Christmas and (finally) Winter

We had a great Christmas this year with Briar, Gus and the kids.

One of our gifts from Briar and Gus was a wildlife camera. It's a waterproof camera with a motion sensor. You set it up outside and it takes stills or video of anything that walks by, day or night. We haven't caught any moose or bear yet but, after our first snow last night and this morning, I passed my hand in front of it to trigger this video of falling snow.

The previous record for latest measurable snowfall was 12/24 so this 12/29 storm set a new all time record (now I'm hearing that the record is January 3rd -they need to make up their minds). December isn't quite over yet but we are also on track to set the record for the warmest December on record. This storm only dropped 3 or 4 inches and it quickly devolved into sleet and freezing rain. It's raining right now so it won't be around long.

We went out for our usual morning walk and took most of the following pictures.

Front yard and driveway from the garage.

Back yard from the end of the driveway.

Looking toward town center from the street end of our driveway.

The front of the house from Coldbrook Rd.

Our house through the trees from Maple Ave. The colors of the siding and roof usually provides excellent camouflage but the white roof really made it pop.

Looking along Maple Ave. toward town center (taken from the same spot at previous picture).

Looking the other direction along Maple Ave. (taken from the same spot)

Looking down Barre Rd. toward Coldbrook Rd. from Maple Ave. We're at the corner of Barre and Coldbrook.

After passing through Oakham Center School from Barre Rd. to Coldbrook Rd., we took this picture up Coldbrook towards home. 

Approaching home from the Barre Rd. intersection.

This really wasn't enough of a storm to justify using the snow blower but I've been eager to try it out (just to make sure that I know what I'm doing). I had hoped to have a picture of me doing the snow blowing but that didn't happen. Here's the cleared driveway.

-JC-

All the Leaves are Gone

It's been a while since my last post. With the leaves gone, we are seeing a lot more of our property (including the previously mentioned field stone walls which we now know go completely around us) and our neighbors.

One image that I've been trying to capture is the sunrise over the crest of the hill. The sunrise silhouettes the tombstones in the old Revolutionary War era cemetery. This first photo is my best effort to date (but not very successful). Just to clarify the subject matter, I walked a little ways up the street this morning and took the second photo in better light.

Sunrise over the cemetery (taken from the house).

Cemetery from the same angle but much closer. It looks like they've added an ice skating rink in the last week or so (no ice yet).

A later attempt from the kitchen. Less zoomed so the tombstones to the left of the church aren't clear. Still, abeautiful sunrise.

Next, I have some pictures of things that have emerged from the leaves across the street from us. I've shown the piece of farm equipment and the wall before but they are much more visible now.

This abandoned piece of farm equipment is directly across from our front door (we have no idea what it is). It's only a few feet from the road but was completely invisible in the summertime. Note the old windmill in the far right background.

The Great Wall (across the street, next to the farm equipment). Stone walls are everywhere but this is by far the most impressive that we've seen.

We have long seen this historical marker across the street from the house next door (these markers are all over town). There never seemed to be anything there.

This dangerously dilapidated building has emerged from the brush about 20 feet in front of the sign. Doesn't look much like the picture on the marker but it might be a remnant.

I mentioned that we can now see our neighbors. Oakham doesn't have anything like city blocks. We may live on the only spot that resembles a block in the entire town. I'm providing the following map just to clarify the pictures that follow the map.

The blue marker points to our property. All structures are shadowed in. The unnamed street at the top is Barre Rd. so you can see that our block is surrounded by Barre Rd., Coldbrook Rd. an Maple St. (on 2 sides).

We see these houses out our kitchen window. The one on the right is the only house on the stretch of Maple that runs above us. The other house is at the corner of Maple and Maple.

These houses are also visible from our kitchen. They are all on the stretch of Maple that runs uphill from Coldbrook.

Also visible from our kitchen, these are the buildings on Coldbrook. From the left, the first 2 buildings are houses, the third is the old Post Office (now a house) and the roof peak on the far right is a barn that is attached to the old Post Office. The barn looks like it might collapse in on itself at any moment.

The view from our farmers porch is all trees in the summer. Now, as we look across Barre and along Coldbrook, we have a house (on the left), a red barn and a white barn.

Also from the farmer's porch, you can just make out another house up Barre (through the trees above the trailer).

Back to the kitchen side of the house, that's the steeple of the Congregational Church behind that big pine tree.

Along with being able to see our neighbors through the trees comes being seen from our neighbors houses (we've lost our camouflage).

From Coldbrook up toward Maple.

From the other side of Barre on Coldbrook.

We've finally started to get involve in some of the many volunteer activities that exist in Oakham. We helped to decorate the town bandstand and Christmas tree.

Bandstand, Christmas Tree and Carolers.

And we decorated our house too! No visible here but each of the upstairs windows has a blinking LED candle.

Sorry, I know that this post is going on forever...

We started December with our first visit back to California. We spent 3 nights with Jeff's Mom in Walnut Creek and then 5 nights with Grant, Melissa and the kids in Thousand Oaks. We were there for Cooper's first birthday and party.

Colton, showing off his new bike riding skills.

Riley

Grandma and Cooper.

Grandpa and the kids.

We went on a hike to a waterfall with Grant and Riley. It was a long steep decent and Riley surprised us by hiking out by herself (she'd had to be carried most of the way in).

We all took a trip to a monarch butterfly sanctuary in Goleta.

Cooper and Melissa at the sanctuary.

-JC-

Late Report on Halloweeen

This was our first Massachusetts Halloween. Our old house, on Pumpkin Street, was a natural draw. Fortunately, we had no windows that faced the street and it was easy to pretend to not be at home. That's not the case here. Combine that with the fact that the town collected donations brought us candy to distribute to the kids and we really had no choice but to participate in Halloween.

Being at the town center, we'd been warned that we might expect as many as 200 trick-or-treaters. Halloween being on a Saturday threw a wrinkle into things. It might have meant an increase but we only saw about 60 trick-or-treaters. The kids were probably at parties or traveled to other towns - they weren't here.

Trick-or-treating was from 5-7pm with a parade to follow at 7pm. We closed up at 7pm and went up to the town square to watch the start of the parade. We'd been told that the entire town participates in the parade. The Fire Department led the parade and the police department followed up. In between, there were 4 or 5 small children with their parents. We cheered them on as they went past and then went back home.

We had a ton of candy left over that, through Briar, we were able to donate to charity.

Last night, we attended a dinner party at one of our neighbor's home. This party is an annual tradition and usually includes a bonfire where a cutout of a witch is burned (must be a Massachusetts thing). It's been dry and it was pretty windy yesterday so the bonfire was cancelled. We had a nice visit with our neighbors, some of whom we hadn't met before.

It's been interesting to learn what we can see when the leaves are gone. Our lot abuts nearly every other lot on our block. We couldn't see any of them before but we can now see the silhouettes of almost every house on the block through the woods. The local church steeple seemed far away but, all of a sudden, it towers. We can even see the ancient tombstones silhouetted across the crest of the fill.

I've already mentioned the stone wall that we've discovered across the back of the property. I was seated next to the lady that we bought the house from at the dinner party and she told me that the wall goes all the way around the property. I've been thinking about building a greenhouse in the brush area at the back of the lawn. The prior owner told me that, come springtime, we'll see that there's a large concrete slab back in that area (it used to be a goat shed). It might provide a perfect foundation for the greenhouse.

-JC-

Mountain Climb, Tree Removal and Discovery in Our Own Back Yard

A couple of years ago, we saw the foliage from the top of Wachusett Mountain and we have been meaning to go up there again. This week, we invited Briar along and visited the mountain. We had intended to drive up the mountain and climb the last quarter mile or so, The gate was closed because of some maintenance that was going on so we had to park at the Visitors Center near the base of the mountain and hike up. It was a beautiful day for a hike.

That's Boston in the distance.

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That's Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Briar, Gus and the kids climbed it a couple of weeks ago with the Cub Scouts.

When we had our house inspection, it was pointed out that we had a couple of dead branches that were potential threats to the house. On further inspection, we realized that we had 2 trees, an ash that had succumbed to beetles and a hickory that had been choked by a vine. We had them both cut down today.

This is the vine that strangled our hickory. It's twisted around a maple that it killed before jumping to the hickory.

They also did some cleanup in the neighboring hickory.

Taking the top off the ash.

TIMBER! The last bit of the hickory coming down.

Cleanup was still in progress but I shot this view of the finished product while there was still some light.

While all of this was going on with the trees, we discovered that we could finally get to our rear property line through the now leafless trees. We weren't surprised to learn that there is a stone wall on the line.

That's our house down through the trees from the back property line.

-JC-