This snow is ridiculous

I don't think I've seen this much snow in years.  We've had 4 major storms in a row, every Friday or Saturday for the past 4 weeks.  Each storm has been more than a foot of snow.  Friday's was 2 feet.  Here's the state of my world!

Marc's car after he made a pass around it with the snowblower, but before I began to clear it off.

Uncovering the car.

In an area without drifting, I measured the snow depth.  The driveway was clear-ish (ground level) before it began on Friday).  We had 25 inches, or 64 cm, from Friday morning through to Saturday morning.

Because we just keep getting storm after storm, it's difficult to find places to put the snow now.  Here's the front door area before I got around to shoveling it.

Here's my path to the bird feeders.  Some of the feeders were actually partly under the snow.  The heated bird bath stays clear, for obvious reasons!

Here's Marc after doing some of the snowblowing work!

And me, on the front step.  Look at that snow pile!  Crazy!

And here I am on the back deck.  Very little light is getting in to the dining room window on the left due to the height of the snow pile.

Unfortunately, Marc had a bit of an "oops" with the chicken wire on the rabbit enclosure (they're not in the outer area at this time of year of course).

And here I am in the backyard on the path to the compost pile behind the greenhouse. We add the litter from the rabbit cages to the pile throughout the winter months so Marc snowblows the path to the pile for easier access.  You can see how high the snow is - approaching shoulder height on me, and in my winter boots, I'm at least 5'10".

One unexpected sight was the enormous flock of robins in my mountain ash tree.  I do not normally see robins in the winter.  A few do stick around, but most migrate.  I have occasionally seen one or two in the winter, but usually don't see them until April sometime.  Well, today, there were about 20 in my tree, all eating the berries left on it from last fall.  I was stunned.  I've read that others are also seeing flocks of robins here this year. they do look really pretty against the snow, and with their feathers matching the orange berries.

I have had enough of the snow now.  There is plenty for me to ski on and plenty to replenish the ground moisture (not that we were lacking that after last summer, which was awfully wet).  I would really like a few weekends without snowstorms. At this rate, we'll still have snow in July!

Winter Weather

 After a relatively mild December, January has now reminded us that it is definitely winter.  The first major snowstorm for my area came on Friday morning, and lasted until sometime overnight on Friday, leaving a considerable snowfall total in my yard.  I used a measuring stick in several spots and the average was 46 cm, or about 18 inches of snow, which is quite a bit for a single storm.  Here's how things looked on the driveway this morning.

And here's the view out the back porch door towards the rabbit palace.

It is definitely enough snow for me to try out my new cross country skis soon.  But I didn't go today, because I figured everybody would be out there today, since we haven't had enough snow to ski on yet this winter.  

Fortunately, I have a reliable snowplowing service that came to do the driveway. It didn't take him very long to get most of it cleared, although I still spent a long time cleaning off Marc's car while he used our little snowblower to make paths in the backyard.

It is so much easier to access all the animals when there are paths in the yard.

I'll have to make a few paths of my own to get to the bird feeders though!

Twilight wisely stayed in the barn eating hay.

Lucky Nickel came out to eat the pieces of pine tree that broke during the driveway plowing - it's difficult for the plowing guy not to damage any trees when the boughs are so heavy with snow, so I brought all the pieces over to her for snacking.

It's a good thing I don't have any chickens living in the Eglu right now!

The duck house was well covered in snow.

Sir Francis was happy in his kiddie pool though!  The immersion heater keeps it from freezing.

I definitely need to do some major pruning of the yew shrubs this spring.  I'm thinking about trying to do the pom-pom style topiary with them.

The chickens were content staying inside the coop.

I don't blame them!  It will be a long time now before they will want to go out into the side yard.  They don't really like standing around in the snow.  I wouldn't want to do so in bare feet either!

It's Still Winter Here

Admittedly, there are signs of spring, and I am definitely encouraged by this, but one look around my yard today will show you that winter is still here in my part of the world.  I took a short walk this afternoon, although it's difficult here because there are no sidewalks and the snow and ice on the sides of the roads mean that the roads are narrower, so one must be mindful of safety when out walking.  I actually saw my first robin of 2019, so that's a good sign!

Here's a tour around the yard where you will see mostly winter, and a bit of spring. We have actually had a reasonably good March - it's further along in terms of melting than I'd expected it to be at this point.  Loads better than last year!  Here's the back deck, where you can actually see some of the wood steps.  These have only been uncovered in the past week - before that it was just a big heap of snow.  But, there's a lot of snow yet to go!

The path through the yard to the chicken coop is still completely snow and ice, especially underfoot where it has been compacted over the winter.  This snow is at least 2 feet deep still in some places.

The side yard where the spring bulbs live is still under deep snow.  We have a lot of shade from the woods so that does slow the melting process.

There has been a good amount of melting on the driveway, so you can actually see some pavement and gravel now, but as you can see, there is a great deal of snow on the flower bed in front of the workshop.  That flower bed is the one that receives the most sun, so it is the furthest along in terms of melting.

Look!  Bare driveway!! 

The snow piles left on the edge of the driveway in front of the house are also considerable.

The huge hat of snow that was on top of the arbour has mostly melted, but there is much yet to go underneath.

Here are the mounds of the raised beds, still enclosed in their snowy blankets.

The bird feeders were, at one point, covered up over the bottoms of the raccoon baffles, but now there is a lot of space under the baffles.  You can see that the sunflower shells, with their dark colour, have absorbed extra sunlight and caused additional melting in that spot.

Along the back of the house, there is a lot of snow but you can see where the drips from the melting on the roof have created a long groove.  

I've had a very difficult time with the chicken coop gate door this winter.  We had a lot of snow, so I kept digging out in front of the door so that I could continue to open it.  Over time, this led to a sort of deep "valley" right in front of the gate.  Now that we have some melting, it pools exactly in that spot, and there's no access to the ground yet.  As a result, I keep ending up with puddles that freeze overnight and it takes me a good 30 minutes sometimes to get the door free so I can access the birds.  I'm going to have it modified this summer so that next winter, it won't be an issue.  You can also see, in the picture below, that finally my feed bins are visible again.  The shorter one on the right had to be dug out a few times because I couldn't even see the top of it.  

The birds are all well though, and I only lost 1 chicken this winter, which is really quite good.  Here are Shadow the Icelandic cross hen, and Fancy Pants the Icelandic cross rooster, enjoying a bit of sunshine.  I love Shadow's grey feathering.

I might even call them lovebirds!  They do spend a lot of time together.

Inside the coop, here's a shot of Onyx--one of my biggest hens--and Sienna, a bantam hen. 

 One other sign of spring - egg production is in full swing!  Hooray!

Long Time!

It's been a long time since my last post.  I feel as if things have been busy lately, which they have, but I also feel that I've been spending a bit more time on some craft projects, so that has been a focus and and blogging sort of took a break.  I'll try to do a little round-up today of the view from here.

First of all, we're in the grip of a really early winter.  Usually we have a couple of minor snowfalls in December but the real snow and bitter cold starts in January.  This year, things are all mixed up.  We have already had 2 significant snowfalls and have over a foot of snow on the ground.  It has been absurdly cold for this time of year - well below normal.  Temperature records have been set, as well as snowfall.  Many people in our area lost power in the two storms but we were lucky and retained power here.  Here's how the garden looks now.  It makes me pretty miserable.

Our menagerie of critters is well.  The chickens do not like the snow and typically stay inside the coop except to go out to the heated waterer.  They also like to eat snow.  Silly birds!  Not many eggs at this time of year, and I don't provide supplemental lighting to boost egg production because I think the hens deserve a break.  Here's a picture of some of them pecking at the snow. 

This year is expected to be an irruption year for finches on the east coast, and so far, that's proving to be true.  If you're not a bird person, you may not know what an irruption year is.  No, it's not a misspelling of eruption (those are for volcanoes).  An irruption is a significant migration of large numbers of birds outside their typical range.  Typically this happens as a result of food scarcity in the normal range.  Finches are particularly subject to irruptions when certain seeds are less available.  This year, seeds from conifer trees and birches are poor, so finches are poised for irruption moves.  If you're interested, here's some information on expected 2018/19 winter irruptions:  http://jeaniron.ca/2018/wff18.htm

I'm very excited to have a regular flock of evening grosbeaks visiting my feeders, which is certainly not normal for this area.  I'm hoping to see some siskins and redpolls if I'm lucky!  Here's a male evening grosbeak.

I have noticed very heavy feeding on all my feeders (currently 6 active feeders) for birds in the past couple of weeks.  We have a lot of black-capped chickadees (more than usual), red-breasted nuthatches, goldfinches, blue jays, dark-eyed juncos and both hairy and downy woodpeckers.  Keep your feeders stocked - it's a tough winter for many bird species.  Here's the flock of grosbeaks at my tray feeder.

I've been busy with yarn-related projects too.  I'm quite pleased with how this plain-weave wrap turned out.  I used a lot of different warp yarns with a rayon weft. 

It's so important to focus on colour when everything outside is bleak, cold and white or grey.

I also finished the first block of a crochet project I'm working on called the Stained Glass Lantern Afghan from Lilla Bjorn.  I'm quite pleased with how that's turned out as well.

So, that's a little bit of an update.  I'll see if I can write a few more posts in the coming weeks to try to get caught up with all the things I've thought about writing.