The O-Zone

Rodent wars have been heating up, and we had to get a move on and finish the wire cages for the main raised beds.

The pack rats got into one of the potato beds before we had completed the wire cages, and they cut out at least half of the plant stems and leaves.

Swiss chard.

The plants which are protected are doing great!  The swiss chard is already big enough that I can start preserving leaves for the winter.  Plus the plants in the greenhouse have been giving up fresh leaves for breakfasts for several weeks already.

Walla Walla onions, and Copra onions, growing pretty well.

Onions are growing well, and we pulled out the spinach and some lettuce.  The peas behind the romaine lettuce were a total mass of greenery and we pulled them out and harvested the peas over the weekend.  The pea plants actually did better in the greenhouse and that’s where we’ll plant them next year instead of in the garden.

Red currants are starting to show ripening berries and I need to start going down every morning and picking the ripe ones.  They will all get ripe pretty fast and I don’t want to lose many to the chipmunks who adore these berries.  Then I can make jam.

The chocolate mint plants are looking good and getting big enough that I can start drying leaves for tea.

One of our two apple trees, both of which have a lot of apples on them.  This is the first year they’ve produced much on this tree, and the first year the other tree has produced anything.  We’ll see how many of them stay on the plant, but so far, so good.

The gooseberry plants are both pretty loaded with fruits, even though we really axe murdered this plant by cutting out the older branches.  It didn’t seem to have slowed it down at all.

The pie cherry trees are both loaded with fruit.  Good thing, too, because we’re out of frozen cherries now.  Can’t really see the cherries as they are still pretty green.  There are way more cherries than there are leaves.

So the garden is doing pretty well.  All the wire cages are built except for two which will cover the strawberry beds.  We’ll have those in place by the end of the weekend.  Cucumbers are up and starting to grow, and so are the beans, carrots, and beets.  Now it’s just a matter of weeding, and watering and watching things grow.  The raspberries are starting to get ripe, too.

Roofing project

Finally we’re getting rid of the metal roofing.  This is the before picture.

This huge truck parked next to the greenhouse has a crane that can lift a pallet of roofing on to the roof from quite a distance.  At least that was the plan.

It was a very tight squeeze getting this huge truck into the driveway.  It’s a much bigger truck than we thought it would be.  Amazingly enough the hummingbirds didn’t seem to mind all this hullaballoo at all.  They carried on using their feeders.

The guys were walking around all over the metal roofing like it was just no big deal.  It’s really slick and intimidating to those of us who hate heights.  Even low heights.

Here they are busy tearing off the old metal roofing.  The stuff around the chimney was particularly difficult to get rid of, and detached.  While they were removing the old metal roofing, they discovered places on the underlying plywood that needed to be replaced, plus it needed some proper venting.  And that meant the truck couldn’t put the roofing up on the roof where it is convenient to the job at hand.

So instead of going from the truck to the roof.

It went to the yard and the guys get to carry it up on the roof on their shoulders, the old fashioned way.  This is also known as “Plan 2.”

End of day 1, plywood all patched, and the tar paper and ice dam prevention paper and drip edges were all installed and the roof was water-resistant, plus some roofing had been hauled up and placed where it would be convenient for installation.  After they left, we watched a large thunderstorm which developed to the west of us with trepidation, but it slid north, and stayed in Canada instead of visiting us.  Whew.

So today on Day 2 of the roofing project, all they had to do is haul all the roofing up and go to work laying it down.  They showed up at 7am, to beat the heat.

It went really fast, all things considered.

And all of a sudden they had picked everything up and we have new roofing, properly installed and vented.

And all of a sudden they had picked everything up and we have new roofing, properly installed and vented.

Yay!  No more snow sliding off the roofs and landing with a crash and a bang, and it will be quieter when it rains.  Which is good and bad.  When it’s a light rain, it sounds kind of neat, but when it’s a heavy downpour or hail, it is awfully loud.

The pink wall on the upper story is all the farther the painting has progressed so far, having been interrupted by weather and then roofing.  Hopefully soon that will be finished and then there’s just some masonry work to do on the chimney and foundation to fix old concrete, and the house will be in the best shape it’s ever been.

Progress 🙂

June 2015 to June 2016 was just the same old, same old, except for forest fires and hopefully that sort of thing doesn’t happen again – like ever.  Wishful thinking, I know.  But still.

All we did last year was gardening, making jams and preserving things from the garden, and staying home because the roads in/out of here were closed off and on due to massive forest fires and because it wasn’t safe to go anywhere far from home, again due to the fires.

So, that year is over – moving on 🙂

We took a trip to the Canadian Rockies last week, and also visited a world heritage site, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, which is in the eastern part of Alberta, in the badlands.  We got lucky on the weather.  We drove through rainstorms, but the mountains themselves were partly cloudy, and no mosquitoes to speak of!!  Nice!!!  Saw a few bears near the road, and Bighorn Sheep as well, playing next to the road and causing traffic jams 🙂  No moose, though, and no wolves, which we saw last time.

Lake Louise, one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, and it is one of the most visited placed in Banff National Park.  Totally understandable!!  Mountains rise straight up from the lake and a glacier hangs over the end of the lake, contributing the rock flour that gives the lake it’s beautiful color.

We heard a sound echoing off the mountains, and looked towards the glacier.  An ice dam had broken, and water was cascading down the sheer cliffs on the bottom edge of the glacier.  The water drained away in about 10 minutes, and the sound disappeared.  So cool!  The power of the water and ice was palpable, giving us chills.

Moraine Lake

Moraine Lake is another jewel located very close to Lake Louise, and it is actually our favorite lake.  We hadn’t been there for years, and the water level was about 40 feet lower than the last time we were there.  Where I took this picture from, standing on the bank, I would have been well underwater and the picture would have looked substantially different.

Just another view of Moraine Lake, showing how clear the water is and the color which is spectacular.

Jaspar National Park.  We took a drive north just sight-seeing.

This is a view from an overlook in Jaspar National Park, looking back south to the road we had just traveled on, heading north to the Columbia Ice Fields, the headwaters for the Columbia River.  You can see the road in the bottom of the valley, along the glacier fed river.

The thing about the Canadian Rockies is the mountains are spectacular.  Every time you go around a corner on the road, you see yet another breathtakingly beautiful mountain, and then when you turn around and go back the way you came, you see the mountains from a different perspective, and they are just so beautiful it’s really impossible to describe. You have to wonder how you missed that view the first time around.  Basically, you just need to go see them for yourself.

Heading east from the mountains, the landscape changes as the mountains disappear in the west.  It gets flatter and then you head down into a canyon, going back in geologic time until you arrive at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, 100,000 square feet of dinosaurs.  They have thousands and thousands of exhibits on display and they change things every year.  Not only do they have fossils from Alberta and Montana, which is directly south of Alberta and in the same geologic formations, they also have visiting exhibits from around the world.  It’s a fabulous museum and well deserving of its World Heritage Site designation.

Huge slabs of stone, with partially removed fossils tower over your head.  These animals were huge!!

Two of the rock walls.  Hard to imagine how they moved these around, much less excavated them from their original locations out in the badlands rock formations where they were found originally.

Some of the fossils are relatively small.  These little guys are some of the smaller bird-type fossils, a good 14 feet long from the tip of their noses to the tip of their tails.

One of the Albertosaurus fossils, is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod, during the Late Cretaceous period, 70 million years ago.  A T-rex, in other words.

The fossils are displayed in front of some really beautiful artwork depicting what the landscape would have looked like when they were alive.  It is hard to actually notice the artwork as the skeletons are completely engrossing to view.

These guys had sails on their backs.  I guess it helped them know which way the wind was blowing on any one particular day.

This is one of the frilled ceratopsian dinosaur, a relative of the Triceratops type.  These went extinct in the K-T extinction, 68 million years ago, give or take a few millions years.

Not all of the displays are complete as not all fossils have been found to make up a complete animal.  This was a large herbivore.  See the lack of teeth!

This display showed the evolution of the frilled dinosaurs with horns.  This was a type of triceratops.

Relatively small animals, still larger than the largest dogs alive today.  It’s really great when they have multiple specimens all on the same display; it really demonstrates the variety in sizes.

A very large turtle.

A large predator and it’s really huge prey.  These animals were found together in one of the bone beds.

A small fossil who obviously used his head as a battering ram.  The skull is almost solid bone, leaving no room for a brain.

This is my favorite of all the exhibits, a Triceratops found in Montana.  It is absolutely beautiful, and really large!!  Behind it is another  T-Rex, which completely dwarfs the Triceratops.

Another view of the Triceratops shows the beautiful skull.

This is the actual hip bones for the T-Rex standing behind it.  It is way too heavy to have lifted into the air for the display, so they used a lighter weight cast for the display.

This would be the view looking up as a T-rex was getting ready to snap me up as a small bite-sized snack.  I would fit comfortably in his or her mouth, whole.  The first time I saw this years ago, I asked Dan, “Wouldn’t it be scary to see this coming for you?!” and he replied, “Not for long!”

They have other more recent animals from the fossil record.

This Sabre Tooth cat looks kind of small, until you imagine several hundred pounds of muscle to go along with the impressive fangs.

This was a Woolly Mammoth.

The museum has over 1,000,000 individual fossils comprising 100,000 individuals.  My 18 pictures obviously don’t even begin to scratch the surface of all the wonderful things you can see at this museum.  Not to mention their fantastic arboretum which has living plants all represented in the fossil record.  That’s Dan’s favorite room.  I’m looking forward to our next trip 🙂

A couple of weeks before visiting Canada we visited the west coast, Seattle and Portland and Eugene, visiting friends and family.  The traffic was sort of a shock to our system.  Actually to be more accurate, it was a total shock to our systems.  We’re used to having two cars on the road with us constituting a traffic jam.

The Owens boys sitting on the deck of Mike’s house.

So now we are back home, and back to gardening, aka rodent wars.  Once we finish building the new cages for our raised beds, I’ll post a picture.  The Woods Rats aka packrats are already actively attacking unprotected plants.  That will be our project for today, building a few new cages.

The greenhouse is all planted and has been for about a week, but I waited to take pictures until some of the baby plants had time to put on more leaves and let us know if they were happy with their new living arrangements.  So these pictures are the “before” everybody gets with the program and starts growing.

A 3x3 space for basil to grow. Can't hardly see them, they are so tiny, but there are a lot of them popping up.

I put a thin layer of composted manure, then a 1/4 inch thick layer of potting soil mix, then a bunch of basil seeds scattered around artistically, then another 1/4 inch thick layer of potting soil mix.  And then we have been waiting for them to pop up.  It’s been a week and voila!  They are starting to appear.

Two butternut squash plants. These are supposed to be a bush type, and not sprawl all over and take over the world.

These squash plants have both added new leaves and they look happy so we have high hopes.  Butternut squash is so delicious.

Four sets of two cucumber plants. They don't have real leaves yet, but soon. And then we'll have to pick one of each set, and remove the second plant.

Dan is thinking about putting up some chicken wire for the cucumber plants to climb because they WILL try to take over the world.

A delicata squash plant.

It looks so little and non-assuming.  This plant will get very big so it has a whole bed to itself.

Two different kinds of melon, sharing a whole bed to themselves. Both of these plants will get huge.

We planted three varieties of melon, and we have high hopes of getting ripe melons again this year.

In one of the center beds we had planted some lettuce seeds last November. We planted the melon in the middle of the row of lettuce.

The melon will end up having the whole bed to itself but it can share with the butter head lettuce until they are big enough to eat.  We also have several volunteer dill plants growing.  And two hanging baskets which will go outside once I have a couple of hooks on which to hang them.

Our herb garden is doing well.

The planter box has a rosemary plant as it won’t overwinter, and six basil plants.  We’ll bring the rosemary plant back into the house in the fall.  We also have parsley, sage, thyme, oregano, chives, and more dill.

Six hot pepper plants are sharing a bed next to the herbs.

There are two bell pepper plants in the same row with the tomato plants.

We bought one tomato plant from a nursery, and the others are the seeds we planted.

Our baby tomato plants were so small we were doubtful but decided to put them in the greenhouse anyway and see if they could catch up with the nursery plant.

They are definitely doing their best to catch up. They are growing really well now.

Evidently the artificial grow lights just can’t hold a candle to real sunshine!

Looking from the back of the greenhouse to the front.

You can see the screen we put on all the windows.  It is really helping a lot to keep the wasps out of the greenhouse.  I still haven’t gotten any flowers for the pots, but will do that one of these days, very soon.

So just like the garden, we have everything planted and now we just have to water, week, watch things grow, and wait for them to get big enough.  This is the fun part!

Our rhododendron is finally blooming this year.

It evidently appreciated the aluminum sulfate to make the soil more to this plants liking.

A few of the iris are starting to bloom.

They don’t really like getting soaked with water when they are blooming, and we’re supposed to get an inch of rain tomorrow.  That’s a lot of rain.

And now for some after.  I’ve been working on redecorating and remodeling the upstairs guest room and art room since the winter, and it’s mostly done.  I repainted the whole room, and then moved everything around, trying to make it all fit and be accessible at the same time.

The closet in the guest room converted to a place for me to keep all my art supplies, and to do painting and drawing.

All the crystal pieces for the new light fixture are laying on the desk.

There is now an opening window on the west wall, giving great cross-ventilation to this room.

The window is a huge improvement to the room.  We haven’t put the window trim back up yet, as we’re not sure it will fit.  But one of these days we’ll get around to doing that.

The other side of the room has my loom and one of my spinning wheels, next to all the books.

It’s a very cheerful place to do spinning and weaving, and who knows, I might even get around to doing some of that here in the near future.

Plus I’ve organized all my fiber arts magazines and books so I can actually find something when I want to.

The treadle sewing machine and electronic sewing machine are next to each other, and very convenient for use.

All in all, the room is more comfortable now, and a lot more useful.

This year, pretty much as soon as we had baby plants (peas and spinach), up in the raised beds, the local rodent population rejoiced and sent out invitations for the party season.   Early party-goers harvest the majority of the spinach before it had real leaves, and dug up the peas.  Argh.

So we thought about it and decided to build a framework out of plumbing pipe and fixtures for the added benefit of being fairly light to handle.  Then we had to decide if we want to incorporate a wire cage inside the framework, or cover the framework with a floating row cover.  We decided to try floating row covers first.  We can always buy wire and make the cages later if the floating row covers don’t thwart the little bastards.

This is the fifth framework laying on the paving stones in the garden, waiting to be glued together.

By this time we have a system going and it doesn’t take a long time to put this together.  It’s a lot of sawing and measuring and gluing.  The gluing part is fun!  It gets all over everything.

Put together and sitting on the raised bed. This one doesn't have anything planted in it yet, so no need to cover it up. The far end of this raised bed is all the extra large strawberry plants I had such high hopes for. The winter did them in. Boo.

Each raised bed requires two frameworks.

Two completed raised beds, covered and protected.

The floating row covers are very lightweight and the wind pulls them out from where they are tucked in under the framework.  Not ideal, but since we installed them, the plant predation has ceased.  Yay!!!!  Humans win a round!

Had we not covered these pea plants, they would have been mowed to the ground.

The onions share the same bed with the peas and they are also enjoying their floating row cover.  It all makes watering a wee bit tedious as we have to move the floating row covers out of the way and then tuck them back in again after the watering is done.  But at least we have plants that need to be watered!

The gooseberry plant is gigantic and covered with little berries. We will have even more fruit from this plant than last year, and the other gooseberry plant is also putting on a lot of berries.

This was a close up.  The berries are very small at the moment.  There are just a LOT of them. 🙂

Here are the gooseberry, rhubarb, and josta berry plants all striving for supremacy of space.

We have already picked some rhubarb from the plant and need to harvest a bunch more.  The raised bed has the potato plants which are from the seed potatoes we saved out from last fall.  They are looking really good.

Red currant fruits are just literally covering all six of the bushes. Last year we got a small amount of fruit; this year will make up for it.

Dan really loves the red currant jam, so this is a good thing to see.  Chipmunks love the fruit too, so it will be a contest to see who gets there first.

Dan shows how big the rhubarb plant is.

The bigger of our two cherry trees is behind him and it is also loaded with cherries.  The apple tree to the right of the cherry tree is done blooming but we don’t know if it set any fruit yet.

These three josta berry plants are huge. Some of the stems are taller than Dan. And they are absolutely full of fruit. This will be the first real harvest.

We have been waiting for these plants to get with the program, and it looks like this year will be a taste of things to come. Josta berry jam is Dan’s favorite of all the jams I make.

One of four low bush blueberry plants, very covered with blossoms.

The larger blueberry bushes are looking a bit better but they don’t have any where near the number of blossoms.  And these low bush blueberry plants are more like the wild blueberries we loved in Alaska out in the bush, flavor wise.

The smaller of our two cherry trees is a bit behind and is just now in full bloom.

It is going to have to fight for space from the josta berry plants next to it.

It’s going to be a very good fruit year, I think.

The drive down was interesting – snow and rain showers through the mountains. We didn’t really take warm enough clothes for that sort of weather, so all we could do was hope it would be better the next day. It was better, not much precipitation, but cold and windy. On well, that’s the way it goes sometimes. It was still really good birding!

Along Lake Roosevelt we saw a flock of twenty White Pelicans, the only pelicans we saw on the whole trip.

The water levels as Malheur were the lowest we’ve ever seen and Dan has been going to Malheur since the late 1960’s.  The narrows were dry!!  And Krumbo Reservoir was also dry.  Really surprising how low the water was all over the refuge.  I wanted to drive over to see Harney Lake but the winds were kicking up huge clouds of alkaline laden dust clouds so we decided that didn’t actually sound like that much fun to go driving into those conditions.

Driving down to Frenchglen we saw a Prairie Falcon riding the winds next to the lava cliffs overhanging the road.  And we saw the first of what was to be many Short-eared Owls.  Those were two exciting bird species to see prior to our planned day of birdwatching.

Black-crowned Night-Heron.

We’ve tried to find these herons on the last several trips, without success.  So we were very happy to find them right off the bat.

Adult and baby Great-Horned Owls. The baby is peeping at us over his parents' shoulder. The adult opened one eye.

Never really thought of owls as cuddling, but this baby was definitely cuddling with the adult.

Two babies and two adults were occupying a large Cottonwood tree in a small copse of woods next to a beaver dam.  They were all pretty sleepy and mellow, and didn’t seem particularly disturbed by us visiting their home and taking pictures.

American Bittern.

We haven’t seen a Bittern in many years and it was so surprising to see one sitting out of the reeds, pretending to be invisible. One time when we were at Malheur, one of these birds was sitting right next to the road, singing.  Well, technically they were singing, but the song is described as a pumping a rusty hand pump on a well.  It was a sight and sound we’ll never forget.

Sandhill Crane.

A large number of Sandhill Cranes flock through Malheur on their way north to their breeding grounds in Alaska and Northern Canada.  And some stay here and raise their babies at Malheur.  There is a hen sitting on a nest at the Malheur headquarters pond, and that’s the first time we’ve ever seen a Crane on a nest.  We were wondering how much they were paying her for her reality TV appearance.  We also saw a Common Raven sitting on a nest she’d built in the upper rafters of the Round Barn.  For the first time in years we were able to walk into and around the Round Barn.  It was high and dry.  The last time we would have needed hip waders to get around in the water.

Great Egret.

Lots of Egrets were stalking around in the grass, looking for something tasty to eat.

Off to find greener pastures. Literally.

A Badger busy digging for ground squirrels. These animals are not usually seen, so it was exciting watching her (most likely), go about her business.

Dan read up on this Badger, and it was most likely a female foraging for her babies.

And we weren’t the only ones interested in watching the Badger.

A Burrowing Owl was keeping a close eye on the Badger, as well. These little ground dwelling owls are on the menu for a Badger.

We’ve looked for Burrowing Owls for many years, without success.  But thanks for our friends Casey and Carmen, the losing streak of trips to Malheur without seeing a Burrowing Owl came to an end.

Other birds we saw, more or less in the order in which we saw them:

Vaux Swift

Osprey

Willet

White-faced Ibis

Snowy Egret

Long-billed Curlew

Cinnamon Teal

Avocet

Loggerhead Shrike

Swaison’s Hawk

Horned Lark

Sage Thrasher

Black Tern

Great Blue Heron

Wilson’s Snipe

Blue-wing Teal

Yellow Warbler

California Quail

Northern Shoveler

Ring-neck Duck

Marsh Wren

Brewer’s Blackbird

Red-wing Black Bird

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Pintail

Gadwall

Common Yellow-throat

Yellow-breasted Chat

Forester Tern

Capsian Tern

Sora

Trumpeter Swan

Pied-billed Grebe

Western Grebe

Redhead

Canvasback

Rock Wren

Wilson’s Phalarope

Ruddy Duck

Plus a lot of other bird species we’d already seen this year, at home, and which I didn’t list.  Malheur is such a great spot to go birding.  Already thinking about a trip next year.  We didn’t see any of the waders or peeps, and no geese except for Canadian Geese, which had flotillas of babies following them around.  Fun place!!!

Our satsuma orange tree arrived via snail mail today, and the planter arrived by Fedex yesterday (good timing!) and so today we put the planter together and planted our new baby tree.

The tree will live in the south west corner of the sunroom. It already has some blooms and baby oranges on it.

Learn something new every day – it takes 12 months for a ripe fruit from the time a blossom appears.

So far no other wildflowers have appeared in the yard except for these buttercups.

Next we should see Spring Beauty, but so far none have shown up.

Their size is not very impressive but these baby Swiss Chard plants are in the greenhouse, well over a month before we'll be planting seeds in the garden.

Today we’re going to plant some pepper and tomato seeds in pots indoors.  We put a card table up in the living room and will set the peat pots up under grow lights.

A rotten log laying on the ground next to the woodshed and garage.

We had to pull down the outside bird feeders earlier than we had wanted to, due to the activity of the large black bear who is hanging around.  He used his claws and put a big dent into this rotten log, searching for ants or other insects.  We are not sure why he didn’t find the feeders, but there was no sense in tempting fate twice!  This tree isn’t all that soft either.  Bears are amazingly strong critters.

We planted some lettuce and swiss chard seeds in the greenhouse on February 10th.  The baby plants are just now starting to get a little bigger but no real leaves yet, so I’m not sure how ahead of the game we got planting them so early.  But still, we planted seeds in February!!  That must be worth something.

Today we put the shade on the greenhouse.  It was a little tricky getting the first corner where it belonged but then the rest was actually pretty easy.  And it makes a difference in the overall heat in the greenhouse, combined with opening a couple of side windows, it knocked the temperature down from in the 90’s to the mid 70’s, which all the plants will like a lot better.

It makes the light inside the greenhouse a lot softer. We had been waiting for a day when it wasn't windy, or raining, or snowing. Today was it!

The squirrel proofing Dan did last year to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeders works a treat.  I want to put up another post and put a bluebird house on top of it.  Maybe we can keep the House Wrens out of it.

A piece of metal flashing is tacked down on the post using roofing nails. The collar is for a stove pipe for a gas water heater. It's enough of a lip out from the board that the squirrels cannot reach around it.

The first time the squirrels tried to get past it, you could just see them say, “damn!”  🙂

These are addictive, gluten free almond flour donuts which are baked, not fried, and then covered with cinnamon sugar.

I might just have to make some of these tomorrow. I’ve been good and haven’t made them for a while.  Being good can only last so long.

The earliest blooming plant we have is this Daphne. It has easily tripled in size since we planted it.

We also have some blooming Buttercups in the yard.  This seems really early!  And we saw both a very large Black Bear down by the garden a couple of weeks ago, and a tick the same day.  Both were a surprise.

Spring is very definitely here.

Well, not totally nothing.  We’ve been getting new seed catalogs in the mail, and thinking about what we want to plant next year.  And thinking about all the strawberries (hopefully!), I’ll have to play with in June.

Mishkin hiding under the couch, glaring at the fact the housekeeper was here.

He was growling and hissing at her, so Dan used the cat attitude adjustment tool, aka squirt bottle, and chased him up the stairs.  He came down about five minutes later, and crawled under the couch, and resumed giving dirty looks to all and sundry, mainly Dan who had managed to get a few minute drops of water on him.

We had really cold weather in December, -13F one morning and then several other mornings well below zero.  Then it fogged in and we didn’t see the sun at all.

Everything outside was covered with ice crystals, well over an inch long.

Trees, bushes, dry grasses sticking up out of the snow.

It was a fairy land outside, until the wind kicked up and blew everything away.

Then it warmed up and snowed a bunch.  And then it warmed up more and the snow melted.  And then it snowed again about a foot, which is where we are today.

The snow hasn't fallen off the roof by the living room (yet), and the icicles are growing all sorts of weird angles as the snow curls around.

I’ve thought about trying to knock off this icy edge of snow and ice hanging out over the edge of the roof, but it looks a little intimidating so I’ll just not and say I did.

Even the greenhouse is dreaming of spring.

And it’s doing it’s imitation of a glacier as the snow started oozing over the side and hanging down.

And then it shook off the snow cover with an impressive avalanche.

Today we’re back to being in a fog bank.  Figures.  I’d really like to see the comet but we won’t see the sky at all until this fog goes away and it shows no signs of wanting to do that.

So I’m playing in the kitchen.  I fixed coleslaw and I’m making pizza.  Can’t hardly imagine everything green outside, but we’ll be planting lettuce and greens in the greenhouse in two months, and potatoes in the garden in mid April.  It will be here before we know it.

We woke up to a foot of snow fall over the previous 24 hours, on Wednesday morning, almost all of it overnight. Heavy wet snow, too, which weighed trees and branches down.

It was a good thing Dan had already shoveled the first three inches that fell late Tuesday afternoon. This was very heavy work.

As the temperatures warmed up, the snow starts sliding off the metal roofing.

This is why I want to have different roofing, besides metal.  When these heavy sheets of snow fall from the upper roof they land with a loud crash.  And then the doubled load of snow slides off and lands on our walkways, and must be shoveled off again.  We’ve cleared the sidewalks by the door several times since this last snowfall.

We had much entertainment plowing the driveway, clearing small trees which were falling over the road.   Temperatures are going to plummet by Saturday morning, with a predicted low of -13F.  This wet snow would have set up like concrete, so we’re very happy to get the driveway cleaned up as much as possible.

So, what do Mish and G have in common?

"Snow?!?!!?!?!!!? But, I'm an indoor kitty!!"

No feet touched the ground anywhere near the container of snow. Amazing how squirmy he is, at times.

It’s really true what they say about firewood. It keeps you warm when you are cutting, stacking, splitting, or hauling it around, in any combination. Last week we got to experience everything except the cutting down trees part. And we were warm despite having low temperatures ranging from 3F to a balmy 10F this morning.

All cleaned up, and the pile of loose bark has a couple of tarps keeping it dry over the winter so we can burn it next spring while there's still snow on the ground.

It took us all week to get the wood put away.  That stuff is heavy!  And some of the pieces were really big, hard to hang onto.  We bought a couple of new splitting mauls with fiberglass handles, and hopefully they will be tough enough not to break right away, unlike the wood handled axes.

The woodshed holds about 8 cords of firewood, stacked as high as Dan can reach for the most part. Which means I can't reach a lot of this.

A small amount of the firewood is stacked in front of two sections of the woodshed and we’re working on splitting and using that first.

Friday we’re supposed to see our first serious snowfall, lasting all weekend, and then next week it will be several more days of snow.  Winter is arriving.