Snowmageddon Gallery

The present: that seductive, smooth-talking diversion, has impinged itself on me once again. 

We have had Snowmageddon in southeast Ohio, winged by the great winter storm Jonas as he waddled east, hunkered down over West Virginia and Virginia, and buried us all. We got a mere 18" to WV and northern VA's 3' or more. Still, it was a lot of snow for us.

It was beautifully powdery, and it fell right off the tree limbs to the forest floor, and no trees fell across lines, and nobody lost power. It was a New Year's miracle! And to Liam's delight he got Friday AND Monday off school!  

I have lived here in Appalachian Ohio since 1992 and have formed a rock-solid Pavlovian association with BIG SNOW and NO POWER FOR DAYS. So I looked at the weather map, saw the giant blue blob headed our way, and started cleaning the house. I figured I'd do all the things I couldn't do anymore when we lost power. Use the lights, the washer, dryer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, that kind of thing. It wasn't "if" we were going to lose power, it was just "when." And we never did lose power.

But I kept at it. Two full days it took me, which is pathetic, but I truly hate cleaning. This is a big house and I move very slowly because I find it all so stultifying. I used to clean once a week when the kids were small. I felt like I had to, but I still don't know how I did it. The difference between 40's and 50's, I guess. Now, I'd far rather write or paint or read or run, and nobody else seems to care, so why should I? But with decreasing frequency I still pull myself together to do it, even as I begrudge the time it takes. Time is my favorite thing, the most precious resource. 

It wasn't so bad, though, because as I cleaned I watched the snow piling up outside, and I felt enormously thankful to be safe and warm and snowed in with Liam. Just grateful to have such a nice roof over our heads, to have a house to clean at all.  We had plenty of food because my inner squirrel had been stockpiling for days before the storm hit. I'd laid in all the bird feed we could need, too, and the first day of the storm I made a quadruple batch of Zick Dough Improved, so we were good.

On the morning of January 24 I finally suited up and headed out to catch some hoarfrost atop the snow. Oh boy oh boy! 

That Japanese maple, once a potted bonsai, is becoming a major landscape force. Big enough to sit under, big enough to walk under, big enough to have chipping sparrows and cardinals nest in it. Ahh. Such a good tree. 

Still feeling appreciative, I walked around to see the once-tiny birds-nest blue spruce I moved from Maryland to Ohio in 1992. Oh my. 

And better yet, two very small crape myrtles in the foreground, come up from seed or root, I know not which, from a beautiful shrub that was killed in the horrid winter of 2013. They came up out of nowhere after two years without a sign of life from the shrub's stump. And bloomed this past summer of 2015. And were true to the original, a rich magenta. HOORAY! May they make it through this winter.

A deer, looking for birdseed. Those thin legs move pretty well through snow. I'd have thought they'd yard up in this much snow, but the meadow was laced with their tracks. I think the fact that the snow was so powdery encouraged them to move about. It's crusty snow deer hate, punching through it with their hooves, the crust cutting their legs.

I purely hated to walk on that clean white sheet in the meadow, but I had to, if I was going to get any photos.

Looking at the junco and sparrow tracks, it suddenly hit me that deep snow actually helps them forage.

For instead of the seedheads being high above their heads, forcing them to jump and flutter, the seeds are right at their level. The birds are 18 inches higher on the surface of that snow, and can simply hop from seed cluster to seed cluster. Beautiful! I loved that revelation, that thought that juncos actually like a deep snow. That it makes finding food easier for them. No wonder we call them snowbirds.

So busy, the tracks of their industry everywhere in the meadow. 

The bluebird box with its baffle was steaming in the sun as the hoarfrost burned off.  It looked eerily like a man with a derby on, breathing. I tried to capture the misty exhalation with two cameras and couldn't. But oh, it was cool. 

I like this shot, for the elements it shows--housing for birds and for us, a baffle to protect against snakes and raccoons; a Virginia pine left just because it was beautiful; my meandering path. At this point I'm tired. Slogging through knee-high snow is work!

Under the same pretty pine. Yes, red is the right color for that house. And I can pretend it's an old barn. Especially when I don't feel like cleaning. Har.

At this point, I'm sufficiently snowblind that I can barely tell what I'm shooting. Which makes for some interesting pictures.

The lacework and tracery of frost and grass and stem and shadow has me in its thrall. 

I turn the camera toward myself and the sun. I can't even see it, the sun is so bright. I'm all warmed up, and have been shedding clothes all the way out the path. No hat, no gloves needed when you're wading through deep snow. A mile walked this way is probably worth three on pavement, from a cardiac standpoint.

No Bacon chaser with me. He wouldn't be caught dead in 18" of snow.

My photos get odder and odder. I can't see what I'm doing very well, but I'm fascinated by the light, and I keep facing into it, like a moth.

This could be another planet...

A junco's snowball, growing a crust of hoarfrost.

Probably time to head toward the house. And when I turn my back to the sun, the blue sky and shadows jump out at me. Oh my! what I've been missing!

And when I got home, Chet Baker, who does not gladly suffer deep snow, came out to run the rat maze I had shoveled him all over the yard. I made little alleys to his favorite spots--the compost pit, the spruces, the feeders, the greenhouse.  I made sure they all connected, and all led to the front door. He came out of the woods so proud of himself, and considerably lighter. It had been a day and a half. It was time.

O noble doggeh o' mine!

Cold, but the Bluebirds are Singing

I am so thankful that the sun is starting to come up when I go out running in the morning. That running in the dark is for the birds. Yes, I could wait to run later but then I'd miss seeing my friend Clarence who drives Liam's school bus and waits at the cemetery to time his route right. We talk and it is cool. He is an amazing person, a joy to know. He knows how to do more things than almost anyone I know. He's tanned salmon skin. Says it's turquoise and incredibly soft and strong. Why aren't we making shoes out of all those farmed salmon we eat? Things like that, that's what we talk about.

You must try to imagine the songs of bluebirds ringing out across this cold and forbidding landscape. They soften it quite a bit.

On this morning (February 23), the pileated woodpeckers were drumming their strong, swelling and then fading tattoo, and red-bellied woodpeckers were quirrking everywhere. White-breasted nuthatches were yammering and cardinals were singing their rich sweet songs.

The air pollution from all the chemical and coal-fired power plants along Rte. 7 augments the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets, peachy melon pollution in a low hazy ring in the winter sky. Summer sky, too. It's gotten better in the 21 years we've been living here. When we first moved here we could smell it. Every day. Some days we couldn't even go outside. Now we can't smell it, but we can see it.

Since our huge oak fell down, I've become attached to this one, which amazingly enough is also on our land. But just barely. One small corner of our 80 acres stretches across the road and comes to a point right at this tree. Because she is a line tree and full of fencing and metal, no one will cut her. Thank God. I couldn't bear that.

She's probably about as old as our driveway oak was, well over 100 years. She cuts quite a figure on the land. 

I'll listen for the brown thrasher who sings in her crown, and watch her leaf out come spring.

I wrote this post before Daylight Savings Time kicked in. Yes, it'll be darker when I go out now, but I'm kind of glad it has swooped in to save me from abnormality. Every year at this time I start waking up at 4:45 AM. Why? Who can say? Overactive pineal gland? Listening for the woodcock and turkeys, the first song sparrow of the morning? All of the above. 5:45 AM: better. Not much, but some.

Surviving an Ohio Valley Winter

photo by Geoff Heeter

It's been a winter. It didn't really get revved up until right before Christmas, but it's been going right along, and February's been no picnic, no picnic at all. Gray and snow and sleet and ice and rain day after day.

I have had to resort to coping mechanisms. One being basking in the greenhouse, which just got a whole huge post of its own. Vital. 

The Fastnacht Supper on Fat Tuesday at our Lutheran church helped. Crullers and bean soup and stewed prunes and milk. Mmmm. And Mardi Gras masks that make you look like a flounder or a mantis or Marty Feldman.

Little photobombers named Liam.

Luke the leucistic song sparrow helps when he sings under my bedroom window at first light, sitting on the post that song sparrows always choose. I must do a little trimming of the crape myrtle to make room for him. I cannot believe he is staying to set up a territory. It's too good to be true. He's been with us since right before the Big Sit in October. Just blew in like a snowflake and never left. Yay Luke! I'm glad he's a boy so I can locate him whenever he sings. I know his song now and can find him wherever he is. Our yard, for whatever reason, seems to support only one pair of song sparrows each year, and I'm delighted that Luke is the guy.

We have embraced the snow. We really have. The storm before last came down at the rate of 2" in an hour, and lasted only a day. It was so beautiful I went out just to photograph it all.

Germantown Road.

Pawpaw Creek, where Liam found his velociraptor claw. (I identify it as Duck Creek in the post linked here, but it's actually Pawpaw Creek).

We got a really big snow of about 7" and Phoebe and her friends got together, went sledding, and then built a giant igloo in the front yard. It was awesome and they about killed themselves building it. Every time they come over they do something wildly creative like build an igloo or make a video.

 We love having them here.

We built a snow ruddy duck. Chet sat on it but only for a moment. Too cold.

Baker much prefers baking his bacon in the SUN.

If you ever wanted to cuddle a puppeh, I'll bet you want to cuddle this one. He's delicious, especially when pre-heated. He's like a little corn muffin. And the sun brings out his seal brown so beautifully. Melty melty Snickers bar of a doggeh.

He likes to carb load in winter. Here, he is staring at a croissant just out of camera range.

Aren't we all. Hang in there. Spring is coming. The woodcock says so; the robins moping in the snow say so; the bluebirds peeking in the nest boxes say so. Whatever the thermometer says.