We started the week with a snowstorm. Midweek we had another dose of cold and snow. And we ended the week with more of the same. School was canceled on Monday because of the snow. Even Hannah’s college closed its campus that day. The wind chill at the end of the week was at minus 20. We managed to cope. We kept the wood stove fired up. We put extra blankets on the beds. We wore additional layers of clothing. And we kept reminding ourselves that every hour that passes brings us a little closer to spring.
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| Hungry goldfinches and sparrows. |
We have more than two feet of snow on the ground. We’ve reached the point where we haven’t seen the bottom step on the porch for so long, we’ve almost forgotten it’s there. The icicles on the front of the house are over five feet long now. Some of our snowdrifts out in the garden are nearing four feet. Several family members out west that we spoke to during the week were happy to point out the lovely warm weather they’ve been having – temperatures in the 70's. I would be jealous, but when our spring and summer do come at last, we will be reveling in soft 80° weather in our lush, green hills while they roast in their 110° brown, dry mountains. It all evens out in the end.
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| Icicles on the front of the house. |
Maple season is underway. People are setting up their buckets and tubes getting ready for the sap to run. Last week Daniel spent two days helping our friend Chris Nicholas put up plastic tubing in his woods. The weather was very cold and Daniel said he had to push through hip deep snowdrifts sometimes. Chris is tapping over 1000 trees this year. The sap will start to run when the temperatures start to fluctuate regularly between above freezing during the day and below freezing at night. I don’t know when that will happen. We seem to be stuck below freezing, night and day, right now. When the sap does start to run, it will be boiled down to make into syrup, maple cream, and maple sugar – things that I love.
Daniel is leaving us tomorrow to go out west to work for his cousin Chase. He’s flying to St. Louis to meet up with his cousin Seth and from there they will drive to St. George. We’re sad that he’s leaving. It’s been fun having him home and he’s done a lot of work for us. We’ll see him later in the month at Sarah’s wedding, but other than that, he’ll be in Utah all spring and summer. He plans to come back for school at the end of the summer. The house will seem so quiet without him. We’ll miss him.
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| Late day sunshine through a woodshed window. |
I put in my seed and garden supply orders last week. I am not a shopper. I loathe shopping. I never go into a mall, a K-Mart, Walmart, or even a grocery store if I can help it. But I love to put in my seed orders online. That’s my kind of shopping. And ordering time always comes, with perfect timing, just when I need a fresh infusion of hope into my winter weary heart. Over the next few weeks those orders will arrive and it will feel like Christmas each time I find a package in the mailbox.
Today things are a bit slushy, but that's about to change. There’s a new winter storm headed our way. It’s supposed to hit tonight and by Tuesday drop another four to six inches of snow on us. Oh well. We can’t do anything about it but stay indoors and keep warm. I have a stack of books to read. I’m trying to remember what a blessing all this snow will be when it melts and fills our streams and rivers and feeds our water table (in March and not May, I hope).
