Paths about to vanish

With another storm coming, these paths won’t be clear for much longer. And it never got warm enough to melt any of the last snowfall. So, so looking forward to figuring out where to put the next batch.

Snow bright

There’s days when you have to shovel snow, and then there’s days when you have to admire it. Today is one of those days. Even though it’s so cold, the squirrels get inside the feeders to eat, it’s a bright day. You look out on a bright blue sky on a swath of white snow […]

Today’s complaints about shoveling snow

Living in Boston and complaining about shoveling snow doesn’t exactly make you stand out as a unique breed of semi-sentient being. It’s like being a writer and owning cats. Well, I’m guilty of the latter, and I’m about to indulge in the former.

A blizzard of birds

Along with today’s blizzards, a bunch of juncos showed up! The snow piled up so high, some of the birds were hopping about right under the kitchen window. Most of them hung out in the bushes, or suddenly burst into flight, or one by one swooped down to the feeders. The birds even pecked at […]

Scragglions

The storm was not very nice to my cold weather plants. The snapdragons are munged, the collards are covered, and the scallions are barely hanging in there, all scraggly on top of the snow. I’m sure the scallions will be fine, and the snapdragons will grow back. But I worry about the collards up on […]

Snowy birds

So we got a blizzard, but it’s not winter until the juncos show up. I’ve been wondering what’s keeping them. And I wondered last night, while listening to the storm huffing and puffing and rattling the windows, where do the birds go? I suppose they go the same places they go every night. By dark, […]

Safe from the snow

We actually went shopping with a storm coming — and it wasn’t so bad. How am I supposed to get a story out of that? Well, as part of putting the milk and ice melt and kohlrabi away, we finally dragged the Weber kettle to safety. And that’s a bit of a story.

Why Webers and winter don’t mix

Here is my Weber kettle sitting on the patio, right where it’s been all summer, all autumn, all winter. It’s not that I’m lazy. I don’t mind shoveling snow. I’ve got it down to a routine going up and down the steps and along the sidewalk and across the driveway and up again. But bringing […]

Another White Solstice

Welcome to another White Solstice. Unlike last year, the first snow waited until the solstice, a steady light snow that barely added up to an inch. Naturally, the evil cat insisted that it must be inspected. As you can see by the tracks, he did a thorough job of criss-crossing before declaring the snow a […]

Snow in stasis

We’re stuck in that midwinter pause, when the days are short and the sun isn’t changing. It’s still cold outside. The snow still looks pretty much the same. There’s still sparrows and juncos mobbing the feeders. Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal still drop by. Nothing much seems to be happening.