Late snow, early geese

Well, OK, the Canada geese might not be early.

I took the pup walking this morning near Horseshoe Bend of the Huntington River. A light snow was falling under an overcast sky. As we crossed the edge or the meadow, a pair of Canada geese flew across, dark against the sky then light against the evergreen-covered rise to the northeast. They honked as the flew, one deeper-voiced than the other. Maybe they were heading toward the pond off Mayo Road, unseen to the east, and above me.

The pup spared them a glance, but when back to snuffling old scents on the crusty settled snow. Me, I paused, watching.


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First Snow

First snow tonight. Wet stuff, after another day of heavy rains and flood warnings. Not too much -- so far. I think of the first snow of the season being October 17th, plus or minus. I'd been guessing it would come on the 19th this year. So much for that.

Aside: we have enough wood. Not yet stacked though. Oh well.

ooh, ice!

The creek is half frozen, great swaths of chunky silver-blue ice punctuated by the occasional dark pool at the foot of a waterfall. (Exactly the colors that don't photograph well with my camera, especially when I'm looking through the window.) R says it did this last New Year's too.

Iit's between -7°F and 0, depending on which thermometer you look at. Bundle up!

Three of a kind

Driving home, we reached our mailbox around 6 p.m., full dark. The mailbox is at the junction of a side road; opposite is the old farmhouse (the reason our road is here at all), and on the far corner is an apple tree (same variety as ours?) and a low cement-block dairy barn, used now for storage and the occasional pigs.

Between the apple tree and the barn were three white-tailed deer, eyes gleaming in our headlights, bodies deep bark-colored shadows.

A pause, a neighbor pulled around us and two sets of headlights illumined them briefly. The neighbor passed up the side road and then, easily, they leaped down the slight slope under the spreading bare branches, over the road, and into the old meadow and a different neighbor's leftover gardens.

second snow

It snowed again last night; thicker, wetter, heavier. It bowed the lilacs, the roses, the crabapple.

The chickadees seem to enjoy the resulting arches. All I have at the moment is mixed seed and two small feeders half-full, but there are about 5 chickadees and 3 juncos visible right now.

first snow

looking southeast from the French door

There's a light wet snow falling this morning. I'm dreading winter this year for some reason, but the loveliness of this still touches me. Orca, the twelve-year old Bernese Mountain Dog, loves it; I didn't nickname her Icebiter for nothing!

It's still really dim out, and hard for me to take photos.

icy snow is good for...

It's thawed and snowed and refroze ... strange weather. But the crusty, icy snow, not too deep, turns out to be nice for teaching LittleBirder to ski a bit.

He loves it.

spider prints

LittleBirder: "Mama, can you put the spider outside so it can make footyprints?"

Mama: "Do you think spiders can make footyprints?"

LittleBirder: "Yup, with their legs."

Beloved Orca

Orca, my Berner, is 11½ years old. She loves the snow as much as ever. In the winter, we call her "Orca Icebiter"

snow for skis

LittleBirder has a snow day today. This rather threw my plans of working off, but we played outside in the snow instead. OK, I did chores: shovelling, bringing in wood. Then he got to try his skiis for the first time!

Things to do on the land...

first snow...man

LittleBirder and his Dadda built this fellow to watch over our woodpile.

I'm not sure whether I love the carrot nose or the hemlock beard more. Just wonderful.

This pic is a little blurry at this auto-resize; you might want to click to see the larger one.