I wonder what the experiment will show this year? Right now this section of lawn is under about two feet of hard packed, wind blown snow. I’ll have to remember to cut the line correctly, sheer happenstance when I did it last year!
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Uncategorized complaining about the weather 20:39
are done with winter, they have been busy pairing off this week. As are most of the other birds, the goldfinches, for example, are beginning to regain their golden colors. For them the sun is king, not the temperature or the extended forecast.
Winter isn’t done though.* Last night’s snow was elegant: a fluffy (if very slick) eight inches. It hung in the trees quite nicely. Tomorrow night is forecast to hit -11 F. Yay?
Despite major efforts, the driveway remains shut, except at both ends. You could build very respectable igloos out of the drift snow. So we wait. What else can one do, but lie to oneself about one’s power over old Mother Nature?
*Today it got above freezing, however! I have a feeling that the winter/spring transition is going to be short and wet.
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Uncategorized 21:05
One good thing about the cold weather, there was a lovely moon tonight. It was the slimmest, sharpest crescent edge of gold riding low with the ice-blue Jackal star close by. But what made it really lovely was the earth-shine. All this white snow helps with that phenomenon. The reflection of the rest of the moon was just enough to pick out in golden black shadow the entire moon, glowing ever so faintly against the black sky.
Hauntingly lovely.
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gardening and Modern Photos 13:02
Ever noticed how it makes one procrastinate even more?
In lieu of something or other:
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Landscapes and Modern Photos complaining about the weather, photography 21:22
Do try it! It was open and drive-able yesterday.
This wind is a bit absurd.
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gardening and Landscapes and Modern Photos gardening, photography 10:49
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Uncategorized 00:25
And the miles unending
Anger’s broken road
The snarl of hating love
Running through the night
And home, where is home?
Ah, but I know
As sure as I know my master
And life’s wondrous chains.
The purple hills rising from the river
The Big Dipper swinging low across the horizon
Stars poured out across the northern sky
The fires of the southern cities behind me
And these hills, these woods
In their frozen silence
They hold the promise of the dawn.
Love out of darkness singing on.
Esperanza and Modern Photos weather 23:27
The bare spot on the roof is actually caused by the wind, not a heat leak. Some of those icicles now touch the drift on the top porch, which is about three feet deep.
Note the almost entirely buried dormer windows on either side of the chimney. And for those that know the house, the drift on the lawn, which should be flat and at the level of the base of the yew.
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Uncategorized poetry 21:05
My kinship lies
Not with the shining valleys nor yet the mountain ranges
Where man, heroic, stands alone
The world before him in glory
Mine are the beaten hills
Rough as the boxer’s crown.
Take away your gleaming cities of neon
Stainless steel in the sun;
For mine are the cities
Fallen from their strength
Children of iron, black as coal on the snow
In my cities, living still,
Are the descendants of
That fighting Irish Italian breed
Crossed with the Yankee farmer.
Murphy’s Bar, Vinnie’s Pizza
Haunted by Ethan Frome
Who on his good days turns into Robert Frost
But no apologies.
Mine the farms where the fields have vanished
Ghosts of a dream betrayed by the dreamer
The white church on the hill
The weathered farm, ox and ass
The red mill by the river
And all fallen to the ruin
But enduring still.
Uncategorized 20:46
In comparison to the last post!
(not quite the same angle, this was taken from the driveway right below the apple tree in the previous picture. And yes, that tree needs serious pruning. It Always does.)
Acair Fearann 