Deep Winter

Wintry Forecast

daily haiku

rabbits face south
turn towards the noonday sun
drink in rays of warmth

A Happy New Year to all of you who read my blog

May 2015 be a healthy and blessed year for you all.

Prolonged cold with plenty of snow and wind brings us deep into winter. A chilly greeting for 2015. Actually it is probably more like the usual Montana winters that I remember from the 60's and 70's and is somewhat reassuring considering evidence of global warming.

This week I took down the Xmas Tree and all the decorations; but as always, the hardest part is taking down the Christmas greeting cards that I tape to the living room bookshelves. When they are "up' it feels like I am surrounded by the good wishes and love that the cards bring to me. A wonderful feeling.  After I remove them I spend an afternoon re-reading them and the letters that often are enclosed. As the cost of buying and mailing increases, each one becomes more valuable in the good feelings they convey. 

The animals are interesting to watch as they adapt to winter survival.  A lovely sight - the chickadees hover and the tree creepers scamper upside down under the eaves to drink the drops of water from the end of the icicles on my porch roof. They are very close to me as I sit in my chair.  The rabbits eat the yucca growing in front and then chase each other at high speed through the snow.  I doubt they are mating, although you never know with their oversexed species; I think it is more the need for warmth.  And with that, I had better get dressed for the day and do some more shoveling to keep myself in the same condition!

Christmas 2014

Christmas 2014

Teddy and the Puffalumps arrive, and Christmas can begin

Snow on Christmas Morning

A chilly Finch

Deer wish me a Happy Christmas

What beauty - both the snowy country and the Doe!

 christmas tanka

snow falls
a silent landscape broken
by squabbling finches
indoors the sounds of carols
and the tearing of paper

I wish all of you a happy and healthy  New Year in 2015. It is probably too much to ask for peace in the world but I do anyway.

I put up decorations early this year and was enjoying them, but somehow it wasn't quite Christmas. I have some Christmas toys called Puffalumps, that were given as a free gift by a store back in the 80's, and Christmas does not officially arrive on the hill, until they emerge and join my Christmas Teddy Bear on the sofa. Teddy plays Christmas Carols when you squeeze his paw, and what is even more fun, will burst into song spontaneously when there is static electricity around him! I do remember one night in July when there was a lightning strike close to the house and he started playing "Silent Night" - that night was anything but silent!  Still, I didn't quite have that certain "Christmas"  feeling yet. Then on the 23rd I was playing carols on the radio and baking cookies, and suddenly it arrived.  The smells and sounds and sights all combined and my senses knew it was Christmas.

 Christmas morning here was beautiful. In the many years that I have lived here , I think this is the first time I awoke to snow falling gently all around. We received about four inches of quiet beauty and to quote the poem "not a creature was stirring".  Then the finches moved in to the bird feeder and had contests with the chickadees for sunflower seeds and their squabbles filled the air.

At my computer reading the morning mail I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and it was two visiting Does.... one was smaller than the other and I suspect it was her offspring for this year. What a sight.  I whistled and talked to them and they just stood and listened. Then eventually they moved over the hill to take their trail to the river and drink. 

I decided to stay home this year and shared Christmas dinner with my friends Owen and Diana.We had a wonderful meal and then watched the deer from the porch window as evening descended. Now as we head into the New Year I have no idea where I will be next December, but one thing is for sure, if this is my last Christmas here, it was a very special gift. 

Fast Time with a Polar Vortex

Early morning a day before the snow came

Low temps and fluffy birds!

Baby mice on the front seat of my car

usual dawn
usual sky
hard to believe
in a polar vortex
but the mice know

 ------------------------------------------

overnight
landscape change from brown to white
the big chill arrives

My main decision for today was whether to vacuum or to blog, so of course I decided to write! Winter weather finally came as a gift from Canada.....a polar vortex .......as my friend Art says, they are inventing newer more technical names for things now - it used to be called an arctic front, or even just a cold front.

After the gorgeous fall weather we had, we are all very spoiled.  Still, we usually transition into cold weather with a more genteel movement. The critters are all back.  Fred is in my bathroom and determined to commit suicide in the bathtub;  I had to remove him three times last week.  He was very fat from his summer pickings, but now has slimmed down to normal again. 

We had a nasty infestation of wasps - that is one thing I love about the cold - they disappear. Box Elder bugs swarm all over and walk on me while I am at the computer, and the mice reek vengeance indoors and out. Two weeks ago today I walked in Birney, got hot, and removed my scarf. I put it on the front seat of the car. The following Sunday I went to get a lifesaver candy and jumped a mile - there on the front seat neatly nestled in my scarf was a mouse nest and four baby mice! It got into the glovebox, I found later, and chewed through my car registration certificate. Lots of cleaning with lysol!  Indoors, I caught three mice in traps before the snow came.  How do they sense the oncoming weather?

Yesterday and today I am back to the treadmill for exercise. I don't like it nearly as much as the great outdoors.  The days are slipping by so fast. My friend Thelma said "See you at Thanksgiving" when I telephoned her yesterday! Yikes!  I have yet to find Christmas gifts for the family and I like to get them ordered before Turkey day. That is usually easy with USPS delivering two inches of catalogs to my mailbox each Monday. 

A woman who owned the Livingston Enterprise newspaper in Montana, used to call daylight savings time "Fast Time" she was always relieved when the clocks fell back in the fall. It feels to me like time is going faster than I am these days - or is it that I have just slowed down with age?  So - off to the catalogs to at least do my Christmas Consumer research before fast time catches up with me!

Fall Repair Work

303 Commercial Ave - Laurel's studio and first roof

 

Second roof - their house

Third roof - the barn (foreground)

Fourth and last roof today - The Woodworking Shop

Laurel and Butch at work

Owens house getting new windows today - new roof last month

Working on the windows

My office had to have new skylights

My house - fence was repainted

All the windows were repainted, and a smashed window replaced

daily haiku

along the valley
cottonwoods turn gold
a sea of treasure

It is a beautiful fall day today and I should be doing housework, but I could not resist the opportunity to take photographs and write.  So much work has been completed around our little town. The hailstorm on May 31st damaged property for many of us, and we've hastened to finish the repairs before the snow flies and brings outside work to a halt. 

I've had help repairing the skylights at my office, mending the broken windows and repainting the house. It is great to have a person like Fred Welter who comes out here from Sheridan WY.  Fred is so multi-talented and has been able to solve a lot of problems for me over the last few years. 

But the people who amaze me are Laurel and Butch Fjell. Butch is really skilled at auto repairs and just about anything mechanical. Laurel amazes me with her indefatigable energy and talent for all kinds of projects. I had no idea until this summer that she could be a roofer!  Laurel and Butch between them have re-roofed their four buildings in Birney, that were affected by the hail. Today they were re-roofing their woodworking shop in which they both build and carve anything for which they get an idea. Butch makes chairs and wooden toys, Laurel, picture frames, and anything else for which she has an idea! 

Down the street Owen and Diana Cartwright were getting windows and skirting replaced on their house. The hail made holes in the skirting and cracked the windows and their surrounds. Last month their damaged roof was replaced.  

All our houses are now ready for winter; in the meantime the trees are turning to sunshine gold; they take my breath away as the sun comes up each morning.

 

 sun breaks through dawn clouds
paints the hills with gold
blue sky    clouds tinged pink
rosy outlook for fall day

September Survivors

Jerusalem Cricket

Emmette Medicine Top stops by to visit

Then rides off into the sunset!

My petunias survived the first frost

So did my friend Diana's wonderful flower bed

In fall Maple leaves change with a wide array of colors

The vines at my office are beautiful

This little fairy looks sad that fall is here

Virgil came to stay while his master was in hospital

daily haiku

colors in the leaves

shine bright even with no sun

they stand alone

I could not think of a theme for this post and then I thought about survival.  Many plants and even garden vegetables survived our first frost somewhere around the twelfth of the month.

So much happened during September. My friend from Texas, who now lives in Birney, was taken ill and hospitalized early in the month.  I love his black Labrador Virgil, so rather than have him stay alone I brought him here to stay for a few days until Oren came home.  I enjoyed Virgil, but I must have lost a couple of pounds while he was here as he LOVED to go for walks. I am not sure he needed to pee as many times as he asked to go out, but go out we did, even in the dark and rain at 5.30 a.m -- that made me think twice about getting another dog!  So Virgil survived in comfort and style and with a friend who cared.

As noted in the picture - I had a visit from a very large Jerusalem Cricket.  I put a water glass over him till morning then he was relocated down in the town site - hopefully he'll survive down there with all the log piles in which to make a home.

Another friend, Emmette Medicine Top, stopped by on his horse the other day to chat and have a cold drink. Emmette has continual car problems, but he doesn't let them get him down, ofttimes he rides his bicycle a 16 mile round trip to get his mail at the P.O.,  or as in this case, jumps aboard his horse. It is such a lovely old-time western occasion to have someone visit on horseback; rare any more as most people drive up in SUV's or double cab pickups.

I feel somewhat depressed at the thought of spending another winter here and coping with all the cold and snow alone. But I am doing the chores that are needed, making sure the furnace is overhauled and a good supply of propane at hand for the cold months ahead. All the repairs have been completed on the damage from the hail storm, May 31st, and that is a good feeling. So I think, a day at a time I'll survive too, maybe get some writing done and enjoy the view from the hill as always.

Critter Season

 

Gregory - a cute Pack Rat - species of Neotoma 

Hole in Hood insulation

New Balsam Needle sachet for prevention

Peppermint Oil sachet

daily haiku

set the trap each night
pack rat springs it and escapes
swear words on dawn air

 As Bob Dylan sang "The times they are a-changin' ", and that is true as we come to the end of summer and approach fall. It seems like Fall happened two weeks ago when we went into a cooler spell and got rain on and off. We get an occasional day near 90' but for the most part top 70's most days now.  The days are shorter; it is dark when I go to bed and dark when I get up. I really don't mind as I am sleeping longer and better. 

As I walked this morning I espied large fish swimming in Hanging Woman Creek even though it is less than a foot deep. One was somewhere between 12-18 inches long and there were smaller ones too.  I am pretty sure they were catfish and my friend Nan reports plenty of them in the river by her house. So there will be a few full plates for dinner in the next week, at a guess. 

Accordingly, with cooler weather, the critters arrived.  A persistent mouse was eating my bowl of fruit on top of the dishwasher.  I baited the trap several times with no luck; even put pieces of my precious peach beside the trap to lure him, but no luck.  Finally I went back to the old fashioned bait - cheese. Caught him on the first night and after re-baiting the other traps caught three more. 

The night before last, a spider ran across my path as I went to the kitchen and was so large (about 2 1/2 inches) I gasped.  I knew it had to be a Wolf Spider. Fortunately for me it was so shocked it stood still long enough for me to put a water glass over it until I could deal with it next day.  It was relocated to the outdoors.

I went to lunch with Nan last week and as I was driving down the river I smelled something odd. When I arrived I parked the car and looked under the hood. Sure enough there was a Pack Rat's nest on top of the engine! Neatly built and woven in among the wires and hoses was a great deal of the insulation from the lining to the hood of the car. I was using something called Fresh Cab - sachets of ground Balsam Pine needles, the odor of which rodents do not like.  However unknown to me they had disappeared, so there was no deterrent and the Rat moved in. 

I have a live trap that I use for Pack rats so I baited it and set it out by the car.  The bait was gone and the trap sprung several nights in a row. Then I realized that I had not set the trap properly. I made another attempt and this time I was lucky.  There, the next morning, was the one you see in the picture.   I was going to town, so I popped him in the car for relocation.  On the trip I remembered how my cat liked me to play an Enya  CD on the way to the vet hospital; I thought about playing it to Gregory, but then dismissed it - figured he wasn't that intellectual. He was dutifully dropped off by the ruin of a old log cabin where he can pack happily without destroying my car. 

Thanks to Amazon & UPS I now have some new Balsam Pine needle sachets under the hood, plus I read that rodents don't like peppermint oil, so I made a couple of those too. Now I am driving into those cool, wet, critterly Fall days, in a world scented with peppermint and pine - what more could a person ask for?! 

Early Morning - Birney in Summer

Sun-up

Maturing grasses

Old flatbed in low light

The only Sunflower

Hollyhocks at my office

Old ruin - doorway

Bull discourager

It is high summer and I am still in Birney - no sale in sight. In the summer heat I don't pay much attention to housework, and I am feeling more and more like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations.
In the hot evenings I float around between the cobwebs in my Indian cotton caftan rather than a wedding dress, but there are no Estella and Pip to keep me company! I have Netflix and a pair of Mourning Doves to entertain me instead, but the conversation definitely lags.

I walk in the early morning while it is cool. The last couple of mornings I took my camera - see the above photos. In the afternoons I try not to feel guilty about the housework and read, x-word, write and watch the occasional TV or movie. If you see me with a cobweb veil - please rescue me!