Winter Returns

This was a week of contrasts. Warm rains came and washed all the snow away. Though it was late when I got home on Wednesday, I went out with the dogs to have a last look at the ground; snow was forecast for the next day, and I thought this might be the last time I would see dry land until spring--or at least the January thaw.

Above, you can just see a black dog in the middle of the trail, with a full carpet of leaves and needles on the forest floor. Below, Valla stands in the the grove, which looks warm and inviting, but that all changed in a matter of hours.

This is what it looked like in the morning--all the branches were weighed down with wet, heavy snow, and the leaves in the crick were glazed with ice. Already the sky is that intense blue it assumes in winter. The black water flowed through plump white banks of snow. This weekend it will drop to -14, but then rise to 5--the November rollercoaster.

Cold and Colder

Each successive day is the coldest yet. We have had freezing rain and light flurries--and some of the snow we received on 2 November is still with us. In the woods, the trees were laced with ice, and crystal shards continually clattered from the branches, falling like jewels onto the frozen leaves.

The low sun played weakly about the tops of the trees. It was still warm enough for the little stream to flow, though it was edged with ice.

Thin patches of cloud dimmed the sun, though now and then the sky cleared and showed itself intensely blue. I stumbled across what must be an early use of the phrase "by hooke or crooke": Faerie Queene 3.1.17. It is said of the Foster who chases Florimell through the woods. "Might and maine"turns up a few stanzas later (20). I was struck by the failure of the third book to give any indication of the season. There is a reference to singing birds, but that is in the Castle Joyous, and they may be caged. Perhaps the seasons did not matter as much in Ireland, where Spenser wrote the early books. Here, the season determines everything from the colour of the sky to the feel of the wind on your face. Gawain and the Green Knight is also a highly symbolic poem, but the winter weather is strikingly evoked--perhaps the West Midlands, being about as continental as one can get in Britain, had a climate more marked by contrasts than did Ireland.

It is now the end of the week, and the temperature has fallen to -12.5. Nothing is flowing; the pools of water under the uprooted trees have frozen to the bottom. It is winter once more.

Snowvember

Here it is, the second day of November, and already it looks like a winter wonderland. With enormous prescience (well, with an ear to the weather forecast), we put snow tires on the fleet and brought home some special equipment.

The autumnal look is gone and all the fields are white, the trees snow-capped.

We should get a reprieve, though--it is supposed to rise to 9 degrees next week. I well remember the winter about ten years ago--it began on Halloween.

The Moral Woodlot: Envy

If trees were people, they would be sinners.

No matter how high you climb,

Whatever is yours must be mine.

"For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one." Job, 5:2.

Out and About and Under

I did not spend as much time in the field as I would have liked, but we did drive up to Florenceville-Bristol to see the fall colours. The trees grew greener as we drove west. In the Juniper area the colours are nearly at their peak, but down in the river valley, things are still moist and dark.

I spent a good deal more time this weekend under the sun porch, trying to turn this  . . .

into something more like this . . . 

If you don't see much difference, I can't really blame you. All I can say is that it takes a lot of digging before you can do the carpentry, and a lot of carpentry before you can do the insulation. Winter is coming on much too quickly this year, though I must say the last three days have been absolutely balmy--mid-20s and sunny. 

The Moral Woodlot: Pride

If trees were people, they would be sinners. Today: Pride and its fall.

I will raise both arms to heaven

And challenge the skies

Daring all wind, all weather.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16:18

Arboreal Mortcat

The dogs were uneasy during our evening walk. Even Valla the Destroyer seemed spooked. She actually raised her immense bulk and clawed at the trunk of a tree. At first, with the sun low in the sky, I could not make out what crouched in the branches of a slender maple. A dark shape moved hectically amid the foliage and then froze into stillness.

Its cry was haunting; I can only describe it as a memory of anguish.






I moved closer, cautiously. It turned its head slightly, tracking me as I advanced. Its hollow stare was black and terrifying. There was no doubt in my mind. Though sightings have been rare, this could only be the Eastern Arboreal Mortcat.

Autumnal flowers

The wildflowers by the Crick look rather lovely this year . . .

but there's always that faint yearning when I see fading flowers in the fields--yearning and perhaps fear: winter is coming. The angle of the autumn sun is a warning.

Lawnmover

I finally finished the lawnmower. This is the Co-op one that has lain in pieces for 15 years, and has been on the Lucia pallet-table all summer. Now I have a 6-hp monster, massively heavy, that I don't really need--but it's finished!!

With overhead valves and manual throttle, it's an old-school grass killer. It might just be the dogwood demolition tool I've been looking for.
UPDATE: As of June, 2016, this is our main push mower. I mounted a fixed discharge chute after cutting a hole in the side of the deck (it was originally rear-eject with a plastic chute that always clogged). The original blade adapter wasn't up to the job, but the heavy duty replacement turned the machine into a very reliable and powerful mower.

Culvert

6 September
Today, I finished the culvert by the tractor shed. Boris came tantalizingly close to completing it this summer, so I gave it the final push, digging down another six inches and levelling off the ground around. Now I can buzz to and fro with brush and fill.

Arthur

Around 10:00 on Saturday (5 July), Security insisted the university close. As I left the SUB, I noticed a tree in the Quad uprooted and blown down. Once home, I actually started to download the new version of Kaspersky, a process that was interrupted at 11:08 when the power failed. Shortly after, I headed back into town with jerrycans to pick up gasoline. I took highway 8, but near Killarney Road Hill, I was stopped by water bursting out of the hillside and flooding the road. I crossed at Durham Bridge and tried again, fording some ominously flooded stretches until I was again forced to a stop: a great tangle of trees and power poles had fallen, and the lines were broken. I made my way back to Stanley, took the Royal Road in, gassed up at Costco (about a 15-minute wait), and started home once more. This time I made it most of the way down the Limekiln before running into a major barricade of fallen trees. Many had covered one lane of the road, but this was more extensive. One truck simply drove into the ditch the get around the trees, but it had to return shortly after, burning his way back up onto the road to report that there was another  blockade ahead, and another. I headed back south, hoping that highway 8 might be clear, but I came upon a road crew with a chainsaw, and so I followed them back, helping to drag boughs off the road. They got me close enough to take a run at it--over branches and and through someone's yard. At last I was home, and I brought out the generator. It ran surprisingly well, considering how long it had sat idle in the workshop. This was its first ever use--it didn't even have oil in it! On Saturday and Sunday, I just used extension cords to keep the fridges and the freezer going. On Monday, we made our way into town, and I tried to get a 220V twist-lock plug at Harris & Roome. They very kindly phoned down to Liteco on Carleton, and we hurried down to buy what turned out to be the very last such plug in Fredericton. I used Lucy's 12/2 welding line in reverse to run the well pump, and I ran a new line to run the hotwater heater. We continued to use extension cords for the two fridges and the freezer. The only problem was with the Noma cord reel's breaker, which popped several times when we plugged in battery chargers. The generator itself handled the load without complaint.

In the end, we had only three trees leaning badly, at least one of which will have to come down--the balsam fir. The maple on the west side of the driveway may eventually come down as well. I think the elm by the workshop may have to go also; it split at the main fork. 

Photos to follow.

Timber!

On Saturday Lucy and I set up scaffolding around the woodshed. One of the few remaining old spruce trees had snapped about eight feet from the base and crashed down on the woodshed roof, holing it in three places.

I worked from a 10-foot long platform with a chainsaw while Lucy carried away the wood. When I had the tree clear of the shed, I showed her how to cut with the saw; she did very well, though she said it shook her from head to toe.

On Sunday, I shut the garage door against a driving blizzard and overhauled the rear brakes on the Honda. I wasn't really expecting a serious fall of snow, and I certainly didn't anticipate the dreadful weather on Monday! UNB opened at noon today, which was fortunate, because until 10:00am all hands were on shovels in Cross Creek. I dug out the oil tank, and then burrowed my way back to where Lucy was cutting an avenue through an eight-foot drift. Jo went over to dig out Diane so she could finally escape from her house after two days of captivity. We were able to leave our own house only because Boris got up early and dug out the back door. Phew!

I am always reassured by a full woodshed. "Whatever else happens," I think, "we can be warm." At times, we have had to cook on the woodstove, and even melt snow for water. When we rebuilt the back of the house, that stove was at the centre of our planning, and I can't imagine being without it now. I would like to have one in the basement as well, to keep the pipes from freezing in a power outage. We did get a hefty gas-powered generator, though we have never used it.

All  in all, it has been a rough winter. I can recall at least one year when the snow was a little deeper, but this season beats that one for pure staying power: here it is April, and another storm is forecast for Sunday! I am afraid that when we finally get rid of the snow, we will find the trees have suffered terribly.

Someone went round posting little signs in all the washrooms--a World Water Day stunt. This one suggests that I "turn off the tap" when rinsing my razor. That's not going to work! I suppose they meant that I should put the plug in and run a little water in the bowl, or something like that, but the crass idiocy of the advice seems symptomatic.