View from the Loft

I'm cranky (part one)

I'm cranky for a lot of reasons.

Let's start with number one: since the winter solstice, we have had two weeks without heat. We had a day and a half in between the weeks. An ice storm knocked out our power completely starting on December 22nd, so we could not have the traditional Christmas Day family gathering here. Our daughter was a gracious hostess and her husband a gracious host for dinner that day, so it's not as if we didn't have Christmas. It was just unexpected, and at least one of the grandkids was quite disappointed about not coming to Nana and Pop's house. 

We live in a rural area, so we rely on a well for our water, a well that uses a pump powered by electricity. Thus we had no running water for about a week. Not fun. We tried to keep it in perspective, though, thinking about people with no roof over their heads.  And we do have a generator, so we kept our freezers and refrigerators running throughout. We lit up the Christmas tree in the evenings. We have a propane space heater that puts out a lot of heat, so we didn't freeze, and for a couple of nights the bedroom gas fireplace worked. Then it quit, and we slept on the sofa and loveseat in the living room after that.

We'd been hoping to have an extended family get-together here on the 29th, but due to the power outage, we had to cancel. That was after cancelling once before because we were both sick.

A day and a half after power was restored, we got up to a cold house: the furnace had broken down. That was a week ago today. Having electricity is good, though. We bought a couple of small electric space heaters and use one in the bathroom so we can take showers without freezing to death. We had bought a queen-size inflatable bed last summer (which we had completely forgotten about during the ice storm) , thinking we might have overnight guests who would need it, so we put that up in the living room. Our kitchen and living area are contiguous and the propane heater, plus one electric heater, do a good job of keeping the temperature in the 60s. Of course we are spending a lot on propane, but what are you gonna do? 

And now we've had about 15 inches of new snow, complete with wind and some pretty hefty drifts, and plummeting temperatures. Still waiting for the new motor that will at least temporarily repair our furnace. But we may very well have to get a new furnace this year. Neither of us wanted to try having a replacement installed in the winter.

We had hoped to have our son and his significant other over on Sunday, but with the snow and the distance they have to travel, we cancelled out of fears about the road conditions.

So nobody has seen our tree or the Dickens village or the cedar roping except us and the furnace repairman. It's a lovely tree, too, twelve and a half feet tall and, if I do say so myself, beautifully decorated--not designer decorated, but eclectically decorated. The grandkids did not get to snag the candy canes off the branches or find the ornaments they particularly like. Disappointing.

Of course we are quite privileged, regardless of inconveniences, compared to so many who have been living in terrible circumstances, often due to economic policies that are hurting untold numbers of people. We try to keep that in mind.

But being human, we still piss and moan.

 

 

 

 

Dirge Without Music

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Rainbow!

And what a rainbow! It was huge, it was incredibly bright, and it was a double, even (though faint) at the top of the arch. I don't think we've ever seen a rainbow quite so brilliant.

Note the second rainbow left of the "main" one. I've been told that the double is a reflection of the actual rainbow, and sure enough, you can see that the order of the color bands is reversed in the reflection.

 

 

 

 

 

Last week's snow

This is very tardy, since we didn't get our photos downloaded in a timely fashion. But these are a few photos of last week's snow, which amounted to close to a foot. It was difficult to measure because of drifting.

Those are rabbit tracks in the snow on our front porch. Notice how the drift curls at the top, reminiscent of a wave.

 

Still snowing. The drift blocked the exit from the porch.

 

James shoveled a path through the snow on the front porch before he could even think about the sidewalk and driveway. 
 

 

Autumn color

No, not the trees--the flowers here on the homestead.

We planted some hardy mums this year. We'd been talking about it, and then when my sister Jana gave us a potted mum, we knew the time had come.

 

 

 

And then there are the nasturtiums, which have bloomed beautifully all summer and so far this fall.

 

Twin fawns

Because we thought opening the door to take these photos outside might frighten the deer, Jim took these from our window, so the quality was somewhat compromised. The fawns were playful, darting in and out of the thicket just behind them.

Time for a snack?

Night sky

Jim took these photos a couple of nights ago, when the moon was nearly full.

The moon above the house across the lake.

Proud parents

This morning Jim heard the sandhill cranes making a racket and rushed downstairs just in time to shoot this photo of the proud parents taking their new little one out for a stroll. We'd been expecting to see the chick any day, as we knew the cranes were nesting nearby.

Spring morning

Signs of spring amidst the cold

Although it's blustery and gray, and the temperature has dropped almost twenty degrees since I got up this morning, spring--not just official spring--is definitely here.

The local maple syrup producers have taken in their sap-collecting equipment after what we were told by one sugar-bush owner was a good season, better than last year. Most of the collection is done the modern way, using plastic tubing strung from tree to tree and sometimes a vacuum pump--you can see what the collecting tubes look like here--but one stand of maples we drove by had old-fashioned buckets with curved lids. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the sap is up to the lip of the pail; in fact, it was running over when Jim took the photo.

In the photo below, you get a sense of the woods and of how old these maples are:

One of the things we most look forward to each spring is the return of the sandhill cranes. This year we first noticed them on March 6, when Jim heard them call. They often come into our back yard, particularly appreciating the bit of water that runs out of the geothermal system's drain.

And while I can't get a good photo of the waterfowl on our small lake--they're too far away for our camera--it's worth noting that migratory season for Canada geese and several species of ducks has begun in earnest. Yesterday, in addition to the geese that have been around for a while now, Jim spotted mallards, mergansers, buffleheads, ring-necked ducks, and a wood duck--this despite the fact that there was no open water, only ice, on our lake.

The male redwing blackbirds are also back (the females join them some weeks later), and the robins have been about for a few weeks. The male goldfinches are beginning to get their brilliant yellow color back, slowly but surely, after a winter of olive drab.

Before you know it, the spring peepers will be singing their jingle-bells song. Ah, spring! Eventually the weather will catch up with the animal world.