Contrasts

Yesterday's high winds made for an unpleasant day. I ended up in the ditch twice: not in a car, luckily, but rescuing our recycling boxes and their contents from the water at the front of our property where they were blown twice by the wind before the truck arrived to collect them. Later on, I did drive to the library to take some books back and it took three times as long to get there as usual, with drifts blown all over the roads from adjoining fields. Not much fun.

Today's weather is completely different: clear and still. It's pleasant to be out admiring the snow-sculptures made by yesterday's winds along the fence lines:

This one made me think of meringue when it has reached the 'stiff peak' stage:

The poor chickens haven't been out since Christmas with the snow that we've had. This morning, as it was a little milder and much more still than it has been, I've cleared some of the snow from their run so that they can go out if they want to. They don't mind a little bit of snow, but they do object to going out in it if there's more than an inch of depth. The cat is the same, come to think of it.

The dog, however, is quite happy to go out whatever the weather.

More white things

The promised storm left us with some impressive snow drifts yesterday. The tractor's snow-blowing attachment hasn't seen a lot of use this winter, but it was proving handy this morning. Yesterday was the first Wednesday when I haven't driven to Deseronto because of the weather. In our first winter I drove through a few storms like that (they always seem to happen on a Wednesday), determined not to be thought of as wimpish and probably giving myself a few more grey hairs in the process. These days I'm more sensible.

The dog disturbed an animal in the barn yesterday - all I saw of it was its tail, which was rather like a cat's in shape and size, white with a black tip. It hid in the woodpile before I could get a better look at it. At first I thought it was a cat, but a bit of hunting around on Wikipedia suggests that it was a stoat in its white winter coat. Which is ermine, of course. Nice to see it on the animal instead of trimming someone's robes. Not that I spend an awful lot of time with nobles in full regalia, it has to be said. If the stoat's going to eat the rats and mice in the barn, then I'm quite happy - but I am worried about the chickens...

Talking of pests, I had to do a bit of snow-clearing myself. While Mike was negotiating the tractor around one of the trees at the back of the house, the blowing snow hit the back door, forcing it open. Our utility room rapidly filled up with snow:

Mike's slippers were one of the main casualties. Which I feel is a suitable penalty for making me shovel snow indoors.

This evening, Mother Nature is the one doing the snow blowing:

Dreaming on the left

Driving on the other side of the road is one of those things that causes worry for people. It doesn't take very long to get used to - especially as you're generally on the opposite side of the car as the driver. I noticed in a few driving-related dreams I've had recently that my sub-conscious is still driving on the left (although the car I'm travelling in is left-hand drive).

This morning I had another driving dream. (Sorry, I know other people's dreams are really boring.) This time, I made an effort within the dream to see which side of the road we were on. It was the left, again. I turned to the driver (Mike) and said "You're on the wrong side of the road!". At which point he crossed over to the other side of the road and started driving on the right.

Maybe my sub-conscious will drive on the right from now on. Now I've just got to worry about the fact that I always seem to be a passenger rather than the driver in my own dreams. I bet Freud would have had a field day with that...

Image from Flickr user Sergio~.

Fake winter, real winter

Tuesday morning dawned bright, with a civilised sprinkling of snow on the ground.

It had fallen gently in a windless night, creating delicate highlights on the trees and little white hats for the seedheads of the Queen Anne's Lace plants.

"This isn't too bad," I thought. "Maybe winter isn't as awful as I remembered it."

Today the real winter came. High winds, heavy snow and a horrible drive to work. The sort of journey that demands intense concentration and leaves you feeling washed out for an hour after you've finished travelling. This kind of winter doesn't look or feel pretty.

Now that's more how I remember it.

Oranges

Was compelled to stop driving twice in the last two days in order to record some of the glorious colours of the season. The trees above are on Burr Road in Prince Edward County, next to the cemetery there. The pumpkin patch below is just south of Highway 401 near Trenton.

Much extreme caution

Fifty mile an hour winds combined with fairly heavy snow and rapidly dropping temperatures made my journey to work today distinctly hairy. As I drove along the north shore of Lake Ontario I could hardly see at all, with all the snow blowing off the lake and over the road. The weather warnings issued by Environment Canada advised that "motorists and the public in general should exercise much extreme caution". I was completely shattered from all that exercising by the time I got home.

Oh, and we've lost another twelve or so shingles from the roof, too, so it was not a good day at the homestead either. A fascia board has gone (and we can't see it anywhere) and some soffits have come off as well, this time. The snow inconveniently melted off the roof yesterday, exposing it just in time for the winds to wreak their worst today. The roofers will come back at the weekend, but as it is due to snow again on Friday, I'm not sure how much they'll be able to do.

The roofing guy thinks that the roof needs a period of hot weather to weld the shingles onto each other (there's a layer of glue on the underside of each shingle) and make it more solid (the top half is nailed to the roof). Such weather seems like a long way off at the moment and we don't want too many more days like today where we watch helplessly as chunks of roof fly past the windows. Perhaps we should have waited and got the roof replaced in the spring.

Looking on the positive side, my first order of seeds arrived yesterday, bringing with them at least the promise of better weather in the months to come.

Rain Fall

Most of the guttering went up yesterday: just waiting for the last downpipes and the diverter that will stop the cistern overflowing (although that seems like a distant possibility at the moment!). We've had 9.2mm of rain so far today, so the water collected from barn roof has been replenishing the cistern in the house, which is up to 8 inches of water again. Mike fixed the leaky loo today too.

The Toyota garage fitted a new tyre to the car yesterday and Mike took a taxi into Belleville this morning to pick it up, so we're mobile again.

The nature columnist in the local papers was explaining this week that the Fall colours have been disappointing this year due to the dry and hot conditions during September. The big ash tree in our front garden (dubbed 'Giganto' by the kids) turned yellow very suddenly just this week, but many of the trees lost their leaves early because of the drought conditions. The maples have been pretty magnificent though, so if this is a disappointing year, I can imagine that a good one will be breathtaking.

Tired out

Yesterday was always going to be a bit hectic: work at Deseronto, picking up child #1 from karate, taking both kids to the inaugural meeting of the Consecon cub group, taking Mike to a meeting on renewable energy in Bloomfield, picking up the kids, picking up Mike. All went more-or-less according to plan, even with time for a meal and a cup of tea in between ferrying jobs, until the last journey of the day. A couple of kilometres out from Bloomfield we got a puncture in one of the car tires. Turns out that this Audi has a cover over the wheel nuts that you need a special tool to remove. And we didn't have the tool.

So we phoned the CAA at 9.45pm. The guy got to us at 11.00pm and he couldn't take the cover off either, so he towed the car back to our house and we finally got home just after midnight. I was somewhat surprised that the car didn't turn into a pumpkin at that point. This morning we spoke to the Toyota dealership that sold us the car and they're going to get it off for us, once the CAA take it over to Belleville.

In the meantime, work is continuing on the roof, with the fascia boards going up yesterday. Mike also worked out why our water situation had deteriorated so much over the last week - there's a leaky seal in the bathroom toilet, and Mike reckons that it had been consuming about 17 litres of water an hour. So something else to fix, but at least there's a stopcock next to the toilet which means that its water supply can easily be turned off and the cistern just re-filled as necessary.

Roads, old and new

This is the view of Prince Edward County that you get as you approach from the Glenora Ferry, a 10-minute trip that takes you from the mainland to the county. We all went to Kingston on Monday to register with the provincial health insurance plan (you have to be here for three months before being eligible for it). As we were going to be out of the house for a few hours we took the puppy with us. This meant that we didn't need to rush back, so instead of heading back along Highway 401 (a very boring dual carriageway) we decided to take the old road, Highway 33, marketed as the Loyalist Parkway. It runs alongside the lake most of the way from Kingston and then along into the County. Although it takes a bit longer, the route is far preferable to the 401 alternative.

I've had a particular request for an updated picture of the puppy, so here he is. This is the 'Where's my treat then? Look I'm sitting down and everything.' pose. He is now house-trained and usually wakes us up to go out between 5-6am, which I hope will get later as the mornings get darker. He's still chewing anything he can get hold of with his needle-sharp puppy teeth - will be glad when he finally gets his adult set. He lives on the ground floor and doesn't venture up or down stairs (yet). I must admit that it's quite heart-warming to see how pleased he is to see you in the morning - his whole body wags!

I went to Deseronto last night to talk to the Archives Board about priorities for the next few months for the archives. I was handed the keys to the room in the library that serves as the current archives and, as the meeting ended, I met the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor of the town. The latter looked at me and said 'I was expecting somebody older'. So that's nice - I still look too young to be an archivist. Thought I'd moved on from that! So I start work there next week - I suggested that I would do one day a week and they seemed happy with that. I drove back as the sun was setting - more lovely views of Lakes Ontario and Consecon. The drive takes the same length of time as my commute into Manchester did, but the contrast in terms of traffic and scenery couldn't be greater.