Signs of spring.....

March 26. The snow is melting, tulip nubs are poking up,

and the deer are starting to migrate back up the hill from their winter yard. Their pointy tracks were all over the road on the hill this morning.

This coming week starts off with a couple of cold (-15C, 5F) nights, then the temperature appears to be on an upward swing, and in the following week, the temps are only just below freezing at night! I don't know what to think. The snow has been melting quickly, and the garden beds are now bare.

March 18

March 26

 So, is spring here or not? The calendar says so, but, there is still snow in the immediate forecast, and incidental flurries showing on the weather graph, over the next two weeks. Of course, it probably won't accumulate and will melt off quickly.

Last Friday we had our final snowshoe hike around the trails. It was a noisy, clattering business on the crusty bits. We came across a beech tree that the pileated woodpeckers had been working on, the pile of chips around the base a testament to their pecking ability!

Down behind the barn in the orchid patch, last year's seed pods are still held on stems above the snow.

Robins showed up well over a week ago, and red-winged blackbirds are here, about 8 of them hanging out around the feeders, giving the greedy blue jays a run for the seeds. A couple of grackles have shown up, sunshine hi-lighting their burnished iridescent purple heads. The ruffed grouse are starting to drum in the bush around, and a friend living a little bit south of here has seen and heard sand hill cranes flying over.  

Yesterday I planted my pepper seeds. They grow relatively slowly, unlike tomato plants, and I like to get them established and pruned for strength so they can hold the weight of the fruit I am hoping they will bear! Tomatoes won't be started until at least mid-April, if I can control the itchy planting fingers until then! A friend has given me some okra seeds for a variety hardy to this zone and I am wondering if they should be started as well.

It is a waiting game now. I'll soon have to get out the 'deer deterrent' fence and place it around the tulip bed, as we expect to see deer grazing in the yard any day now. There is still snow in the bush, especially in shaded and north-facing places, but it is not very deep at all. There seem to be lots of strange bumps in the yard and sink holes along the driveway that we've never seen before. We are wondering if it is because of the frost being able to get further into the ground because of the lack of a good snow cover this winter. 

The ice sheet on the pond has floated up on the melt water, and water is flooding out a bit on the north end of the pond.

March 18 (N end)

March 26 (S end)

While filling the bird feeders, I've noticed that the Spongy Moth egg masses (formerly known as Gypsy moth, or Ldd moth) on the apple trees have been pecked away at by the birds. We are hoping that the birds have found out they are a food source, and have made inroads on the egg masses throughout the bush. One can only hope!

Last week on a walk up the road, I noticed this.

Fox tracks. The snow has been melting and settling, and anywhere it had been packed down, even if only slightly by the weight of a fox, who may be between 8 and 15 lbs under all that fur, the tracks stand out like little hoodoos. There is so much water in the snow, my knee was soaked after kneeling in it briefly, to get that close to eye-level shot.

The sap has been running quite well. Hubby has been percolating his morning coffee with maple sap, and we've had too much to store, so whilst working in his shop, he has boiled down a big pot full on the stove, and we have about 2 cups of amber gold.

Pancakes in the morning!

 

Nellie Belle....

This morning the sun is glowing behind some hazy clouds, and there is a definite feel that spring is on its way. It is -5C (23F), but there is a certain "Je ne sais quoi" in the air. 

The birds have been galloping through the seed supply which I've had to restock. This morning as I reloaded the suet feeders, two hairy woodpeckers were less than 3 feet away up in the apple tree above. I held up the suet cake and one hopped backward down the trunk, appearing to be thinking about hopping over onto the cake. I ran out of patience before she made a decision! 

We've had a busy week. The old tractor breathed its last...too much to fix this time. We knew it was failing and Hubby has been on the hunt for a while for a used tractor with a loader.

Well, he found one over in Quebec, just across the river near Chapeau. We went and looked and met the folk, a lovely older couple who have to downsize. We had some trouble finding someone to truck the tractor back, as there are special regulations for truckers coming out of Quebec. It took some searching, but we found a licensed trucker and on Wednesday, Nellie Belle arrived home.

Hubby is in the shop, coveralled and greasy handed, working her over. She has a few issues but nothing he can't fix.

It was a treat to head off and see some new country. Other than that, we have been able to walk around our snowshoe trails early in the mornings before the days warm and the snow gets sticky. We have tapped a couple of maples, as the forecast looks good for the sap to run. Mmmmm....maple flavoured coffee coming up! 

There are bare spots in the drive where the westering sun reflects off of the house and melts things down. Mud season is just a smidge away!

 

Weather and critters.....

March appears to have come in like a lamb. There have been periodic flurries of light fluffy snow over the first two days, and now today is clear, sunny and a perfect -10C (14F), with the same forecast for the next couple of days. 

Early last week, we had a nasty bit of weather with sleet and rain, but the temperature dropped back to crisp and cold, and it snowed more since. Snowshoeing was out of the question for a couple of days, the crust being not quite hard enough to support us walking with boot cleats, but deadly slippery to try to maneuver on snowshoes. The few nasty days had us looking for inside entertainment, so I got out a puzzle for us to work away at. We jointly finished it, each of us spending a few moments here and there, putting in the pieces. The colourful picture was nicer to look at than the nasty weather that was falling outside the window!

Now there is a lovely padding of about 6 inches of fresh snow, covering the hard layer. That crust is very hard for deer to travel through, and we have only seen tracks and trail camera pictures of a lone doe and her fawn, who were heading toward the big deer yard to the south of us, in the last picture we have of them. The wild canines, on the other hand, have easy going, padding easily through that layer of soft snow on top of the crust.

We have seen their tracks regularly, and this short video shows them coming down our trail and turning off on a regular deer migration trail, heading in the direction of the deer yard in the cedar swamp to the south. At the very beginning of the video, one goes south, then another comes trotting along. 

We think these are a cross between wolves and coyotes, which occur in this area. The wolves disdain our trails, crossing them, but not following them, and their footprints are much larger.

Yesterday, on a short hike, I stopped to hold out a handful of seeds to the chickadees that follow us around, when a firm, steady tapping sound caught our attention. A pileated woodpecker was systematically hollowing out a cavity in a dead beech tree, just off the trail.

Our presence did not phase the bird. Could it be preparations for nesting? The picture is a little hazy as I zoomed right in with my little Canon ELPH that I always carry in my pocket. We'll be keeping an eye on this cavity, and on another we spotted a few days ago. 

The insulating value of snow.... and other stuff

We've been off-line for close to two weeks, getting Bell's 'blue screen of death' much sooner than expected. My computer guru is searching our machines to find out what used the extra data this month. He thinks some program did an automatic update, despite (we thought) having auto-updates turned off.

Finally, we have some lovely cold weather and a decent amount of snow! Several nights mid-January were -20C (-4F) and colder, and we got a little worried about our water system, especially as we'd had so very little snow at the time. The crawl space under the house is fairly well insulated, but we count on banking up the house with snow for some extra R-value. We finally got the snow and banked the house up.

 It has been so beautifully cold, and with the lovely blanket of white stuff topped up with another 4" on Wednesday, the snowshoeing has been excellent.

The deer are moving slowly to their winter yards, the deeper snow encouraging them. Over the last week or so, they have been bedding down at various places on our property. One night, they bedded down just over the stone fence in the cedar bush behind my compost bins, not more than 100 yards from the house. I found this evidence along the trail the next day. 

The snow around the edges of the indentation made by the deer's body, appears to be un-melted. Here is an old picture from a trail camera, showing how well insulated a deer is, the snow on its back accumulating and not melting. 

No wonder they can bed down comfortably in the snow!

The temperature was milder just before the last snow fall, and the snow stuck on the tree branches, giving then all a delineation of white, so beautiful, as seen against that incredible blue, blue sky.

This Saturday, we hiked a little further afield, it being an absolutely sublime, cold, sunny day. We explored a bit of crown land which had long ago been the site of an homestead, with some old apple trees still evident. We snowshoed up a rise to the old foundation, and there, in the snow, were 4 moose beds.

We'd seen the fresh tracks and were thrilled to see where the animals had bedded down. Each bed had a 'deposit' in it, as when the animal gets up, the first thing it does is poop. 

Along another trail, we were startled when a grouse erupted out of the snow, leaving it's little overnight snow cave, etching it's wing prints in the snow.

You can see the hole where it plummeted into the snow, then burrowed along, creating a snow cave where it spent the night. We are curious as to why we find their little overnight shelters so often along the edge of a packed trail.

These are bear claw scratches on an old, beech tree. The tree has obviously been a mast tree in the past, as evidenced by these marks made by bruins climbing to reach the nuts.

Last weekend, we hosted a snow shoe party for two neighbour couples. Hubby blew out the fire pit area in preparation for the fire, on which we brewed hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows after our walk.

That Saturday was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures around -19C (-2F), rising from -26C (-15F) at daybreak. A good time was had by all.

On the crafting front, another long legged pair of socks for Hubby are finally off the needles.

They started out as identical, and finished as fraternal twins, as I didn't want to unravel another ball to find the matching point. 

A quilt that has languished for a VERY long time in a storage bin is FINISHED!!  Hubby's great Aunt was cared for by his parents as she got older. She suffered from dementia, and sitting with her hoop and floss calmed her. She had been an amazing embroiderer all her life. I inherited her final mono-coloured squares, and had to fasten down a few ends and even finish a few missed cross-stitches, but finally, after sashing the squares, and creating "quilt-as-you-go" blocks out of them, I've just finished hand stitching the binding on.

It has been a long, long time in the making, as it was started quite a few years ago, and in the busyness of life, got put aside. It wasn't my preferred type of quilt, but I felt I had to do something with the squares she'd laboured over, so now we have a useful keepsake.

We have been having a regular visitor of late. Early this morning we watched the Pine Martin trying to find a way to access the bird feeders. He raced up the apple tree and did a flying leap toward one feeder, splatting down into the snow about half way between the tree and the pole mounted feeder. Then he raced up the crab apple tree on the opposite side, but found the branches too flimsy to get him any where near a launching spot from that side. He then contented himself with scavenging under the suet cake, getting bits the birds have dislodged from the cakes. He has been coming regularly, and here is a picture from the trail camera facing out over the rock garden where we put out odd scraps he might like.

 

A tree a day....

 The temperature has risen from -29C (-20F) yesterday morning, to -5C (23F) this morning. The forecast calls for more cold temperatures over the coming weekend, actually colder than those we've just experienced. I sure wish we could have a good fall of snow to insulate everything. This crazy temperature fluctuation is hard on everything, especially since there is such a scant covering of snow. (the present header picture was taken mid January 2019)

It being so much milder today, we headed out and got back at tree harvesting.

We are working away at felling beech trees, cutting them for firewood before the Beech Bark fungus totally takes the good out of the trees. We are trying to haul in enough wood to replace what we'll be burning this winter.

The rounds will be split in the spring, hopefully before the biting insects come out, and will be piled to cure in the empty space in the woodshed.

All that bending and lifting is good exercise, and doing just one tree a day ensures that we don't overdo it.  

January? Not according to this weather.....

 Well...it is January, and the weather is not January-like. Our temperature has been going up and down like a yo-yo. We've gone from mild and rain, to beautifully cold, crispy squeaky boot walking for a day, and now we are a little above 0C. Tomorrow we are supposed to plunge to even colder temperatures, and the wind is ushering it in now, howling around, the temperature slowly dropping back below the freezing mark.

We don't have a lot of snow cover, just enough to get one thinking that maybe snowshoes should be brought out and readied for use. There have been a few brilliant sunny days, but they've been few and far between. 

I've been doing some baking, some sewing and some knitting, and going for regular daily walks. 

I tried my hand at a bit of colour work, and made this simple cowl, holding one colour in each hand. One colour is knit English style, the other Continental style. It sure keeps the yarn from getting tangled up.

This is a summer top, knitted with a new to me yarn, a rayon/bamboo. It is very slippery and a little 'splitty', but the summer top is now complete, blocked, and is drying. The edges are all I-cord bind offs, a very nice finish to the garment.
This morning, I got out my graphed garden bed sketches, and have penciled in prospective plantings, made and sent a seed order.

Best get it in before all those 'sold out' banners get splashed across the seed order site's pages! I've ordered 3 blueberry bushes, compliments of a gift card from a friend. The local wild crop has been very inconsistent, and it would be nice to have a small harvest we can count on. 

 Recently I retrieved my dried cayenne peppers, ground them up in a coffee grinder I reserve for such things, and have a nice little amount, enough to last quite a while.

In the woods, the deer are slowly progressing down to their winter yard, a few still showing up on the trail cameras. 

Weather, deer and Christmas wishes....

Our weather is on some weird roller-coaster ride at present. Lately, we've had every kind of precipitation known to man. Last night the temperature did not even drop to freezing, and today the temperature is supposed to go up to an unprecedented 12C. (54F) There is a skim of 'sort of' snow...ice pellets/sleet, on the ground, and lots of icy spots, so walking is pretty iffy on untreated surfaces. I am longing for a proper snowfall and cold, cold temperatures. (The header picture is from a previous, more snowy December!)

I've been doing a little Christmas baking for humans, and dog friends.

On the crafting front, some crocheted pot holders, a little gift for a friend.

 The deer were starting to move to their winter yards before the snow melted.

Oh Oh...Busted!!

Here is a cute, short video of a young 'button buck', this spring's fawn. It was taken earlier, in November. He was eating apples from under the apple tree behind the barn. The direction he is looking in, is toward the house, so maybe he heard a thump from us, perhaps getting wood out of the back porch, as he did not run away.

 Just wanted to drop in and wish everyone happiness, good health and peace for the Christmas season.