The O-Zone

December sun sets far to the south and west, through the trees.  We haven’t been seeing much in the way of sunsets this month; lots of cloudy weather at the wrong time of day.

Fuzzy clouds reflect the sunlight, and the sunset is reflected in the clear bird feeder.

Today we had a herd of Pine Siskins in the bird feeder, and a lone Evening Grosbeak was yelling at the top of a tree.  Normally we don’t see just one Evening Grosbeak on their own; he had lost his flock and was yelling about it until they come back and find him, or somebody else finds him like one of the predators which hang around our yard from time to time.

Speaking of predators, here is Mishkin waiting for me to come inside from taking a picture, and looking innocent.

This is his best, "Who?.... Me?" look.

Sunlight hitting a small icicle. Sparkles like crystal.

I just thought this was pretty, outside the sunroom windows. We were sitting in the room reading, and the sparkle kept catching my eye.

I found a recipe for Cinnamon Rolls on the internet and they were good, so now I’m playing with the recipe.

These were worth the mess.

Grease a 9 inch glass pie pan and set it aside; pre-heat oven to 375F.

Step one:   Wash and dry an organic Orange, and then finely grate the orange peel, collecting approximately 1 Tablespoon of peel in a bowl – set aside

Step two:  Cream together 2 Tablespoons margarine or butter with 1/4 cup white sugar, and then add the grated orange peel

Step three:  Heat 2/3 cup of almond milk to 110F – add to it 1/4 cup of canola oil, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 large egg.  Beat to combine.

Step four:  Add the milk mixture to the butter/sugar/orange peel mixture and whisk thoroughly.  Add 1 Tablespoon dry yeast and whisk again

Step five:  Combine 1/2 cup potato starch, 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons corn starch, 2-1/2 teaspoons xantham gum, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda.  Stir to combine.

Step six:  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and whisk to combine as much as possible, and then use a large heavy spatula to make sure everything is mixed well.  The dough will be very soft.

Step seven:  Cover a breadboard with plastic wrap; sprinkle with some white sugar.  Place the ball of dough in the middle of the board, and sprinkle with a teaspoon of corn starch.  Cover with more plastic wrap and then roll it out with a rolling pin to about 12 inches square.

Step eight:  Mix 1/2 cup brown sugar with 1 teaspoon (scant) cinnamon.  Sprinkle this evenly on the flat dough, leaving 1/2 inch margin clear on the edge of the dough.  Sprinkle raisins around.

Step nine:  Using the edge of the plastic wrap closest to you, start rolling the dough up until it is in a tube.

Step ten:  Cut the tube in half and then cut each half into four even slices.  They will be around an inch wide, give or take a bit.  Place the slices into the prepared pie pan.

Step eleven (optional step):  Put the pie pan in the oven.  Drop the contents of the pan into the bottom of the oven.  Curse a little.  Turn off the oven and the smoke alarm.  Remove the mess from the bottom of the oven as much as possible given the fact it’s very hot.  Open the windows in the kitchen.  Console the cat who is sure the world just ended.  Clean the oven, and the rest of the dishes.  Repeat steps one through ten, and skip the whole dropping into the oven.

Make some icing while the rolls are baking for 23 minutes:

Combined 1 Tablespoon soft margarine or butter with 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and fresh orange juice from the orange you just used to make orange zest.  Drizzle over the rolls when they emerge from the oven.

The first time I tried this experiment with the original recipe, I didn’t have any fresh oranges, so I used orange extract.  That was awful!!!!!  Don’t do that.

Mountain shadows mid morning.

Three weeks away from the Winter Solstice, the shadow cast by the mountain above us creeps farther into the morning hours.  I love this time of year, when the contrast between light and dark is dramatic.

The heavy cloud cover of the past several days seems like it is breaking up a bit, and that means we may see sunshine today for our solar panels.  They have been lazy panels, taking a nap from power production.

A new recipe to try out, easy to make relatively speaking, and one to definitely make again.

But not too often, or the consequences could get bad!

A very cold wave of air slid south, colliding with warmer moist air sliding west, and the result was snow.  Not a lot of snow, only six inches, but it isn’t going away anytime in the near future.

One and a half wheelbarrows of firewood, stacked next to the sun room door. This will be mostly gone by morning.

Filling the wood rack was Dan’s main project for today, keeping the house warm.  Early this morning it was -2F with a stiff wind.  That is enough to take your breath away!  It warmed up to +7F, and now that the sun is getting lower in the sky, the temperature is dropping like a rock.  It is already down to +3F.  Forecast is -20F overnight, and it seems highly likely we will see that in the morning.

Shoveling sidewalks is so much easier than shoveling a path over uneven ground. And it makes moving the firewood around much easier!

We knew we were going to love having sidewalks when it got snowy this winter, and we are not disappointed.  Not having to worry about tipping the wheelbarrow over when the front wheel get stuck in a hole in the ground is a luxury we both really appreciate.

Wading through snow to get to the bird feeders isn't that big a deal. A one shovel wide path is all we'll need to make when it gets deeper.

The low angle of the sun casts dark blue shadows around every tuft of grass hidden below the first snowfall.  Our outside birds are very happy with their seeds and suet.  Our yard is a popular place all winter long.  A couple of days ago the Pygmy Owl was hanging around on top of one of the tall pine trees, calling and talking to him/herself.  They sound like a small horn, tooting.  The small birds in our yard were having a fit about that.

Broom in hand, Dan walks down the hill from the house, to brush snow off the solar panels.

The mountain still shades our house but by mid morning the sun has moved far enough around to reach the solar panels.

A light swish with the bloom, and the light fluffy snow covering the panels cascades down.

It took two swishes with the broom to clean the solar panels off completely. It is a mini-avalanche. I'm not quite tall enough to be able to reach to the top of the largest solar panel array.

Just two swishes it all it takes to clean the smaller solar panel array. No snow will fall tonight, it's going to be crystal clear skies.

After the panels were cleared of their light snow cover, they began producing power, enough to fill the batteries and power the washer and dryer.  Clean clothes, courtesy of the sun.  The sun is down now behind the mountains, at 3:35 PM.  And we still have a month to go until the shortest day of the year.

A pitchy piece of firewood is so pretty to watch in the stove, not to mention the fact it puts out a tremendous amount of heat.

I love watching the fire burning in the stove when I’m working.  And our little furry cat child loves it too.

He was rolling around on the floor, upside down and looking extremely silly, until I told him I was going to take his picture. At which point he struck a royal cat pose and pretended there was something interesting to watch in front of the stairs. Perhaps a bug?

The first real snowfall for winter melted.  That was our cue to hurry up and get all the rest of our outdoor chores completed.  We scattered the remainder of the grass seeds in areas where the grass we planted didn’t take, but weeds did!  The chipmunks are all sleepy-bye now and the seeds will have a chance to grow next year, instead of making our local population of chipmunks look like funny colored tennis balls with head, feet and tail, rolling about the yard and squeaking.

We also planted several baby Juniper trees on the edge of the lawn, between the house and the driveway.  They won’t get bombarded by snow sliding off the roof and the surrounding trees should provide some shelter.  Hopefully they were dormant before we planted them.

It wasn't snowing when we woke up, and we had green grass and a visible sidewalk.

It started snowing shortly after it got light outside, and it kept snowing until mid-day, by which time we had at least three inches of fluffy wet snow.  Next on the agenda, Monday temperatures are forecast to be -4F for the low (-20C – sounds colder, doesn’t it?) and that means that winter has arrived.

And how!

It has been an extremely uneventful week or so, just the way we like it.  Mostly we’ve been watching the few remaining leaves falling, and waiting for snow to fall.  We’d seen a few flakes falling, but couldn’t really say it was snowing, just ‘flaking.’  I’m really hoping for heavy snowfall this year.  I still keep hoping to get snowed in someday.

Sidewalk needs shoveling, but wait, it will just melt instead!

This morning we woke up to a world transformed overnight into white!  It’s so funny, but after just a few weeks of seeing snow everywhere, it becomes hard to imagine things being green again.  That is one of the best things about living somewhere with seasonal changes.  There is never enough time to get totally sick of one sort of weather pattern before it all changes.

The bird feeders are extremely popular this morning.

We changed the angle of the solar panels to compensate for the lower sun in the sky, and theoretically the snow will slide off easily.

Not going to see much solar gain from the panels today.  Even if we did brush them off the sky is overcast.  That means we will need to run the generator today.  And that means we need to put some gas in it.  And that means we need to go get some gasoline to put into the generator.  And that means we need to put on snow tires.  If it isn’t one thing….

They only come out at night... mostly.

The Snowshoe Hares are changing into their snow white winter coats, and we only have been seeing them at dusk or early morning, before it is really light enough to see.  This one was sitting on the sidewalk munching grass that was close enough to reach without getting his paws damp.  They will all be completely white in a few more days, at most.  They change so fast.  And then they will be very miffed at the snow melting, and there is nothing more dangerous than a miffed rabbit.  Monty Python documented that, once upon a time.

Yesterday a Ruffed Grouse appeared in the flower bed right next to the house.  There are some few remaining Serviceberries on the branches, and the grouse had his eye on them.  So I took a picture because they are such pretty birds and they make me laugh.

Neck feathers on these guys are long and they fluff them out, making a ruff. They think they look tough when they do this. Here he is slowly stalking the berry prey, through the bark mulch.

Mishkin went over to the window to see what I was doing, and was standing up making kitty chirp noises at the bird.  Normally I would think a grouse, who is on virtually everybody’s menu, would just flee.  But not this bird.

The grouse turned around and fluffed his ruff for all it was worth, and started stalking towards the window at the waiting cat.  Mish decided there was something interesting on the other side of house to look at, instead.

Score:  Grouse 1 Mishkin 0

The lighter ball of fluff is 50/50 Alpaca/Cashmere, and the darker one is 100% Alpaca.

Yesterday I received a care package of fluff from Diana.  I think I will spin a single from each and ply them together for a variegated yarn, and knit a new hat.  Dan says I look disreputable when I wear his old wool hat, and this should solve the problem.  Thanks Diana!  She’s seen me wearing that old hat too.

Today we had a Blue Grouse visiting our front yard (the Dusky Grouse sub species.)  Such a pretty bird!

You can see the blue feather coloring on the neck and head.

The pictures a little fuzzy because we were taking them through the front door glass.  We didn’t want to scare the little guy away.

Keeping a beady eye on us, but not overly nervous.

Sitting next to the sidewalk is one of the pocket gopher mounds of dirt. I thought perhaps she was considering a dirt bath, but the dirt was a little bit too wet for such activity.

Delicate sculptured feathers.

Very calm, surveying the sidewalk and then wandering off through the brush and up the driveway.

We see these birds every fall since we moved here, but not at other times of year.  They are probably at the higher elevations.  The only other place we’ve seen these is in the high Cascade mountains.