Winter Wonderland

Winter has felt very strong this year.  Many snow storms, each requiring manual labor with my ol' snowblower. 10-horsepower mind you, not those wimpy 8hp deals. No sir, my machine is a real beast only to be wielded by men and trained oxen.  For a while there I was feeling pretty beat down by all the effort and not having any fun with it. At the time I just figured the funk was from either all the snow storms and labor to move it or some other rut, work maybe.

One evening I was in the basement having a party with myself.  Wife came down to see what I was up to and we started talking about our loss of Watson. It totally ruined my party.  But in hindsight that's when I started feeling better. No shit.  Only today did I realize that it was that issue keeping me depressed. Not the damn storms, not work. Nope, just straight up unacknowledged sorrow and mourning.

 So now the next storm comes. There I am battling with winter again. This time I actually went out while it was still snowing and blowing, before the plows even. And I'm workin' and 'blowin' and then I shout into the wind whipped snow 'IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?'  followed by a menicial laughter.

Then news of another storm approaching. Shit, well now would be a good day to shovel the roof.  So I did. 2.5 hours later I finished. Of course I was a nut and did a 1.25 hour snowshoe prior.  Which finally gets me to what I wanted to post originally.  

Fun pics, and a gratuitous kid photo.

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.

'sonly May but....

Memorial Day just went by, but that is no reason not to start getting wood ready for winter. Here is my first 1/4 cord of the year.

Felled, cut, hauled, split and stacked in less than a day. I only need to do this about 20 more times.

The wood is mostly beech and a little birch. I love burning beech, it burns hot and long. Its tough to split, espically by hand as I usually do.

When its 80 deg F in the house during a sub-zero day in February and I have to crack the sliding door to cool the house down, the work is well worth it.

Plus, Who can say no to free heat?