All I can say is, there's nothing like a nice warm wool hat when it's -9F (-26 wind chill)

Yeah, that's really all I can say...

A sure sign of spring

The sheep shearer came yesterday.  Nothing says Spring like bare naked sheep!

Here are a few pictures from the gazillions that I took -

This is Tiny, just about done.  About 30 seconds after this was snapped, she took off like a rocket.  It was her first experience with shearing, and she wasn't impressed.

Here's Smoky getting his mani-pedi.  He didn't like shearing much, either.

He thought the whole thing was undignified.

 "Look what that bad man did to me..."

I tried to get a good picture of Orion and Merlin post-shearing, but they wouldn't let me get any closer than this...

One thing we confirmed with the fleece removal is that all the girls are pregnant.  Here's Tiny and Onyx, both a bit bulgy.

And a closeup of Onyx, showing that, once again,  she's as big as a house.  I hope she doesn't have triplets again.  (Or from the size of her, quadruplets...)

The final tally?  Eight, that's eight, bags of fleece out on the deck.

I need to start spinning faster...

I think I heard a peeper!

While driving home from work tonight.
Or maybe my car has just developed a new and annoying noise.
In which case I'm not nearly so excited...

(For those who don't know what peepers are)

Two steps forward, one step back...

We've had a relapse in the weather department.

We were down to bare ground on Friday.  Saturday I woke up to that.

My lavender is clearly Not Happy:

 And here's the view through my big rosebush:

Rosehips with frosting:

It rained later in the day, and washed most of the nasty white stuff away.  But who knows what tomorrow will bring?

(It was particularly disheartening when I went to transfer these images from the camera's memory card - the photos were right next to the azalea shots I took in Florida...)

(And to anyone who was worried - no, I wasn't eaten by weasels.  No further sightings of the little fella, though we did find a mousetrap, sprung and sans mouse, bait still intact, pulled back under the stove...)

I needed a foghorn...

Just got home from work - the store is already keeping whacky hours in preparation for the holidays - and it was so foggy that I was mostly driving by memory... 
The weather has been warming up again, which is causing all the fog.  Maybe it'll bring Madman good luck in his Quest for Deer. 
We figure Murphy's Law will work in our favor this year - the freezers are chock-a-block full of chickens and garden veg.  We have absolutely no room for venison.  Doesn't that sound like he should get a really really big deer?

The chickens aren't happy with the return to Standard Time, either

I always bitch this time of year about the return to Standard Time. (The only reason I'm not griping right now about the difficulty of resetting my watch, is that my watch died a while back. Probably committed suicide to avoid going off Daylight Saving Time...)
I get out of work at 5pm and am home around 15 minutes later. In total Darkness. So when I go out to the chicken coop to feed and water and gather eggs, the chickens have already settled in for the night. They're pretty grumpy about me wandering around with a head lamp, peeking in nest boxes.
"Hey! What the hell?!? Trying to get some sleep here. Bug off!"

At least the rabbit is happy to see me. He's a little more nocturnal.

And the sheep just cuss me for being so late bringing their supper...

It's a Puzzlement

Orion was a little puzzled this morning.

"What is this white shi... er, stuff... all over the ground?"*

But I distracted him with hay, and that made it all better.


* He was born in April, in Indiana. I don't think he's seen much snow...

In the beginning, there was dirt

Which over the last couple of weeks, (when it hasn't been raining. Which days are few and far between.) we've been getting ready to plant.
Today was the day. I finished weeding the asparagus bed, and rummaged around in my main herb bed enough to plant some more bunching onions. (I keep a running bed of them at one end of the herb garden, but the last couple of years they haven't overwintered well, so I cast out a bunch of new seed to start over.)
Madman planted lettuce, spinach, beets, radishes, and the first row of peas.
Let Garden 2011 begin!

Spring Sprang Sprung

Hey, it's finally spring up here! For certain definitions of spring. That doesn't mean we won't get another snow or two before summer arrives (or even after summer arrives), but for up here, this is as good as it gets.

The tulips are up! No buds yet, but soon...

The first daffodil up is almost ready to bloom. There are a few more daffs lagging behind, but I'm surprised any of them came back after a guest weedwhacked them last year, thinking they were some kind of heavy-duty grass. So I'll take what I can get and be happy.

I hadn't checked the rhubarb yet this spring - it's going all kinds of crazy. Rhubarb pie, rhubarb dumplings, ginger rhubarb jam... Lovely stuff, rhubarb.

Today's big project was putting up the greenhouse that we acquired from friends who are moving away. One of Madman's buddies showed up to help, which was a wonderful thing.

The sheep's pen is next to the garden, and Goldie spent the whole afternoon trying to cajole the guys into giving them more food. Because why on earth would humans be outside if they weren't actively feeding sheep?


They got the walls up and a couple of the roof trusses attached before they had to call it quits for the day.


Once the structure is complete and the plastic is on, we'll be able to set out our tomato and pepper starts and gain about a month on the growing season.

The chickens have been taking advantage of the warmer weather by spending lots of time outdoors. But there's a serious hitch in their enjoyment.

Over the last couple of years, several new springs have bubbled up in our yard. Each year, more and more water is gushing up out of the ground and heading down the hill. This year, half the chicken yard is now a bubbling stream. Once the greenhouse project is done, Madman will go to work trying to channel the water into the trench he's been carving to handle all the water runoff. We really didn't need a babbling brook running from the upper end of our garden, through the chicken yards, and down our driveway...

Here's one of our spring-molting chickens. I think she looks like a Skeksis...

One of the day's smaller projects was removing the Rhode Island Red chicks from the Big Box o' Chix and putting them into their own little habitat. The CornishX chicks have entered the stage where they spend all their time eating, and they were starting to elbow out the smaller Red chicks.
Here you can see the size difference. The Red chick is actually a day or two older than his mutant brethren, but is half the size.

Madman had actually started the transfer before I realized what he was doing (I was still absorbing coffee, so not too quick on the uptake.) I ran for the camera since I wanted to get that size comparison picture.
The Red chicks were a little spooked, as they were getting scooped up one or two at a time and whisked away to the other box.
Here's one trying to hide in the crowd.

("Shhhh... He'll never see me in here...")

Here they are, happy in their new home.


No more having to fight through a crowd of big hungry buffoons just to get a bite of lunch.

Optimism can be a Serious Character Flaw

Ask me how I know.
Today started innocently enough. I hit 'snooze' a few too many times (well, maybe three. No more than four. Certainly not five, though I admit I wasn't thinking too clearly) because I really didn't want to get up. I should have taken it as a sign, called in sick to work, pulled the covers over my head, and gone back to sleep.
But I didn't.
The next sign I should have twigged to was when the chickens got out while I was gathering the eggs. I'd pulled the coop door closed behind me, but big Mr Rooster pushed his way out anyway. And where he goes, the hens are sure to follow. I moved carefully out the door, scooping up hens and pitching them back into the coop, while trying not to spook the rooster so he wouldn't panic and head off cross-country. Meanwhile, he was helpfully making 'Come on, girls, let's go have an adventure' noises, so more hens were trying to go outside. Finally, I got out ahead of the pack and shooed him back inside.
"Well, that could have been worse," I assured myself optimistically while I headed inside to get ready for work.
Then the real part of my morning kicked in. I'd actually made it to the top of the driveway last night when I got home from work, and was quite excited about it since it was the first time in weeks I hadn't had to park at the bottom and trudge up the hill.
I should have known better.
While trying to turn my car around at the top, so I wouldn't have to back down (and we all know how well that would have gone - see previous post), I got stuck. I'd pulled the nose of the car up to the snowbank, then shifted into reverse, figuring I'd have to do that same maneuver several times to turn around in the tight quarters at the top of the drive.
Instead of reversing, however, one of the tires just started spinning on the ice. I tried rocking the car, but only succeeded in digging myself in. At this point, I called work and told them I might be a little late, explaining the circumstances. They wished me luck and told me to be careful.
(Last time I got stuck, Madman discovered that my all-wheel-drive isn't functioning. The car is supposed to work like a front-wheel drive until one of the tires starts to slip, then the rear wheels are supposed to kick in. My rear wheels refuse to take up their rightful duties, so my car is basically a front-wheel drive. No wonder I haven't been able to get up the driveway all this time...)
I tried everything. I put stuff under the tires, trying to get a little traction. Didn't work. I chipped ice out from behind the (increasingly deeper) hole that the tire was grinding for itself. Didn't work.
But I was sure that at any moment I was going to pop right out and be on my way. Optimism can be so ugly.
More grit, more chipping, repeat, repeat, repeat. Finally I felt the car starting to move, starting to lift itself out of the hole... and then the other tire started spinning.
You can imagine the words that were coming out of my mouth by this time. But I was still sure that I was going to get out. (I'd called Madman a couple of times by this time, but he was working in a town that's basically a dead zone, so my calls just went to voicemail.)
I started working on the second tire. Grit, chip, grit, chip.
Suddenly it started spinning freely, without even making contact with the ground.
That can't be good.
I discovered that my bumper was now hung up on part of the snowbank that had been below bumper-level when the whole disaster started, but since the car's level had dropped as it dug itself down, it was now high enough to add to my problems.
I got the snow shovel and started chipping away. This snowbank is plow-pushed stuff which has frozen and melted numerous times after being packed. It's only slightly softer than cast iron.
That part wasn't much fun either. By this time, part of me wanted to just go in the house and get drunk, but the Little-Miss-Optimist part insisted on keeping on.
Finally got the snow cleared, and went back to rocking, chipping, gritting, swearing, because after all I was going to just pop right out any second now.
Eventually even I had to give up. I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the car window as I was getting in for the bazillionth attempt - I had crazy hair, and not only was there dirt on my face, there was blood from my bruised and bleeding knuckles. Optimism over.
(Madman and I discussed it later - where optimism stops and too-dumb-to-know-when-to-quit starts. I admitted it's a fine line, and I often don't know which side of it I'm standing on.)
I called Madman's mom, who was the only person I knew who could even possibly have been home at that moment. I told her the problem, said I was now 3 hours late for work, and she offered to come give me a ride.
Madman picked me up after work and drove me home. He'd gotten my messages, and had gotten my car unstuck for me through a combination of hot water for ice-melting and sheer determination. It's presently parked at the top of the driveway, turned toward the road so I don't have to do anything in the morning but press the gas and go. (He's offered to turn the car around for me for the rest of the winter, pre-supposing I ever get it up the driveway again...)

I think I've mentioned a time or two how much I hate winter. Do you think it's dangerous that I'm going to Florida this weekend? As in, 'Why should I come back?"
Oh, yeah, there's Madman...
Do you think he could learn to love palm trees?

I'm just glad I have today off

The view from my front window. (I was going to go outside and take pictures of this little blizzard, but then came to my senses.)
The initial forecast was for 4 to 6 inches, but it was updated later to 1 to 2 feet. We're currently close to the 2 foot mark and it's still snowing hard. Sideways, I might add. Snowstorms are soooo much more thrilling with high winds.

It's been a nasty couple of days all around. March is a cruel month in Vermont. February brings feelings of doom and despair, but March is full of Epic Battles as Winter senses its demise in the lengthening days and brings in the heavy artillery.
I had Saturday off, so volunteered to do the errands and grocery run. Rain was predicted for the early afternoon, so I wanted to get out and going before the mayhem started. Unfortunately, I'd made it almost to the top of the driveway on Friday, so I had to back the car all the way back down.
I do not have good backing-up skills. In point of fact, when it comes to reverse, I totally suck. While my hand-eye coordination is perfectly good for normal usage, it totally deserts me as soon as I move the gearshift to 'R'. I don't understand this, but I accept it to be true.
And while I can usually manage to back down the driveway in seasons other than winter, without courting a trip to the breathalyzer, the white on white of snowbank/non-snowbank makes for needless added complication.
I backed right up into the snowbank and got stuck.
Madman heard the sound of me trying to work the car loose, with tires-spinning sound effects, and came out and got the snow shovel. (I'm pretty sure he was already putting his boots on as soon as I started the car. He knows me.)
It took him a good long while to dig the car out. Never let it be said that I'm not thorough in whatever I undertake.
Finally he got the car free and back out into the driveway. Then he offered to back it up the rest of the way down to the road ("Oh, please, would you?") and turned it back over to me as he hiked back up the drive. (Which was very very kind of him, and also? Saved him having to come out and dig me out again...)
Two hours and three grocery stores later (one of the drawbacks of small town life is small town grocery stores - not one of which carries everything we need) I got home in pouring rain and made if far enough up the driveway that the three trips to carry groceries weren't as awful as they could have been. (*sigh*)
It rained all night and was still raining on Sunday when we got up. The packed snow of our yard and driveway was now a huge sheet of water and slush with a solid ice layer under it.
Madman had plans for the morning, and I didn't have to be at work until midafternoon, and since my car was blocking the driveway anyway, he used it instead of his own, parking at the bottom of the driveway when he got home so I wouldn't have to back down again.
Walking down to the car, however, was a recipe for disaster. Watery slush on top of ice is slipperier than greased owl ...umm... snot. I kept to the edges of the drive, hanging on to whatever branches and small trees I could catch hold of, as I babystepped/slid down that long long ramp.
Finally, I reached the car. Hallelujah! At that moment, I realized I'd left something off the checklist.
I always keep my carkeys in my coat pocket.
Madman had used my car that morning. Which involved using my carkeys.
There were no carkeys in my coat pocket.
I looked back up the driveway and felt tears welling up in my eyes.
Cellphone. I called Madman. When he heard the quaver in my voice as I said I couldn't face walking back up, he said he'd be right there with the keys.
He came down quicker than I would have dared, and I was off to work.
The rain turned to snow a lot earlier than predicted and the ride home was treacherous, involving slow speeds and white knuckles.
At least the driveway was now hike-able with all that fresh snow on top of the slippery stuff. I parked at the bottom and gladly trudged uphill, thinking as I went that the snow should taper off soon.
I didn't know at that point about the change in forecast...

Just shooting off a flare to let you know I'm still here

Work seems to be sucking every last bit of energy out of my tired little body. Add in the February I've-Lost-The-Will-To-Live blues (It's cold and gray and gloomy and thus it has ever been and thus it ever shall be...) and we've got a serious lack of post-worthiness going on around here.

I manage to knit a few stitches on the Niebling in the evenings, but progress is slow and unphotogenic. It's now a slightly larger lump of bumpiness. (Or bump of lumpiness. It could go either way.)

I'm still spinning Goldie's fleece, but it's just more and more of the same the same the same.

I need sunshine. I need warm weather. I need to not have to put on a hat and a coat and boots and a scarf and gloves just to go outside.

I need to stop whining and just let spring come in its own good time.
(Which up here is May.)
*sigh*

Alex, I'll take 'Winter' for $100, please.

And the answer is: 'No'

Alex, that would be 'Does Gayle want any more snow?'

Correct!

'Winter' for $200, please.

Answer: 'Two complete circuits, clockwise'

Ah, that's 'How many times did Gayle brush off her car tonight, since the snow was falling too fast to keep up with?'

Correct!

'Winter' for $300, please, Alex.

Answer: 'Thunder and lightning'

'What's going on right now at Gayle's house, right on top of the several inches of fresh snow that's just accumulated?'

Absolutely correct! And the rain is such a nice touch.

Alex, let's skip ahead to 'Winter' for $500, please.

Answer: 'Mother's Nature's ass'

Alex, I believe the correct question is 'Where would Gayle like to shove up a snowshovel?'

The Joy of Living in the Deep Freeze

The temperatures for the next couple of days are predicted to be Frigid with a capital F. As in, if we want anything warmer than zero degrees, we're all going to have to go outside with flamethrowers and other incendiary devices.
Since our pipes frequently freeze when it's that cold, I've taken the precaution of filling the coffee maker with water, as well as the chickens' waterer, the sheep's bucket, and the jug for the rabbits, all ready for the morning.
Now if only I could fill the shower...

I thought shoppers were crazed yesterday...

Today we had couples who never should have been shopping, let alone together, who were calling each other names in the aisles, and swearing at each other about whether Uncle Larry would be thrilled to get a foot massager for Christmas. And there were the guy teams - brothers or best buddies - who had waited till Christmas eve to go shopping, saying "Dude... I don't think that's such a good idea..." or "Dude... trust me, she'll love that" while holding up purple sequined whatchamacallits.
I won't even start on the wailing sugared-up children caroming off the endcaps and throwing screaming fits in the toy aisles.
Personally, I got rammed by shopping carts at least a dozen times today, with nary an 'Ooops, sorry.' All I was doing was trying to clean up the devastation our lovely customers had left in their wake.

Gee, I just love Christmas...

So, anyway.

To all you sane people out there:
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and much happiness.

I have to get back to frosting the cookies...

Yeah, it's that Winter Wonderland thing again...

Yesterday was the big day - the stars and my schedule and our garage's schedule finally aligned and I got studded snowtires put on my car. (In Vermont, they can be considered all-season tires.) (No, really.)
And it was just in the nick of time - yesterday's weather was freezing rain, shifting to snow in the late afternoon. The roads were slippery enough when I went in to work at 2pm; I certainly wasn't looking forward to the drive home after 11:00.
But when I went out to my car after closing the store, I discovered that the roads weren't my most immediate problem.
I tried to open my car's door and discovered it was frozen shut. It would jiggle enough to kick on the overhead light, but no way was it going to open for me. I started to worry that yanking too hard on the door handle would break it, resulting in a door that would never close again. (Which would be Somewhat Inconvenient.)
I tried the door to the back seat, with the same result.
Working my way around the car, the next door to try was the rear hatch. That one opened without a fight to the death, but since I had picked up my car from the garage immediately before going in to work, the rear cargo area was full of my old tires. The only way I was going to be able to get in that way was to take out the tires, drop them in the snowy parking lot (and it was still snowing hard at this point in my evening. We're talking the full Winter-with-a-capital-W experience), crawl through clambering over both the back and the front seats, kick the door open, then get back out to retrieve the tires.
I considered this plan for about a nano-second.
No.
The passenger rear door didn't budge at all, but hallelujah, the front passenger door finally popped open. It may have been the cursing. Or the volume of the cursing. Or I might have gotten extra points for creativity. All I know is that I really really didn't want to mess around with a bunch of heavy dirty tires in the middle of a parking lot in the middle of a snowstorm.
The drive home was long and slow. If the snowplows were out, they weren't working on any of the roads I was traveling. It was hard to even see the roads I was traveling.
But my brand spanky new tires climbed right up my driveway, which was the first time in days that I hadn't had to give up at the bottom and hike my way up.

So, tonight on the way home, I thought all that was behind me. The roads were clear of snow, I could drive at normal speed, and it looked like clear sailing.
And it was, until I turned onto the country road that leads to our road.
It's a long bumpy curvy road. Picture a roller coaster constructed for cars.
Apparently, when I was joggling all those car doors last night, I loosened them, even though I couldn't get them open.
Every time I hit a bump, or went around a tight curve, the overhead light and the dashboard open-door-indicator light would come on. And go off. And come on again.
It was like I had my own private lightning storm. Inside my car.
At least there was no thunder.

Slipperier than the excrement of your choice.

Driving home tonight was a little nerve-wracking. Cold, wet, misty, rainy, sleety. Perfect conditions for black ice.

For those of you from more temperate climes, black ice (and I'm resisting the urge to capitalize it) is the most slippery substance in the Universe. Even studded snow tires won't help you on black ice.

And, unfortunately, it looks exactly like wet pavement.

So you don't even know you're on it until your car starts to slither in directions you have no desire to go in. (Sorry. In which you have no desire to go. My 8th grade English teacher would have had me diagramming sentences for a month...)

My driving philosophy is to assume it's slippery until proven otherwise. This has kept me out of a lot of ditches.

Home safe and sound. If there was black ice out there tonight, I fooled it completely.

That's odd...

The weather has been odd this year. (Though in Vermont, the weather is always a little odd...)
As I was driving home from work tonight (in the dark) (in the rain) (not snow), I realized I'd only needed a light sweater today. It's mid-November.
Last year we were wearing our winter coats in early October. And freezing our butts off.
Odd.

Houston, we have a problem.

In between all the crazy things going on here, including bottlefeeding rabbits (and getting peed on by the ungrateful little wretches sweet little bunnikinses), I've actually been doing some knitting. Yeah, I was surprised, too.
But.
Slight problem.
I was almost done with the ribbing on the cuff of Skew when I decided to try it on.That's as far as she goes, folks. The ribbing will go over my instep, but the leg of the sock won't. The only way I'm going to be able to wear this is if I pull a Cinderella's-Stepsister and chop off a hunk of my foot.
*sigh*
The frogging has already commenced.

And if anyone thinks I'm not entitled to whine about our weather up here, this is what it was doing this afternoon.


My daffodils and tulips are pissed.


Goldie just stands there going "WTF?"

Mother Nature is a right mean bitch.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

Today is Madman's birthday.

Mother Nature sent him a gag gift...

Not quite spring, yet.