Spring Snowstorm and a Fox

With the exception of a few flurries, we've been clear of snow for quite a while now. For the past week, the weather forcasters have been forcasting snow for last night and this morning. At one point, they were talking 18" but, over the week, their models changed to the point where we might get an inch.

We ended up with about 8" and large, wet flakes are still coming down. Strangely, the newscasts still are talking about how we got missed and Cape Cod and Plymouth took the brunt of the storm. They are reporting less snow there than we have.

Our StealthCam (wildlife camera) has been possitioned lately on the back of our trailer. I had been starting to wonder if it worked at all and had it pointed at a spot that is frequented by a lot of small animals. We've had a lot of pictures of racoons, squirrels, cats and birds. What I really wanted to catch is a moose. The one that we saw left our yard at the corner where the new windmill is and followed a stream uphill from there.

Yesterday, I strapped the StealthCam to the pumphouse under the windmill and pointed it to where the moose had gone. This morning, I noticed tracks crossing the snow toward that spot and rushed out to get the chip from the camera. Here's the result:

-JC-

My Early Birthday Present

I have never been a fan of the wishing well on the back corner of our lawn. It had a purpose - it was hiding the wellhead - but it was poorly made and ugly.

This "Before" picture is from the multiple-listing photos when we bought the house. Also in the picture is the raised vegetable garden that was quite productive last summer (see the 2nd windmill picture for our new, improved planters).

I have long wanted to replace it with a windmill - not the dutch variety but the kind that you might see on a farm. Kristen ordered one for me for my birthday and it arrived this week. It only had a couple of hundred parts so assembly was simple (NOT).

In anticipation of its arrival, I decided to see how difficult it was going to be to remove the wishing well. My first discovery was that it was just sitting on the ground. I started to tilt it forward and discovered that it was going to hang up on the wellhead. I started to pull it back into position and the front half kept moving forward. It literally fell in half. Wishing well removal complete!

We bought some 1' square pavers to create a level foundation for the windmill. We still didn't want to look at the wellhead so I built a housing from lumber that I salvaged from the wishing well.

Here's the final results. It will look even better once the flowers start to grow up around it.

Behind the windmill, you can see our new raised vegetable planters. Instead of one 4x8
planter, we now have two and they are twice as deep. All we need now is dirt.

-JC-

Spring is Almost Here!

It's been a while since I last posted. I just looked through our pictures and didn't find anything recent so there won't be any pictures here.

Winter, mild as it has been, is winding down. We've had a few fairly warm days (mid 70's). The ground has thawed to the point that we were finally able to install the bird feeder that I got Kristen for Christmas (it was impossible to drive anything more than an inch into the ground up until recently). The birds are ecstatic.

Speaking of birds, that was one of our big surprises here. We had figured that they would all go South for the winter. Apparently, we are South and most of them have stayed here. With the leaves gone, they've been much more visible. The cardinals, orioles and blue birds are just beautiful.

The ponds have all thawed and the ice fishermen are back in their boats. Our town ice rink turned into what Maya calls the town wading pool (it's now been removed). There are no remaining traces of snow but we have had some sleet and flurries the last couple of days (they call it Wintry mix).

I've been staying busy in the unfinished room above the kitchen. I've installed 6 can lights and put them on a dimmer. I've installed a 7th can light at the top of the stairs and put a dome light over the landing. Both of those are switchable from the top and bottom of the stairs. I've also added some additional outlets and routed the TV cable into the room. The roof line runs down to the floor on one side of the room so I've framed that in to provide a storage closet.

I still need to insulate (it gets very hot and cold in there) and we need to get someone out to look at installing some baseboard radiators. Then we'll need to figure out what we're going to do about flooring. Maybe we'll have a usable room one of these days.

It got warm enough last week that I built some new raised beds where Kristen will be growing her vegetables. There was a single, shallow, 4 x 8 bed before. Now there are two, deep, 4 x 8 beds. Now, all we need is dirt. We have some calls out but haven't had any returned just yet.

I've mentioned that we love this small town. Everybody seems to know everybody. A recent example: I had a book that I wanted that was unavailable as an e-book and that I was having trouble getting shipped from another library. I mentioned this to our local librarian and she bought the book for the library. It came in today and she was unable to reach me (I changed my phone number on Sunday) so she showed up at the door with the book.

Speaking of the phone number change, I had thought that keeping my Murrieta number wouldn't pose a problem. After all, Grant has managed to keep his Lafayette number for all these years in SoCal. I didn't consider the time zone difference. Some of the companies that we deal with (Charter, CVS) don't seem to be smart enough to look at the service address. They determine time zone based on area code and wake us up at 11:00pm to attempt to conduct customer service surveys (you can imagine how well those went). Needless to say, I now have a local number.

-JC-

Animal Videos!

Briar and Gus gave us a StealthCam (wildlife camera) for Christmas. We've repositioned it many times and checked it almost daily. Up until this morning, the only things that we've ever captured were ourselves and our truck (and the grand kids).

This morning was different. We didn't get the hoped for moose, bear or deer (not even a fox). We did get some raccoons and a bunny.

In this first one, you can just see a raccoon moving from right to left

between the compost box and the small fir.

In this second, there's a bright eyed bunny just sitting there.

Finally, we have two raccoons.

-JC-

Record Cold / Job News (We Have Them!)

We are at record low temperatures this morning. They are saying that the last time that it was this cold was in 1957. The house seems to have come through it just fine - no frozen pipes or anything like that. The TV news warned us that expansion and contraction would probably cause the house to make popping/snapping/crunching noises during the night. It did (glad we were warned).

We usually get out and walk every morning. This morning will be an exception. With the windchill down to about -50°, the exposure time for frostbite is about 5 minutes. It's supposed to get up to 10° later today so we'll probably wait until then to walk.

That's -17° on our thermometer.

AccuWeather only shows -15° but I include it because of the RealFeel of -48°.

On other fronts, we have jobs for the summer!

As we've traveled around the country with the trailer the past few years, we've often thought that it looked like it might be fun to join the staff of one of the RV Resorts. We've talked to a lot of people about how they went about getting their positions. Many of them lived in their RV's full time, wintering in the South and hiring on in the summer time. A major part of their pay was a site to park their RV and, often, in the case of the larger operators, they had to build up some seniority before they even got a choice of where they were going. Not ideal.

When we arrived in Massachusetts last June, we spent the first month at an RV Resort called Pine Acres. We'd never heard of Oakham before we got there but, as things ended up, it's only a couple of minutes down the road from our house. Pine Acres is a very nice park and is a vacation destination for people from all over the Northeast. Many people keep their rigs there year round so they'll always have their favorite spot.

While we were there, we noticed that quite a few of the employees are older, many living in their rigs onsite. A lot of college students and foreign students also were working there. At any rate, a couple of weeks ago, it occured to us that Pine Acres would be perfect. We could live at home and still get the RV Resort experience that we were after.

We completed our applications and submitted them via email on Sunday evening. First thing Monday, we received a call and set up a time to interview. It ends up that the older people are pretty much their most desirable employees. The hire as many as they can, then they start filling the gaps with college kids. Anything that's left goes out to a company that provides the foreign students.

They like the Seniors because they get a bit more respect from the campers and they easily fit into supervisory and team leadership roles over the younger people.

Our "interview" was pretty much a chance to go through all of the job descriptions and decide on what we'd like to do. Kristen is going to be working in the front office and I'll be doing some maintenance and rangering. We'll start on April 1 and work through mid-October. Scheduling is done monthly so we'll be able to adjust our hours and time off as needed. Our job offer letters even stated that our Grandchildren will have use of the facilities.

-JC-

What a Difference a Day Makes

With yesterdays's "warm" temperatures and the complete lack of snow that I showed pictures of, it was a little hard to believe that snow was in the forecast for today. One of the 2 forecsts that I check said 3-5 inches. The other said that we might get 4-8 inches. 12-15 inches would have been more like it. It started sometime before 6:45 AM (that's when the first plow woke us up). It dumped until about 2 PM. I blew the driveway twice and probably should have done it three times (some of the drifts were almost too deep the second time).

The following shots are the same scenes that I showed yesterday without snow.

-JC-

Winter is Coming (Maybe?)

The last couple of days have been balmy. This was the outside temperature at 6:30 this morning. As you can see, it had been higher than that during the night.

Our snow is almost gone. Here's what our lawn is looking like, We may need to mow soon.

It never got warmer than that today. In fact, it has slowly crept down into the low 40's.

According to the forecasts, a cold front that is coming across Lakes Erie and Ontario is expected to collide with a front that is moving up the coast, giving us about 8" of "meaningful" snow tonight and tomorrow morning.

-JC-