Acair Fearann

Too many and not enough time….

Reworking a bathroom…a pipe 🙂 dream requiring a great deal of planning before actual work.

Cleaning a barn loft (shades of a modern Augean Stables, only with bats and cats added), which would really be best done when it is below freezing so as to reduce the Odor.

Building some Tree Swallow boxes, a bit of lighthearted frivolity and a lesson in basic carpentry.

And in a month or two, gardens!

In the meantime, snow perhaps. At least the drive is clear. Thanks to the tractor driver!

2 Responses »

Some days one gets bogged down by the size of this place, the eternal questions of ‘how to pay’ and ‘who will care for it next’? No good answers there.

But then there are days like today. When the sun is shifting north in the bright, blue winter sky: cold and clear. But the light is alive. When the hemlocks, pines, and spruces are shining evergreen. When countless shrubs have turned to color: red and gold glints in and amongst the gray, green, brown bark. The rugosa roses are a deep ruby color. I was looking particularly closely at them since I was thinning the section along the gravel path. It is so much easier in the winter when one can see the structure and walk where one needs to walk.

Winter is long and dark. This is true. But every day, even in the cold, is lovely and full of life. We overlook it so often and then a moment will reach out and we will be alive.

One Response »

or not. A constant in this state is grumbling about the evil utility companies. But you know….they really aren’t that bad….Somebody did something (or a tree did something) and knocked the power out at about 11:30 last night. By 12:15 am it was back on.  Middle of the night. They have crews on constant standby. And a lot of them. And we take it for granted. Actually, we tend to grumble that it went out at all. But considering the size, age, and complexity of the system; that it works at all is a minor miracle.

Still we do have a generator, large, noisy, gas-guzzling, and very tough.  Thankfully, the furnace doesn’t take much power, but does need a little bit to get started. And I don’t think that bypassing that little starter would be very wise!Keeping the fish pond unfrozen would be a trick too.

I am glad the power came back on. I don’t want to have to use the generator. But I wouldn’t not have it. Sort of like a fire extinguisher or a first aid kit. You don’t buy it with the intention of needing it, or the desire to use it. You buy it because if you don’t have it and you do need it, it is much too late to get it.

Comments Off on In the dark

The big old pine at the corner, which has been a picturesque snag for as long as I can remember*, finally toppled in the rain and the wind. It made the expected mess out of the surrounding area; but it missed the young spruce, and the sheep laurel, mountain ash, shadblow, etc will probably recover just fine. However….it isn’t actually, quite on the ground. The butt end and some of the branches are, but most of its weight is being taken by a four inch red maple that it fell on and bent double…and didn’t quite break.**  Not really a problem, I’d just leave it. But I would like to fix the boundary fence that it smashed. Only, the top of the maple (under load and ready to recoil like a demented trebuchet) is tangled in the fence, and the pine is leaning on it.  And I have a nasty feeling that if I poked at the fence, Something would let go. Boing!!

Or maybe anyone who is fool enough to walk through that area will get what they deserve? Still it would be nice if it was actually on the ground. I dislike hung trees.***

*Over twenty years, amazing how wood lasts.

**I had sort of intended to leave that maple, but there are more than enough of them.

***of course there is also the Damocles Sword bit of another tree, suspended above that same bit of fence, thoughtfully left by the state…

One Response »

is very odd stuff….Julie’s pond is mostly frozen….mostly. Except for the main spring, the secondary spring just west of the center, the outflow sections, the….well just don’t go skating there alright?

The rivers are freezing over nicely, which usually means it is rather cold, since they are rocky and fast flowing, which means that ice has a bit of work to do if it wants to form.

But the fish pond? The little fish pond kept open by the bubblers and heaters? It was frozen over yesterday, but today it was wide open water. It is appreciably colder today. So what changed? Solar gain (sunny today, cloudy yesterday), something with the ground water (which is right there), sheer perversity?

One Response »

I had the occasion to drive down through the central section of Connecticut today. (And what is it about the Connecticut Valley? Somehow the towns do ‘lonely, down at the heel’ with astonishing ease, more so because you know there are So many people and yet….) It is mostly flat, and would like to be mile upon mile of Red and Silver Maple swamps, with the odd oak hillock. It is rich land of deep soil and slow rivers, but because of that richness it grows back to woodland with a speed that borders on the uneasy.  Made more uneasy because the trees that are hard along the highway are mostly the ‘junk’ trees, the urban survivors, locust, ash, bittersweet, tree of heaven, Norway maple, barberry, rose, Russian olive, poison ivy; they grow and grow well. It is an odd strip of land.

It also happens to be raptor city in the winter. No less than seven hawks seen in less than fifteen miles, solemnly perched on their lightpoles or roadside trees, forever hunting the margins. And one big raven circling an old train yard. It wasn’t like I was exactly trying to count them either! Mostly red tails, but I think there were one or two others, at least one that read as a slate grey back so I don’t know what he was.  A little hard to tell on size and color, they were all fluffed out to deal with the cold.

Comments Off on Birds Again

and getting colder!

This guy doesn’t seem to mind too much….an amazing little guy, he weighs in at about 1/3 of an ounce (two or so quarters). He’s waiting for the feeder here, a photo through a window.

Comments Off on It’s cold

Depending on one’s outlook, Mourning Doves are cherished, ridiculed as stupid, or are pests. The latter I fail to understand. Their stupidity…well I have evidence of….but I couldn’t begin to imagine Connecticut without them. Whether the soft dawn chorus, the whistling wings, or just their constant presence; there is never malice nor aggression in evidence, and if that meekness leads to ridicule? Well, that’s a deeper and darker thought than today needs. They are lovely birds, all the colors of a gentle dawn.

Which is a long way of explaining why I was so glad that I checked the fish pond the other day. We have been having difficulties with the current arrangement (see Zombie Fish) and I had set the heater to run* and turned the pump off. What I didn’t consider was that turning off the pump meant turning off the waterfall.  This meant that all the open water was now under the net around the bubblers. The net is fine, black mesh. The mourning dove flock had a habit of coming to the waterfall at dusk for their drink. I think you can guess where this is going.

When I checked at dusk the other day, most of the flock left.  All but one, one panicked dove caught beneath the netting. Maybe it was the brave one that figured out a way to get underneath. Maybe if I hadn’t come, it would have gotten out again.  I don’t know. I do know that I moved very fast indeed to catch the panicked bird before it thrashed its way to damaged wings or a dunking in ice cold water.  I think it had been caught for awhile since it rested in my hands for a solid five plus minutes before any indication that it wanted to leave. And when it did? One brief clasp of a claw around a finger, and then fast flashing wings up into the tree where the rest of the flock waited.

Photo of a Mourning Dove, at rest.

*It didn’t run, which meant a new heater today….we will see if It runs!)

Comments Off on Mourning Doves