Posts Tagged ‘windy’
Cold Blow
The prolonged warm spell this autumn has finally come to an abrupt end. We swung from warm sunshine to blowing snow in about a day, making it feel colder than it probably is. I had planned to avoid the expected precipitation by holing up in the shop and working to restore some order after days of dumping piles of tools and lumber used on the chicken coop construction project.
After a morning of some lightning, thunder, and hail, I stepped out to find a temporary reprieve. It was almost sunny for a moment. I decided to postpone the shop tidying and wander down toward the chicken coop to look into fixing the ramp we have in mind for the chicken door.
Cyndie had tried weaving some grape vines but bailed on that idea after discovering the vines she collected were not supple enough for her methods. I suggested we simply slide small branches over/under a center strut as an alternative.
After finding and attaching the integral strut, and testing my concept with 10 or 12 of whatever sticks and twigs I could find lying around, I switched modes to collect a bigger batch of raw materials for the weave. Conveniently, I had planned a new route through the trees between the coop and trail to the shop garage which needed to be cleared of saplings. These will be ideal for making the ramp.
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Those shots are dark because I can’t seem to finish anything around here before the sun sets anymore. By the time I finished clearing the trail and thought to snap an image, there was barely enough light left. A fact which also makes it difficult to discern the horizontal flying crystals of frozen rain that were happening at the time.
I found it surprisingly disorienting to have a new opening in our woods where one had not existed before. It was shocking to suddenly have the feeling of not knowing where I was for a second.
What doesn’t show in the path is the old rusty wood stove that I had just hauled away. It is a relic of days when they tapped the maple trees here and boiled off the sap for syrup. It wasn’t visible through all the greenery during the summer months, but for the last 5 years it has been very conspicuous during the fall and winter, looking like a sad neglected relic.
That’s one more thing taken care of that I’ve wanted to do since we got here, discarding scrap and making this place ever more our own.
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So Windy
Not today, please. It’s too cold. All night long the wind has been making its presence known with gusts that cause our log home to creak.
With a little sunshine and calm air, the bitter cold of arctic high pressure systems is tolerable this time of year. Sure, we would prefer to bask in the warmth of mild waning winter days, but we are still in cold-mode around here, and it is February, after all. We can do extreme cold.
But the wind, that is another thing. It literally puts the bite in biting cold. Today, that bites.
We have company coming to soak up the vibes of Wintervale Ranch, be with our horses, maybe do a chore or two, and definitely play with Delilah. I’m afraid the wind may just push the activities indoors where we will sit by the fire or work in the kitchen on something that involves baking in a warm oven.
Since taking ownership of a property that involves multiple acres of wooded land, I have gained a new awareness of how significantly the blowing wind impacts trees in a forest. I feel an increased trepidation about the well-being of our trails and fences.
Not a day goes by that I don’t find evidence of new pieces of trees laying in the snow. Usually, they are small, probably snapped off by the activity of an aggressive squirrel. After a windy day, the size of branches finding their way to the ground increases dramatically.
There is no mystery as to the phrase “winds of change.” Our woods are changing constantly from the gusts of moving air. That is a new perspective for me. The growth of trees happens slow enough that we often don’t even notice. I tended to see forested land as protected space, preserved from development.
On the contrary, the woods are probably developing more than the grassy fields around them.
Even the dead and dying trees have a little life left in them. Outside our sunroom door on the side of our house that I refer to as the front, there is a tree that is folded over in two, after the upper half snapped in a fateful wind. In even the slightest breeze, that tree wails and moans from the wound. It makes a wide variety of eery sounds, especially at night.
The ability of wind to change the trees of a forest causes me to feel increased marvel over the majesty of the oldest and most grand of our trees. For a hundred years or more, these trees have braved countless gusts.
It occurred to me recently that in the years of life I have remaining, I will not see any new trees on our property achieve the grandeur and majesty of a hundred-year-old tree. What we have now is all I get. It makes them all the more precious.
It also makes the gusting wind all the more ominous.
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Relative Something 