Dark and dreary

It was so dark and dreary this morning that I was late getting up.  I kept waiting for some semblance of daylight to appear, and it never did.  A black cloud hung heavily over the mountain, so even at 7 a.m. I needed a headlamp for a little while, and Doodle the rooster didn’t crow until almost 7:30 a.m.

The rain, while not heavy, was cold and the breeze blew little slivers of it onto my face, stinging it.  Even the Shelties were happy to turn around and head back to the cabin this morning and that has to be a first!  Birds were hunkered down in whatever shelter they could find, but a great horned owl was still calling just before 8 a.m. 

By afternoon, the day improved, and the sky soon filled with turkey vultures and a pair of red-tailed hawks.  The little birds came out of hiding too.  It is, after all, November and this is how November is supposed to be.  Or even colder, though it’s still sort of early enough in the month to let that pass for now.  Here on my mountain, November is a transition month.  It can be a leaf-less repeat of October, or it can be winter.  So far, this November is milder than average, but with the coldest part of the month still ahead, it’s too soon to complain about just how mild it’s going to be.

Instead, on this chilly and blustery morning, the dogs got a bit of a walk.  When we returned to the cabin, we had a fire in the fireplace, and I had a cup of hot chocolate, and that was enough to scare away the chill. 

In the woods with puppies

Beaver Creek

During the past winter I spent so much time shoveling that I had little time to enjoy the winter or the forest I live in. So I hadn’t been down to the bottom of Roundtop Mtn. and the little Beaver Creek that runs through the valley since the start of 2015 and probably not since early December. This weekend the weather cooperated, the day was sunny and near 60, so down I went.

I took Skye and Sparrow with me, as neither has had much chance to spend time in the woods with me or go on longer hikes. They are still young, not much over a year, before winter set in I thought a longer walk might still be too much for them.

I really wasn’t expecting that I’d be able to walk the length of the valley. I expected to find mud and soft ground in the road, as I have in years past But the spring rains haven’t really taken off yet, and the snow melted 10 days or so ago, and I found the old woods road in better shape and drier than I anticipated. The puppies were ready for an adventure, and spent much of the walk down the mountain chasing and jumping on top of each other.

Skunk cabbage

Down along the creek, I discovered the little creek running full and fast, a far cry from the near-still and shallow version of itself during the last weeks of adventure camp. Down here, spring has not yet sprung. I found exactly one skunk cabbage plant and that just 2-3 inches above the ground. Even the moss hasn’t greened up yet. Most of the Christmas ferns have finally lost their green shade, and the few that are left no longer look very festive.

The puppies paid more attention to each other than what was going on around them, I’m afraid. They did venture down to the creek’s edge for a drink of creek water, but nothing else held their attention or their interest for long. They certainly loved the run, though. On the way back, their little tails dragged a bit, as they haven’t learned not to use up all their energy at once. They still have a lot of learning to do. 

Still busy...and noisy, too

This morning at 4:30 a.m. the sound of several great horned owls calling right outside the cabin woke up the dogs, who began to bark, which woke me up. Sparrow also decided she needed to go out, now that she was awake.  So I stumbled out of bed, grabbed my headlamp, and we went outside.

The owls, three of them, were all very close.  The two females were the closest, the male a bit further away.  The one female was very close and had to be in my front forest, just a tree or two from the edge. With the headlamp I scanned every tree I could see but never caught her eyeshine.

The nearby hooting spooked Sparrow, who started barking and running around trying to find the something she was barking out.  Sometimes a particularly loud hooting sent her in the opposite direction, trying to get away from the sound she couldn’t find.

Needless to say that was the end of my sleep last night.  I rather hope tonight is quieter.

Practice needed

Clearly we’re going to need to practice our evacuation plan.
 

Yesterday afternoon a tornado warning popped up very unexpectedly. Not that they are ever expected, but even the morning’s weather forecast didn’t hint at this possibility. The path of the warning area included my cabin, so I got ready to inhabit my basement with the dogs for a while.

What a fiasco that turned out to be!

First, an explanation: my basement is really just a partially underground area for the utility mechanicals of my abode. The end with the door is about 2 feet below the ground surface. The back end of the area is about 5 feet underground. I don’t have stairs down into it, so that first nearly 2 foot step is a big one.

So here I am with a tornado warning and multiple dogs trying to get them into the basement. The puppies were afraid and didn’t want to jump down those two feet. So I got Baby Dog, my big dog, to go first. She went in, but as I was then trying to get Sparrow into the basement, Baby Dog jumped out, all the while Skye is practicing his mule impersonation, planting his feet and pulling backwards for all he’s worth. Before I knew it I was as tangled as a Gordian knot with leashes and dogs.

The tornado warning expired before we eventually got in there. Fortunately, the tornado never touched ground. But if this had been an actual emergency, we’d all have been killed before I got the dogs into that basement. Clearly we have some work to do before the next one.

Sparrow's big adventure

My puppy Sparrow had a big surprise last evening. Actually, it was a surprise for me, too. We were taking a walk at dusk and were on our way back, just a short way from the cabin on the lane up the mountain. I had her on the long lead, and she was ahead of me, goofing around and sniffing stones and twigs the way she usually does.

Suddenly, just ahead of her, three deer dashed across the lane. She stood still, ears up, watching them go but made no move to chase them or bark at them. The deer were very close, even for me several steps behind her. She looked after them, already disappeared into the dense undergrowth of the forest. 

So we started to move again. We moved ahead about 3 steps when a fourth deer charged across the lane, now even closer to us than the first three. Her reaction was the same. Perhaps she was just as surprised as I was, too surprised to do more than watch them. These were the first deer she’d ever seen. Several times before I tried to get her to look at deer that I saw but they were always too far away to interest her.

After the fourth one, no more deer passed. I moved forward and counted my steps from where I was to the deer tracks in the dirt road. I counted just 14 steps, which put Sparrow about 10 steps from them. I wonder what she’ll do the next time she sees deer?

Never enough time

Winter weather and two puppies sure take up a lot of time, which accounts for fewer blog postings lately.  Winter is supposed to loosen its grip here over the next few days, and I hope the puppy situation calms soon, but if not at least the weather should improve.

It’s funny how I see some snow and ice melting even though the temperature remains below freezing.  It has been sunny, even though cold, and the March sunshine is stronger than that in January.  As long as the sun is out on days that still don’t climb much above the 20’s, a bit of melting occurs.  As with most things, that is both good and bad news.  It’s cheering to see some melting, however the result is that once the sun goes down everything re-freezes quickly and in some places I end up with even more ice than before.  Tomorrow the temperature will actually rise above freezing during the day and then the melting will start in earnest.  I’m ready for a bit of that.

On the puppy front, it’s about what you might expect.  Most nights I get up twice to the sound of their whining and we all make a quick trip outside for a potty break. Skye is smarter than Sparrow, but she is the braver of the two.  She is always the first to attempt something new, like stairs.  He learns new commands at the speed of light and catches on by the second or third try.  Learning commands for her is a work in progress, little baby steps, or should I say puppy steps, at a time?

Shovel-fest ahead!

Yes, I know. Another one.  Yet another shovel-fest looms ahead for Monday.  Ah well, at least the front and back decks were cleared of snow from the last storm.  Though if I didn’t know where I would put the last snow, where I will put this one is an even bigger question.

The dogs will be happy. Baby Dog has always loved the snow, and Skye and Sparrow (yes, there’s another one) take to the snow like little sled dogs. Climbing on snow banks, eating snow, diving right into the middle of a drift.  To them, snow is great.  Of course, in their short lives, they’ve never seen summer or spring or fall, so what do they know?  For them, snow is great and that’s all that matters.

The chickens briefly started to lay again, after virtually shutting down the egg-laying shop in mid-November.  The latest cold snap put an end to that, though they weathered last night’s near-zero temperatures with the ease of long experience with cold temperatures.  Today, despite the snow, the ice and the cold, they all decided they wanted out, and out they went. For weeks, I’ve left the coop door open between fetching fresh (i.e. liquid) water and the day’s food, and they’ve happily refused to cross the snow and stayed inside. Until today.  When I returned with a bucket of feed, they were all out, negotiating the icy snow path. I didn’t feel like rounding them up, so they are out.  Often, I can easily catch the hens, but Doodle the rooster is another matter.  He’s friendly enough, if shy, but nearly impossible to catch and I didn’t want to risk a conflict with his spurs.  They will go back inside on their own at dusk tonight, so if they want to march around the snow and ice today, they are welcome to it.