines of how long it would take to eat dinner. At this point, you should be well prepared to run the aging check. Simply attempt to move your body from one place to another. If you have lost the ability to move, that is a strong indicator that you have aged.
Much of the day yesterday can be described as being an acclimatization day for our guests. We had a pretty short night of rest on Tuesday evening and they had traveled all day long to get here, so they deserved a day of rest. We found a few activities to do in the snow and cold, but we also did some lounging inside, watching a movie, playing guitars, and doing some napping.
The back yard is now a series of sled runs that have been firming up all night. I expect that today will present the opportunity to crash into a few trees, as we test whether the sleds which resist being steered will follow the routes we have laid out.
Our animals seem quite pleased to have company giving them good attention. I have already learned some new skills for communicating to Legacy that although he is the “alpha” leader of the herd, he does not lead me. It was insightful, causing me to recognize where I have been neglecting to assert my authority and allowing him to behave in ways that might give him the wrong impression.
He tests his herd with some frequency, to communicate his dominance. One way he might do this is to chase them off their food. It seems like much ado about nothing to me, but the horses accept this message easily, and then just as quickly as the fracas starts, they all calmly return to eating. Message sent and received.
I have not had any such urge to chase Legacy off the food I just delivered for him to eat. It would be very horse-like of me if I did, to let him know that I am in charge. He wouldn’t hold a grudge. He would go right back to eating, message received.
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Sloppy Surprise
There you go. Two days in a row, shoveling required. We received about 2 inches of powdery snow yesterday. Shoveling was easier to accomplish on Sunday, when I was home all day. I got very little of the snow cleared after work yesterday. First priority was cleaning off the front steps and walkway, then I was off to feed horses before they grew testy. Last to come was rescuing Delilah from the confines of her outdoor kennel.
I know she means well, but she caused me some real pain that I never saw coming. At this point, I don’t even recall what I was doing as I bent over in the fading daylight inside the kennel with her. I was either fussing with her leash, or picking up her water dish, which had frozen around the edges. Of course, she is always overly excited to see us after being alone all day, so she jumps on us and does circles around us as we put things in order before opening the gate to set her free.
When I walk toward her doghouse in the back end of the kennel, she runs away to the door, and runs back to me, as if she believes I must have gotten lost. Back and forth, round and round, up and down. I lost sight of her for a second yesterday, as I crouched down, and then it hit. BANG! She unleashed a sloppy wet tongue across my open eyeball. Yikes, that hurt!
That can’t be sanitary. I know people say that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a person’s, but I have seen what she puts in her mouth. That adds sting to the sting.
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Anxiously Awaiting
We are absolutely thrilled to be just days away from the arrival of our friends from Guatemala, Dunia and Marco, and their sons, Marco and Jose. Cyndie was busy all day yesterday adorning our home with decorations of the season, and cleaning rooms to set up beds with her typically fabulous flair. When I wasn’t lending a hand indoors, I was out cleaning snow off the areas of the driveway that I didn’t hit when I plowed on Saturday, shoveling the deck, clearing a path to the woodshed, hauling wood to the rack by the house, packing the labyrinth path with snowshoes, and lastly, (this especially for Dunia and family…) making the first attempt to establish a path for a 2-turn bobsled run down the hill in our back yard.
I have visions of building up a big enough pile of snow just beyond the deck after a few more storms, so that eventually we can start from up on the deck! In order for that to work, we would need some really big banks of snow at those two turns, so there will be plenty of snow-construction we can work on when we aren’t off on some other local adventure.
My driveway plowing on Saturday turned into a bigger project than I planned. It was my second chance to practice maneuvering the Griz while moving snow. The ATV is working as well as I had hoped. I am learning some things about getting it to shift easily, and apparently becoming increasingly aggressive as I gain experience. I over-stressed the winch cable that lifts the plow blade and broke it, twice! Maybe I’m a slow learner since it happened a second time, but I guessed that the first break was due to the cable being old and weakened, so I didn’t change my behavior.
After I cut off the bad portion of the cable and re-clamped a fresh end, I figured it would be as strong as ever. When that broke almost immediately, I decided I must have been trying to lift the blade beyond its stop point. After applying the fix a second time, I paid a lot more attention to the process of lifting the blade, and as a result, had no more problems the rest of the way.
Now, with all the snow cleaned and ready to entertain guests, the forecast is predicting flurries tonight and snow showers tomorrow. The difference between the two main seasonal chores of mowing grass in summer and shoveling snow in winter is that you know after mowing that you have at least a week before needing to cut the grass again, but with shoveling, you just might have to start over again on the very next day. There’s no rest for the weary.
Usually, after a snow storm, we get smacked with extremely cold air, but since this is just a small system of passing showers, it looks like our daily high temperatures will be going up! As of now, Wednesday is predicted to reach a degree short of the melting point. That will make creating the large banked turns of the bobsled run as easy as baking a cake.
Dunia, Marco, and sons, we hope you are able to enjoy your day of travel tomorrow. We are looking forward to greeting you at the airport in the evening so we can whisk you away to our Wintervale wonderland where our creatures, great and small, are all looking forward to getting to know you.
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Relative Something 