Man Glitter

These guys came down on Sunday

And helped these guys

Turn all the logs that were left into this

And they all got covered with man glitter

Can't thank any of them enough. Now we can be warm and have hot water.  We had birthday cake after and it was delicious.

Awash in a Sea of Gratitude

While tides of despair tug me to and fro.

There was a terrible accident Friday morning. Ralph had just left to take Becky to work when the fire whistles began to wail and we could hear sirens, many, many sirens. I always worry when I hear them, especially when loved ones are out and about.

And then the phone rang and everything as we knew it changed. Someone had crossed into oncoming traffic and although Ralph evaded as best he could, there are guard rails and there were other cars....nowhere to go

He was coming home to cut wood, meet a hay customer, and work on the floor so we could get a new washing machine. The laundry was piling up. Still is, as far as that goes.

Instantly none of that mattered any more. I thought Becky was with him and was incoherently begging the man who called to tell me if she was all right. Thank God he had already dropped her off. Thank God Jade just happened to have come home from work early. He raced down....this happened maybe two-tenths of a mile from the house. He helped get the boss out of the car, which was jammed and mangled and steaming and smoking.

He got them to let me walk down to be there and got me into the ambulance for the ride, and he and Liz ran crazy getting phone calls made and Becky home and hay customers fended, fires tended, and all that stuff. And for Scott and Jen who came and held my hand which unexpectedly needed it. I am tough, but not that tough.

Alan raced home from NY as did my brother. Everyone, everyone, rallied around and was good to us in more ways than I could list. Yesterday the kids cut wood, and car shopped, and brought food home and tended and cared for everything. And cleaned house too, because there will be people who need to come here and we are an untidy lot, with so many things to do that are more interesting than sweeping and dusting.

Thank you to all of them and to anyone I forgot. We know we have good friends and the best family any one could ask for, and we celebrate them and are grateful every day. However, something like this is a strong, if harsh, reminder of just exactly how fortunate we are.

Ralph also wants to thank the many kind friends and strangers who offered help and strength and comfort and so do I. Neighbors on the fire company who called family to come. EMTs who were gentle and good drivers and so kind. The sweet doctor at the hospital who kept coming in and out of the room exclaiming, "You are a lucky, lucky man."

And nurses, row upon row, who did what nurses do. The police investigator who called after it ended and offered much needed words of kindness and comfort. He was so gentle, and I so needed gentleness. Friends who called and texted and offered to do anything they could to help. So many good people....so much better than the network news would make you think.

So thank you all, and thank you kids and step kids and in-law kids....all good kids, good people, whom I am grateful to know and love......and be loved by too....you guys are the best. 

Prayers for the family of the other gentleman. In time perhaps we will know why and how but for now, just prayers from the heart.

Ralph is home, and can get around with a walker, a far cry from the man who makes hay and firewood and does all our driving, but he is here. That is all anyone could ask for.

Today is Peggy's two birthday, as we call them around here. I am thankful for her other grandma and grandpa, who will be making it a big day for her, and for Aunt Becky, who already made sure she is well supplied with Paw Patrol fun. The best we have to offer is her Pa Pa, who is still here to get hugs and put Nickelodeon on his TV when she comes out to see him.

Bones

Coyotes dragged this set of vertebrae and ribs out in the field, whence I removed them, so they wouldn't end up in the hay machinery. This was a large doe, the one Jade got last fall....and yet all these bones only took two fingers to pick up. It was a surprise to find them to be so light.

The same critters found this Mountain Dew bottle somewhere and played with it
 just like Mack does and then left it in the middle of the hay field too.

Living at the Edge of a River

Crunching along on the river bottom, revealed by the winter draw down of the water
There are millions and billions of Zebra mussel shells covering the entire area...crunch, crunch, crunch
Like walking on popcorn.

Means that if you want to get out of the house for a bit it's about a five minute drive to hundreds of Canada Geese and Mallard Ducks, a few Common Mergansers, sometimes a Scaup, or a Hoodie,  and to bits of amazing American history....the Irish built the Erie you know.... a general good time for all. 

From the North

The boss and I went down last week. You can't imagine how bright the green heads of the mallard drakes are this time of year. They are like little green beacons all over the water and shoreline at sunset. My photos came out kind of blurry, so I didn't share, but the colors were spectacular.

Or South

The aqueduct is always worth a few shots. 

Sunset on the cornfields on the river flats down by the Schoharie is so much more than up here on the hill.

The Schoharie itself boiling over the rocks after recent rains was sure different than its usual flat, grey self.

I love to visit the river.

Whole Lotta Shakin'

This is MY tractor

Wow, the wind got me up earlier than I wanted to be and woke me up long before that. My room felt like the deck of a ship at sea.

Sunday sunrise just as it came from the camera. Only lasted about a minute, but wow!

 The laundry I optimistically left on the line overnight had taken a powder. I think I found it all.

Thanks to the washing machine throwing up its agitator in defeat yesterday, there will be no need to put any more out there, alas.

For a while at least. Oh, well, I did laundry at the laundromat until 2001. Don't suppose I have forgotten how.

Meanwhile, March is doing the lion thing. The weather is dramatically miserable; everyone is grumpy and ready for spring. We really shouldn't complain though...it was such an easy winter.

Because I Could

The bottom

I went out for a weekend walk today, just planning on going around looking for birds. Eastern Bluebirds were the goal of the day.....and of course I found a pair fighting with a Robin before I even made it to the Heifer Pasture.

I could backdate them a couple weeks or more, because I've been hearing them, but I didn't trust that I recognized their call well enough.

Looking back down from half-way up.

Anyhow, as I walked across the bottom of Seven-County Hill, a Blue Jay called from the top.

Down from the top

Other directions

It has been years and years and years since I walked up, but it felt like a challenge and so....don't listen to the people who denigrate trying to walk 10,000 steps a day. A very short time ago I would have been hard pressed to make this walk. Today i enjoyed it.

Wanna see a video?

The Peggy Channel....Mystery Package

The box.
Looks innocent enough, right?
But when I saw the flaps were closed, I realized that something was missing.....

An important part of the new recliner saga was the box. There wasn't a soul in this house too old to see its magical potential. Lucky is the family that has a toddler as an excuse.......

Or should I saw somebody?
As I looked at the closed flaps a tiny hand poked out and pulled them tighter closed.
And then a small person popped them open with a huge laugh. hHaha, grandma, I fooled you.

The box is so big that I didn't see that she wasn't the only one in there until her daddy started laughing too.

What a fine place to watch Paw Patrol.

After all, what a shame to waste a good box.......

You can Tell

When they really have something... crows that is. Normally their calls are just a casual neighborhood report. Look, look, can you see? Hey, look.

When they are on a raptor, however, their caws ring like swords, slash, hack, bang, crash. Touche, take that. And that. And that. You can tell when they mean it.

They were on something this morning when I came downstairs. It sounded like a riot out there. I didn't get outdoors fast enough to see what it was. Prolly just the local Red-tailed Hawk pair though. They are here almost all the time, and the crows bedevil them endlessly. 

I keep hoping for an owl. Any owl. We have Great Horned Owls in the back, but I only see errant feathers stuck in bushes where they took out rabbits and mice.....maybe some day.

Anyhow, where Alan works they are near the sea and so they frequently see the big raptors of the watery places. Not long ago he was watching a crow bombing an Osprey, acting all that and a bucket of rice, as Liz would say.

The big bird took just so much of the little fellow stabbing at his back feathers. Then he flipped over, flew upside down for a second, nabbed the crow....pinch....with his big, sharp talons. 

And dropped him. Boom shakalaka. No more crow. 

I wish I'd seen that.

Inevitable

Spring that is. From the hill near the house, up in the old Horse Pasture, you can look down over the valley and see the river, bank full, and nearly bursting.

Flood reports from all over yesterday. Snow today, although not too much. Cold and bitey-windy though. A chilly 18 degrees with with the breeze so brisk it is blowing the birds around.  I won't be taking an impromptu stroll over the hills this morning....

Out in the back of the same pasture, the tiny pond is brimming too. It only very rarely has this much water in it, although it almost always has at least a little, except in the most grievous of droughts.

Believe it or not, this tiny pothole in the slate out there has seen Mallard Ducks on many occasions, and once, just once, a pair of Northern Pintails. They flew up out as I was walking back there.....simply stunning me. Alas it was before I started the annual farm bird count and before the wonderful camera I take everywhere I go, so they are not recorded anywhere except in distant memories.

It is still February, and today it looks and feels like it. However, there are bits of green, short songs of blackbirds and other early arrivals, and a sweet warmth when the sun manages to overpower the wind for a minute.

And every day I listen for the peent of the American Woodcock....and soon....peepers.....yay!

Update

The nuts have it....American Groundnut that is. A consensus of wonderful folks, here and on Facebook, agree that our little mystery flower from the previous post is thus identified. What a fascinating plant!

They grow all along some of the walkways at Montezuma, out on periphery where there are walking trails along some of the smaller bodies of water. I have tried for quite a while to identify them, but with no starting place except that they are obviously legumes, it took a while.




I should have just posted them here first. You folks never let me down.

They'll do it every Time

Plant expert friends. What is this stuff? Thanks

We had a big family excursion planned, what with Alan laid off for a week and all. We figured everybody who could get time off would travel up to the Farm Show in Syracuse and have a high time.

Then Alan got called back to work for today. Farm Show starts tomorrow.

They'll do it every time.

And the boss in his infinite elderlyness has taken to sleeping a recliner for the past couple of years. It works out well for all concerned. His knees and shoulders don't kill him in the morning and I enjoy the phenomenon of not sleeping next to a running chainsaw (just ask Alan what sharing a motel room was like on the Talladega trip.)

Alas, his recliner, which his dad purchased at least 40 years ago, slowly gave up the ghost. We kept telling him, "You have to get a new chair. You need a new chair. Go buy a new chair."

Stubborn is as stubborn does though. He resisted for weeks, nay months. Right up until the other night he fell out of the silly thing. Seriously, there was nothing left of it.

So, he finally went yesterday and bought one. I tried it out and it is the most comfortable thing you could imagine, nice and squashy, yet firm enough, and catches you in all the right places. Looks good too. He looks so much more comfortable in an actual chair, rather than a thing that had deteriorated until it looked more like a raft for Robinson Crusoe than a chair.

However, despite having slept well, and looking pretty refreshed and all this morning, when I asked him how he liked it he said, "I miss my old chair......"

They'll do it every time. 

When you just Love the Barn

WTF

I don't think these are the same birds that hang around down by the house.
Many of them show clear signs of molting into summer colors. (not this one)

Where's the flock? The boys walked the farm yesterday and gave me a call from the T-field. There was a mixed feeding flock up there and they thought I should give it a look.

The river is ice-jammed here and open to the east

I hiked up....the T-field is on the western edge of the farm, not usually where I walk because the cow pasture used to straddle the road up there. No cows, no barbed wire gates to open now, but still....in my mind it is a harder walk than up to the other hill. It really isn't though.

Anyhow, there certainly were birds up there. Hundreds of them. I would estimate there were probably three-hundred American Goldfinches, the largest flock I have ever seen or heard.

I listened from half-way up the hill. There were chickadees in there too....a few....a couple Hairy Woodpeckers, but almost nothing else. Then, faintly, barely audibly, from the bottom of the hill, down by the lightning corner (where trees don't get to grow very tall before they are struck down) I thought I heard a Song Sparrow.

I had no intention of counting it. Song Sparrows are so ubiquitous here that I surely won't need a February "heard only" when there will be a dozen nesting around the house in a few weeks.

However, just for the heck of it I stopped at the lightning corner on the way down, and there came the call again. This enterprising fellow has staked out an old rosebush for a summer home.

Year bird, ca-ching. It was a nice walk in the wild spring wind, despite the lack of birdy diversity. You get to see some different views of the land, and I got the sparrow.

And then, when I was walking the pup, the first Red-winged Blackbird of the year showed up in the ash tree by the sitting porch. Wow, a toofer!

The Edge

We are always balancing. With a Jack Russell guy in the house there is always the issue of adequate exercise. Well, actually adequate as a concept related to activity for a terrier is not an attainable goal, but one must try. How do you get him enough without letting him get into trouble?

You really can't do it on a leash..... Unless perhaps you had one five miles long. We have a nice chain link kennel that served many Border Collies as a partial exercise yard, but Ren uses that.

Thus there are few options other than to let the little stinker run free some of the time. That's where the keeping out of trouble part comes in. He knows you can't catch him.

Do not attempt to combine this with birding. I was standing in the yard letting him race around playing the fool, while I trained my new binoculars on an immature Bald Eagle that was passing over.

WHAM. He hit my legs going about fifty. Needless to say they heard the resulting lecture in town. I won't even try that again.

And he chases horses. Fifteen-hundred-pound horses like Sunny, who hates him with the devil's own passion.

Thus I must schedule exercise around horses, bird walks, and cars coming in and out.

And hope his natural gregariousness brings him to the door rather than the back 40. Because I can't keep up with him and only a fool would try. The minus twenty weather helped with this concept.....I only had to close the door with him on the other side of it once and he decided that coming in was the better part of running away.

This morning I bird walked for a few, just up in the back yard. At least six pairs of cardinals, plus the usual suspects made for a nice trip. Next came the pup, as it is Sunny's day to go out.

He raced down to the heifer barn. I stood there humming elevator music and waiting. He came right back, as he really likes to be with his people. However, he brought something along and proceeded to gobble it down, big pieces of nasty dribbling down from both sides of his mouth. Ack. JRTs will eat anything! He grabs wood and runs away to eat it before I can get to him.

I ran over to see what he had, fearing he had somehow acquired suet from the suet feeder, but no, there were egg shells there. Ah, yes, a lot of eggs froze in the cold snap and LIz buried them in the manure pile.

I guess Ren and Jade dug them up. You cannot imagine how fast a JRT can run when there is a big treat at the end. He did come back, evidently having found his fill of tasty treats, but I asked Liz for a good rebury. I dread to even think what he will come up with next.