Posts Tagged ‘Winter’
Wonder Dog
Before I get to today’s post, I want to proclaim that I unequivocally object to everything the current U.S. criminal masquerading as a leader is up to, as well as all of the rest of the people in positions of power, who are allowing things to happen. It is soul-crushing and heartbreaking.
Our New Year’s getaway to Mike and Barb’s cabin was not entirely for Asher’s benefit, but he did seem to receive the bulk of everyone’s attention while we’ve been here. On a walk through the woods along a portage from Bluewater Lake to Trout Lake, we paused to let Asher zoom on the snow-covered ice.
He is enthralled with the scent he picks up from the deer tracks in the snow and would gladly follow them endlessly if we allowed. A gnome home in the trunk of a tree didn’t even get a sniff from him, probably because it looks like they must have traveled south for the winter.
No one is shoveling their entrance.
The extreme cold has softened, and it is pleasant to be out enjoying winter at its best. We’ve received fresh fallen snow each day, which is keeping everything white and making it look like we are playing in a snow globe.
As darkness fell, we heard the pop of a fireworks shot down the lake, which Barb and Mike knew indicated their neighbors were going to do a show of multiple shots soon. With a full moon peaking through the light cloud cover, we decided to walk down to the lake to watch.
Since Asher had never shown any reaction to gunshots or thunderclaps, we decided to test his reaction to the fireworks.
Our mistake was in assuming he would be as oblivious to them as he is to the other loud booms. The poor guy flipped out. Our 90-pound puppy went into a full-on panic of yelping and trying to drag me as fast as he could, and as far away as he could get.
We have confirmed our wonder dog’s kryoptonite.
Lesson learned, the hard way. This morning, Asher woke up as happy as ever, and he and I had a wonderful walk at dawn, leaving last night’s terror a memory we hope he won’t need to relive. In a short time, we will pack him up along with our bags and leftover food and head for home.
It’s been a fabulous visit. I expect it will also be fabulous to get him back to our usual routine at home, where he can be the wonder dog who barks at delivery trucks and rabbits in his yard.
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Great Adventures
Our first day of the new year up in the north woods was pure joy for Asher and us. The big pup got a lot of love from Mike, here shown gently accepting a treat:
We have been eating the most delicious and festive of foods prepared by Barb and Cyndie, with Mike adding his artistry in a variety of ways, including these wonderful appetizers:
When we weren’t busy eating, we were outside giving Asher a chance to explore the woods around the cabin. He was a good sport about staying in contact with us when we let him wander a little bit to follow the obvious deer tracks in the snow.
Mike dug through a closet of dog toys accumulated over the years and came up with a chew toy for Asher. Our hound gnawed on it for a little while, but then began pacing the cabin, looking for a place to bury it. I let him take it outside with us, and he immediately hunted for somewhere he could bury it in the snow.
Before we made our way back indoors, I snuck over and retrieved the “bone” and brought it back in with us.
He soon lost interest in it and moved on to other distractions, including barking at things out the window that none of the rest of us could perceive.
When we weren’t outside enjoying walks in the perfect falling snow, Barb and I ripped through a 300-piece jigsaw puzzle, while Cyndie made short work of a cribbage match with Mike. We played a couple of other games, listened to an episode of the Telepathy Tapes podcast, and watched a movie that was wrongly identified as a “comedy.”
You know, ‘at-the-lake’ activities.
My daily routine has been knocked for a loop without our usual twice-a-day horse-feeding detail, demonstrated by my confused and entirely incorrect exclamation that it was “already seven o’clock!” after glancing up at an analog clock with Roman numerals.
It was 5:00. Oops. Flipped that around a bit. That drew a few well-deserved wisecracks and laughter.
It’s a good thing I don’t drink alcohol. I’m able to remain clear-headed during these kinds of foibles, allowing me to chronicle them accurately for posterity.
We have no responsibilities to do anything different today, but I’ve heard a trip to Grand Rapids to eat at a restaurant is possible. I doubt Asher will be too thrilled with that plan, since it will involve him staying here alone, but I suspect we can reward him with a big explore later around our hosts’ other wooded property, just a short drive from their cabin.
Sometimes great adventures involve a little sacrifice.
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Wintery Again
This is more like it. It’s feeling like real winter again around here. I worked all day yesterday clearing snow, and with Cyndie’s help doing some shoveling, we got everything done in one day. That’s quite an accomplishment. It usually takes me two days to get to the roof raking and then cleaning up the mess of snow pulled to the ground below.
I took a picture from a similar spot to one I took on Saturday to provide a comparison of the change two days later:
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Having made that run up and down the driveway in the middle of the storm Sunday night made yesterday’s work much easier. I ended up spending a lot of time trying to plow around the barn and hay shed because I hadn’t touched that on Sunday, so it was the full depth, and the base level was still a little wet and messy.
I needed to clear the loop wide at the approaches because we are getting a hay delivery tomorrow morning. I still worry it might be a challenge to pull a trailer around from the driveway to circle in front of the shed. In the summer, vehicles can just overshoot onto the grass to complete the turn.
The Yamaha Grizzly ATV did a heroic job of performing everything I asked of it. The driveway almost looks professionally done.
If we had been up at the lake instead of here during the storm, we would have come home to quite a challenge. As it was, I was able to proactively slide the mailbox off its base when I was plowing Sunday night, to protect it from the blast of snow that shoots off the township plow blade. When I first made my way down to the road yesterday, it had been plowed, so I was able to reattach the mailbox before the mail delivery arrived. I’m feeling rather chuffed about finally remembering in advance to try this.
I usually find it in the ditch, having been wrenched sideways off the base, and kick myself for letting it happen another time.
Now that it is wintery again, I shouldn’t be surprised there’s a 50% chance of a dusting to a half inch of snow today and tomorrow, just so my plowing efforts won’t stay completely clean for long.
I guess I should be careful what I wish for, eh?
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Old Lessons
This is starting to feel like a real winter. For the first time in years, our temperature has not risen above freezing since dropping below in the last week of November. The snow that has fallen is accumulating, not melting. The 10-day forecast shows the trend will continue.
I have to admit, the last two years have lulled me into an uncharacteristic lackadaisical attitude about my techniques of managing the cold and snow. Case in point, that dang plow blade on the Grizzly. It took me three tries to get the mechanisms of the winch-lift and the catch-pin of the blade angle connected so they wouldn’t interfere with each other.
The solution was so obvious when I took the time to consider it. I’m a little sad that my memory of how it worked in the past, before I added the now-failed bracket, made this into a bigger deal than it deserved.
Yesterday, I was finally able to run the plow along the edges of the driveway to push the snow bank one length beyond the pavement. Like any good winter, as soon as I finished, it started snowing again, covering the surface with a new dusting of flakes.
While returning from a walk with Asher, Cyndie had me call his name in a fresh exercise of following commands.
She had been out on Friday night to meet Elysa in Hudson for a creative art experience. I took Asher out with me that night, thinking he would hang around while I cleared some of the freshly fallen snow. He disappeared into the darkness and was gone for two hours. It serves me right for recently bragging about how great it’s been having him stay around.
I’m blaming the darkness of night and the wealth of nocturnal critters available to tempt him. Last night, when I took him out, however, I used a leash. Fool me once…
Not that darkness is the only time he faces temptations to chase prey. The rabbits have been plentiful this year, and he is more than happy to race after them at every opportunity. They are creating well-worn trails in the snow toward the barn overhang, where there is an endless supply of spilled senior horse food pellets to eat.
We are no longer surprised when we show up to sweep off the placemats before feeding and find them already cleaned.
The horses are coping well with the impact of real winter weather. It seems they remember how to do this better than I do.
I trust I will get the hang of it after a few more decent snowfalls. Clearing fallen snow is almost like riding a bike. Once you get it down, it just gets easier as you go along.
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Feeling Wintry
In case you were wondering what the most recent blast of winter weather was like for us on Tuesday and Wednesday, I present the following that it inspired me to create:
Recipe to make an otherwise beautiful event of falling snowflakes into an angry blast of epic proportions:
- One afternoon of misting rain
- A few hours of actual raindrops
- Cold but not freezing air temperatures
- A few hours of mixed precipitation of rain/sleet/snow
- One large blast of a below-freezing air mass
- A constant 25 mph gale out of the Northwest
- An infinite number of snowflakes of various shapes and sizes
Add the above ingredients in the order listed for the duration indicated. For greatest impact, extend the overall event for longer hours to increase the amount of angry blast desired. To add some *icing* to this cake, don’t allow the sun to be visible for weeks after the storm has passed.
I admit that I got a little carried away with the last line. Overstating the part about not being able to see the sun for weeks is just being rancorous. In reality, we enjoyed a decent mix of scattered sunshine yesterday afternoon. The angry blast of wintry weather turned out to be far short of epic.
We have removed blankets from the horses, and they are showing every indication of being perfectly adjusted to the arrival of the snow and cold.
I pulled out my winter boots and insulated Carhartt overalls to wear while the snow was flying in the gale-force winds, but I need to retrain myself on the intricacies of getting in and out of my winter “spacesuit.”
It’s safe to say that the switch has been flipped, taking us from the genteel conditions of a mild autumn into the harsh reality of winter in the north.
Bright Morning
The water line in the Ritchie fountain needed a brief shot of hot water to flow this morning, but that will probably be the end of our water worries for a few days. The temperature is climbing swiftly this morning, and we will be heading out to pull off horse blankets as soon as I finish this post. It is easy to see travel patterns now that we’ve had plenty of days without new snow.
Here is the difference between one time down a trail and a frequently used path:
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I’ve pointed out many times the icy patches in the large paddock that the horses avoid. Here is Mia soaking up the morning sun where you can see the horses cover a lot of the ground except for where they don’t:
That manure pile is my attempt to build a mound over the drain tile from the barn water spigot to keep them from squishing it. The water that drains from it creates that icy patch that the horses know to avoid.
This morning, I caught a shot of Mix’s grain mustache when she looked up from cleaning the spillage on Swing’s placemat.
It’s a pretty cheery day here in our oblivion, sequestered from any gloom or doom related to the evils of this world. It makes me feel a little guilty about how nice we have it. I don’t feel any guilt at all about making the horses’ world as blissful as possible for them.
For now, we are taking care of each other.
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Coping Well
When it gets extremely cold with dangerously low wind chill temperatures, schools cancel classes and communities postpone events, but nobody cancels walking the dog or feeding the horses. Eighteen below zero Fahrenheit doesn’t keep us from donning our “space suits” to trudge out into the harsh conditions and carrying out our duties the same as every other day.
Asher needs to get out there to freshly mark his territory, and the horses need us to make sure they can get a drink of water and feed them grain and hay. Finding the water isn’t frozen in the morning is a huge plus in having things go smoothly for the early feeding. All four horses appear to be coping well with the biting cold, which also goes a long way toward allowing us to enjoy life here in the Arctic conditions.
While I was standing idle in the morning sunlight, waiting for the horses to finish their grains, I noticed some pigeons were on the waterer. They weren’t satisfied with simply getting a drink. One of them jumped in the water like it was its personal hot tub.
I have no idea how they avoid getting frozen when they step back out into the -18°F air. I would expect them to become pigeoncicles. They have been leaving a lot of pigeon-poopcicles on the horses’ placemats lately that are almost impossible to scrape off. I would say the pigeons seem to be coping with the cold better than all the rest of us.
We are starting to count the days until we can pull blankets off the horses to free them from that annoyance. As soon as overnight temps quit dropping below zero and daytime temps are hitting the 20sF, we will offer the horses some relief. The blankets are helpful during cold snaps or heavy snowfalls, but the horses would prefer not having them matting down the hair on their backs for days on end.
They have done a good job of coping with the necessary evil this week. I’d think they would appreciate having the blankets fluffed and recentered on their backs, but they tend to act non-cooperatively most of the times we try.
We just need to cope with getting a little push-back and reposition the blankets anyway. Having the blankets hanging off-center may not bug them, but it bugs the OCD tendencies in me when I see it.
That’s an area where my coping skills could use a little work.
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Deep Freeze
The temperature never rose above negative numbers yesterday, but all our electrically heated water sources for the horses functioned flawlessly! That makes tending to the animals so much less stressful, even though doing anything outside for an extended amount of time at 15 below carries its own challenges.
Yesterday afternoon, while I was waiting for the horses to finish the grain in their buckets, I was looking out over the frozen, sunlit scenery and marveled over the environment. In our homes, we have little freezers for food preservation. They take a lot of energy to function, and we try not to hold the doors open very long to preserve the cold. Restaurants have freezers so big you can walk inside them. A large frozen space seems like such an engineering accomplishment.
Yet, here I was, standing where everything I was looking at was frozen colder than any refrigerator freezer. The wood and screws of our fences. The trunks of all the trees, some of which develop long vertical cracks from the extremely dry, cold air. The ground freezes several feet deep. The world around me was one colossal freezer.
Five months from now, these temperatures will be a distant memory. It’s such a fascinating transformation.
Indoors, our bird of paradise plant is showing a new sprout on the stem of the smallest leaf. It’s a wonderful compliment to the deep freeze outside.
The previous three sprouts that have appeared since this gorgeous potted “tree” arrived at our home were so inspiring that I find myself watching and wondering where and when another pointy tip will emerge. I now have my answer.
Another leaf is imminent.
Maybe the spring thaw won’t be very far behind.
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Wicked Cold
One hard part about surviving a bitterly cold winter night is when the following day and night offer no relief. In fact, the second night proves to be even more harsh. Ouch. It would be great if we could just hunker down inside beside a warm, glowing fireplace during extremes such as -20°F with crazy windchill numbers making it feel much, much colder.
Wisps of deep-freeze ice crystals decorate the driveway.
With outdoor animals that need to be fed and a pet dog that needs to be walked, we don’t have the luxury of staying inside. Adding insult to the brutal conditions, yesterday afternoon I discovered there was no water in our Ritchie waterer in the paddock. Something was frozen. The question was, what to do about it? Of course, Cyndie had the right idea.
She placed a call to the guy who originally installed it and who also repaired the leaking valve last fall. He was at a funeral. She left a message and called the office. The owner answered (which is how she learned our guy was at a funeral), and he tried to offer some suggestions. It was just enough to help me with an idea.
I dug up a heat lamp that was stowed in the vacant chicken coop. Meanwhile, our guy at the funeral checked his messages and called Cyndie back. He provided more specific instructions about where the most common freezing occurs and how to address it. She heated water and came down with an insulated carafe. While the heat lamp was pointed into the inner workings from a side access panel, we chipped away at the frozen cover.
When the cover came loose, Cyndie slowly trickled hot water on the exposed float valve and feeder tube until the carafe was empty. When she returned to the house to get more, I held the heat lamp strategically over the valve. In about one minute, I heard some action. The water was starting to move. The heat lamp was doing the trick, and soon, water filled the metal pans of the double-sided waterer.
Earlier, we had put out electrically heated buckets of water under the overhang to encourage the horses to drink more water during the cold spell. Now, they were showing curiosity about what all the fuss was down at the waterer. I’m hoping they will keep drinking from it because that will move water through the valve, and maybe slow any refreezing likely to re-occur at these wicked cold temperatures.
If it is frozen again this morning, at least we know exactly what we can do to solve it.
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Counting Leaves
It is not impossible to function at -14°F (-25°C), but it can be a bit of a hassle to tie up hay nets and distribute buckets of grain –one of which now gets watered down— in such extreme conditions. I am very happy that Asher showed a keen sense of efficiency and adapted perfectly to my plan to shortcut our morning walk and get his business out of the way as swiftly as possible.
The horses were equally focused on their tasks and offered no resistance to assuming their positions and chomping grain with their frozen whiskers getting messier by the minute.
The feelings of accomplishment when returning to the house and getting the feeling back in our fingers and toes don’t entirely dispel the intense urge to have remained under the warm covers of our bed instead.
We tell ourselves these extreme cold snaps that are difficult to survive help to control the populations of pest animals and insects, as well as the number of added people who might consider moving into our region when their homes prove to be inhabitable.
I looked up at the leaves in the big oak tree over our driveway and had two thoughts.
There aren’t many leaves left clinging to all those branches. On the other hand, there are still more leaves up in that tree than I could count.
In contrast, there is a young oak nearby that looks as though it still is holding all its leaves after they dried up and turned brown.
There is also a birdhouse with a birch bark roof that features an opening that wasn’t there when initially built.
I think the residents left for a warmer climate a long time ago.
As harsh as this weather is, the forecast indicates the bite will be even more intense tomorrow. The critters that survive this will have something to brag about.
I have no conclusion that wraps these contemplations this morning into a logical theme. That would involve more thought than I have to muster. With what little energy I have, I intend to curl into a ball like Asher is doing right now on the couch beside me and save what I can for the next foray into the Arctic elements outside later this afternoon.
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Relative Something 