Sign of Spring

Well, well, well today is the first day of spring. Isn't that just great? I think so. And right now the temperature is a fine 28 deg.F. Gotta love Maine.

Anyway, I was out in the yard last night playing with my dogs and after looking around in I realized that around here the first real sign of spring is that the dog turd starts to reappear out of the melting snow piles. Its not just some dog turd either. It is a lot. How much, I wondered as I kicked the red jolly ball down into the back yard, is there?

Assumptions:

1. December 1 to March 19= 109 days
2. Dogs= 2
   
3. Turd per day (t.p.d) = 1

• Therefore:

(109 days) x (1 t.p.d) x (2 dogs) = 218 dog turds.

Well shit, literally, at least during the summer the turds decay quickly. Ya see, the real issues are the temporary frozen stasis of the winter turd environment and that each new snow storm covers up the previous batch of turds while simultaneously providing a new layer to accept new turds. Then as the snow melts, more and more turds are., in turn, reverse exposed.
Kind of like erosion and paleontological discoveries of dinosaur bones. But these are no bones., no sir...maybe the processed remains of bones, but no bones. These are dog turds: brown ones, fresh ones, old ones, gray ones. turds covered in bird seed. turds with fur. turds that are now so mushy are barely identifiable...until you get close.
It was the bird seed encrusted ones that led to a minor discovery. My dogs are eating the bird seed that falls from the bird feeder. Great...
Now I'm wondering:

• how much does that all weigh?;
• how does it correlate to the weight of food I am feeding them?

I better stop now. my mind is swimming in thoughts of dog shit. Only one last question remains: how much of it will I step in tomorrow?

Have a great spring weekend.

S'more Snow

I am lucky enough that on days that the weather is REALLY fierce I can 'work from home'. I put that phrase in quotes because I don't believe that everyone I work with actually 'works' when they stay at home during these weather events, but that is off topic.

Currently my work load is pretty light compared to normal so this was actually a good day for me to stay planted at the ranch, watch the woodpeckers and focus on clearing the driveway before the rain comes in and makes the snow good and heavy. I suspect that after tonight we are going to be left with an awesome blocky ice mess to deal with.
As of today the yard has 32" of base snowpack, plus the 7" or 8" that just fell. This has been a long winter with lots of snow. I am REALLY looking forward to Spring this year.

Spring Flowers

Yeah. My first spring cover. Yellow flowers. what are the daffodil's. I got them from my dad. He had pulled out all his flowers for some crazy reason (actually mostly lilies). Anyway, So I ended up with a trash bag full of root and plant. But when I say trash bag...I'm not talking 15 gallon house hold. I mean a full size outdoor contractor bag. HUGE. I planted all of them, like 50 pounds.
Toward the end I was just putting them in the woods a little way. They'll grow. So the pic is the first of masses.