Random photos

Here are some random photos from the last couple of weeks.

Taxes, ug. Yes, I still do our taxes by hand. With a pencil. A pencil that gets sharpened over and over and over...

Burning shop waste in the woodstove. This gives us a two-fer advantage: one, it cleans out the shop; and two, the wood is hardwood so it gives a nice hot fire.

The temperatures are slowly, slowly rising. It's zero degrees (Fahrenheit) as I write this, but daytime temps are climbing above freezing, sometimes even into the high 30s and low 40s. As a result, the snow is starting to compact. It's down to about 18 thick on the ground (better than the 30+ inches of a couple weeks ago).

The other day I walked outside and saw a whole bunch of chickens clustered on a tiny little patch of bare ground.

It was the first bare ground they'd seen in a while, so they were pretty excited.

Speaking of chickens, this fella is bottom of the rooster totem pole. As a result, he gets beat up if he stays in the coop, so he spends most of his daylight hours hanging around the (snow-free) barn. I give him a separate pan of food, and he eats it ravenously.

He's a very sweet and grateful rooster as a result.

Yesterday morning dawned cloudy, but one single shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and lit up a snow-buried tank on a neighbor's property with an almost day-glo orange.

I tried to get a photo of the sunbeam itself, but by the time I booted up and got outside, the moment had passed.

The weather goes back and forth. We'll have a few days of calm and relative warmth, then suddenly the wind will whip up and start drifting the snow. On Thursday we took Mr. Darcy for his morning run, and you can see the quasi-drifts trying to close the road.

When the nighttime temps plummet but daytime temps get above freezing, the result is a crust on the snow. This morning it was almost -- almost -- strong enough to support me. For the first three steps I walked on the surface, then I plunged through.

I've been photographing animal tracks as I see them, which surprisingly isn't very often. Here's a deer as it hopped the fence from our neighbor's property onto ours.

Deer tracks in less-deep snow, where it could walk.

Deer tracks in deeper snow, where it had to leap.

Rabbit.

Quail.

Quail tracks crossing deer tracks.

Tracks from Oregon juncos (from our front porch, where we're feeding them).

The season is changing, no doubt about it. Despite the snow on the ground, birds are starting to return. We haven't seen any robins yet, but I'm hearing blackbirds for the first time this year.

But winter isn't over. The weather report is calling for up to another five inches of snow this week, which is causing everyone to groan. No one wants to see another five inches.

But it is what it is. Spring will be that much sweeter when it finally arrives.

Happy International Women's Day

In case you somehow missed it -- and yes, I've manage to remain ignorant of this celebration for the past 56 years -- today is International Women's Day. I hope you'll join me in celebrating the accomplishments of screeching harridans everywhere.











These, folks, are "empowered" women. Obviously there's been a Prozac shortage (doubtless due to the evil male patriarchy) that needs to be addressed.

Now compare this to truly great women I admire:

• My mother, who overcame brutal childhood poverty and starvation, educated herself, married a good man, raised four kids, and did it all with dignity, class, and humor.

• My daughters, who demonstrate young women can be ethical, moral, responsible, hard-working, and overall terrific examples for anyone.

• Millions upon millions of ordinary women who stayed faithful to their husbands, raised great kids, and contributed to their communities without becoming shrieking harridans in the process.

By the way, if you look at the Wikipedia page for International Women's Day, it makes no bones about its communist origins. In fact, it depicts a poster from 1975 which bears an eerie resemblance to all the Soviet Communist propaganda posters of the time. No accident, of course.

So here's an idea: If you want to help empower women, ignore the shrieking harridans and work toward saving ISIS slaves, women caught up in sex trafficking, or common-sense charities that go a long way toward lifting women out of poverty.

Sad little quail

We seem to be finally breaking the back of winter (knock on wood). Temperatures are slowly climbing, and while the snow is still two feet thick on the ground, it's compressing and getting wetter.

But here's the thing: Despite warmer temps, conditions are still tough on wildlife since the ground is inaccessible. We purchased some wild birdseed and have been scattering it on our (protected) front porch, to the relief and appreciation of a lot of birds.

We've been seeing a lot of quail come through, in groups of males (who have the jaunty head feather). When temps were particularly bitter, they fluffed up and looked nearly spherical.

While they're as cute as can be, those fluffy feathers disguised starving conditions.

Quail are ground birds -- and the ground is buried.

I've seen a quail or two on the porch, taking advantage of the wild birdseed I scatter, but not as often as I thought they'd be there (blurry shot through a window, sorry).

So it was with sadness but no surprise when I went out one afternoon and saw this pathetic little bundle in the snow.

The winter conditions were just too much for it.

Then, about ten feet away, I noticed another.

Shortly after finding these two sad quail, I went to feed the cattle and scared up a couple of the remaining birds from the barn. One immediately went over to pay tribute to his fallen companion. It was heartbreaking.

I had to blink hard a couple times.

After he departed, I picked up the two dead birds and put them in the garbage can.

Sigh. It's been a long month of snow.

More snow pix

The snow remains here in north Idaho. One good thing is it smooths out all the potholes in the road.

Another good thing is we can let Mr. Darcy off-leash (he's the little black dot waaaay down the road).

Lately he thinks it's fun to ignore us and chase after whatever catches his fancy -- resulting in some unwarrented hikes down steep canyon sides after he gets stuck -- so we have to keep him on a leash when walking off the property. But for the moment, he can't run fast or far over fields because the snow is so deep. (Besides, he adores chasing snowballs we throw to tire him out by making him wallow through the snow even more.)

C'mon! Faster!

Good boy.

To tire him out the maximum amount possible, we pitch snowballs. This means he has to LEAP and bound through the snow to get them.

He wins if he can find the snowball.

Good boy.

This is the usual aftermath of such walks.

Early one morning I got up to see the full moon setting across the snow. It was bitterly cold out, but almost bright enough to read by. Tough to take a photo, though.

Everywhere we go, we see great sweeps of field unbroken by any tracks.

The only thing marring the smoothness is the occasional tall weed.

Mr. Darcy and I went walking one afternoon and scared up a white-tailed deer (another reason to keep him leashed).

She made her way up a steep embankment...

...then turned and peeked at us from behind a branch. Can you see her?

Here she is.

The moment after I snapped this photo, she dashed out of sight.

Another time I took Darcy just around our pasture (on snowshoes, the only way to go). It managed to be sunny and snowing at the same time.

When he comes back from these excursions, he's covered with "jingle balls," as we call them.

He chews these off, and then we go around collecting the jingle balls and putting them in the sink.

Daytime temps have been just at freezing, then dropping to bitterly cold at night. This results in all kinds of odd icicles.

Sometime we get hoarfrost, which is always spectacular.

Yesterday morning the sun rose through fog.

For the time being, we're just huddling down. Outside work is limited or impossible, so our focus is inside. We're unseasonably cold and snowy for early March, but this too shall pass and I'll be able to get to my garden. Someday.