The Day After the Storm

Today we woke up to clear skies and crisp air after Blizzard Jonas dumped over two feet of snow on us Friday and Saturday. It was time to emerge from the house and try to dig out. By afternoon we could get our car out if we had to in case of emergency. That was the goal. We're lucky that the farmer at the end of the street brought out his front end loader and helped.

Here are a few pictures from today. Unfortunately, it's hard to get an idea of deep the snow really is. But it was deep. For us, anyway. Another time I will show you many of the birds that visited us during the storm.

One of the lucky things about the storm was that the wind blew most of the snow off the tree limbs. Before the storm, they predicted the wind would blow down snow-laden limbs on lines and cause power outages. However there were very few outages in this area associated with the storm. You can see the oak tree in front of house is mostly bare.

Here's Ward shoveling the first pathway down the driveway. 

Luckily, our neighbor came to clear his mother's driveway with his front end loader. Her driveway is directly across the street from ours. In the process of trying to find places to put the snow from her house, he cleared some of our driveway, too. Yea!

I took a walk in the neighborhood to see if I could make it out to the main road. I made it and found the main road mostly wet. Our street went from barely passable to seeing blacktop like in this picture. However, the small side streets hadn't been touched. I think our neighbor cleared what had been done. 

Late afternoon, the blue skies got some high clouds.

The backyard remains largely untouched at this point. I'm not sure where the deer rode out the storm.

Thankful Sunday--January 24, 2016

I am thankful for a snow day.

As most of you know we had a big snow storm here yesterday.  We haven't done exact measurements, but it looks like we got about 2 1/2 feet at our house. Luckily, we kept electricity the whole time, so we had the perfect snow day. We were warm inside and had a good show outside to watch with the falling snow and visiting birds.

Also, the fact that we couldn't go out put us in a different frame of mind. We did some clean up that we never seemed to get to. We cleaned out three drawers, two baskets, and one cabinet. We found a couple of things we had forgotten about and found a couple of things we couldn't identify.

Today is dig out day. Right now the temperatures are in the teens and wind is still blowing. But the snow has stopped. And for the break the snow day brought to us yesterday, I am thankful.

And so it begins

A cardinal and nuthatch at the beginning of the snow.

For the past week, our area has been preoccupied with the predicted blizzard for this weekend. The news has been full of ever changing weather forecasts predicting 2-3 feet of snow and high winds. Warnings have been issued to expect power outages. The store shelves are empty and gas stations are out of gas. Schools and business closed early today in anticipation of the impending snow.

Ward and I have done the necessary preparations. We have the mandatory toilet paper and milk, and I baked bread today because the store was out when I went on Wednesday. We have water set aside to drink and flush the toilet in case we lose electricity. (When we lose power, our well pump no longer works and we have no water.) The flash lights have batteries and we have gas for the generator. We have a few good books and puzzles.

And as predicted, this afternoon, the snow began. It is supposed to last until Sunday morning with the winds picking up tonight. Now we are in the fun part of the storm--the beginning where we are watching the quiet white flakes cover up the grays and browns of winter with no urgency to go anywhere or do anything. I hope it continues this way. But if I believe the predictions, we may not be so lucky. Stay tuned.

A Second Look--January 20, 2016

Well, the big excitement this week was that the hanging wire on the bird feeder broke sending the feeder to the ground and spilling a lot of seed. This made the squirrels very happy. Even the deer have shown up for a snack or two.

Ward said that it's not an easy fix, so it may be some time before it is repaired. In the meantime, we've hung up another feeder that we had in the garage. I got the feeder from someone who no longer used it and I was going to sand and paint some of the rusty places it had. However, our first real snow of the season is coming on Friday and we want the birds to be able to find something to eat. So, we hung the new-to-us feeder. They seemed to be adapting to it just fine.

Here are a few things I saw this week

 during a Second Look.

The squirrel found the downed feeder right away.

He was still quite happy with the sunflower seed left when the feeder was picked up. We decided to leave the seed where it was. (You may notice some snow in the squirrels tail. We ended up with a dusting that day.)

The deer have been by a few times for a sunflower seed snack.

The birds seem to like the different feeder. Here a tufted titmouse and black-capped chickadee are visiting.

Our regular downy woodpecker visitors were joined this week by a red-bellied woodpecker.

The dark-eyed juncos like to stay a little closer to the ground. They are rarely seen on the hanging feeders.

Flocks of crows (otherwise know as murders) visit the yard a couple times a day now. They've been doing this for about a week.

Thankful Sunday--January 17, 2016

These are the books Kimmy and I read yesterday.

I am thankful for the library.

Kimmy, a special needs teenager who lives next door, visits me most days so we can read together. She loves the actual process of reading out loud more than listening to a story, so that has evolved into she reads a page and then I read a page. While her reading has improved, she has not progressed beyond the beginning reading stage and that limits our choice of books.  

Kimmy has a very good memory and remembers most of the books we have read. She doesn't like to repeat a book, so that limits our choices further. That is where the library comes in. While we have read hundreds of books together from there, there are still hundreds (thousands?) to go. And for that I am thankful.