Foggy Day in Farmersville

It was one of those late-winter/early-spring days where the air was saturated and the fog hung heavy most of the morning. Only later in the day did the atmosphere begin to clear. As I stpped put the back door this morning, this is what the sycamore tree looked like at the south side of our property. It was an eerie, other-wordly sight. [Sat. 03/15]


The house itself was enveloped in a thick fog, where the colors turned muted and pastel and took on an out-of-focus feel. You could sense the thickness of the air on yiour skin.

The old catalpas that line Clayton Road were trimmed a few years back by the power company and they look oddly-shaped, especially when highlighted by the fog. The background fades as the trees become the only subject. In a horror movie, these branches would be reaching down to grab you.

Things are looking up

Things are looking better every day. We're back into the 40's at least and the sun is melting much of the snow. Here's what sunrise looked like this morning.


Just last weekend, when the snow finally came to an end. a view out the second floor window netted this scene to the north. Our wood pile - kept close to the house for emergency heating - was nearly buried in deep drifts and the pines hung heavily with snow.

But now we're looking at another way to heat this old house: a heat pump. When we moved here in 1987, fuel oil was $0.69/gallon. When we had our last delivery (in February), it was over $3.20/gallon. Obviously, oil prices are out of control and we want nothing more to do with it. We decided on a heat pump, both to warm the house in the winter and to cool it in the summer. We'll use electrical resistive heating for back-up (when it's 15 degrees or below). Here's the new furnace as it's being prepared. It's tiny! The furnace we installed 21 years is somewhere in between the one we took out and this new one. The efficiency is supposed to be much better, too.

Comparing the old compressor (l) and the new heat pump (r) shows the new unit is much larger. Here it's being staged for installation. The 'old' compressor will be moved for use on the second floor furnace since its compressor was installed in 1987. Better to chance the new one lasting longer.

Great Blizzard of 2008

Pinehaven on a snowy morning!


They're already calling it "The Great Blizzard of 2008" as a late winter snowstorm dropped upwards of a foot of snow in these parts. At 8 a.m. when I took my precipitation reading for the Miami Conservancy District, the melt-down read 0.70". Placing a yard stick into the snow confirmed that about 7" had fallen here. In the picture below you can see the standard NWS 20" gauge in the lower left.



The garage has develeoped quite an interesting overhang of snow, scuplted by the winds last night which gusted to near 40 mph. And when I first heard the forecast, I thought it couldn't be right. I've made just four paths in the snow, enough to get around in the case of an emergency.



The picture below looks out (east) our driveway. At this point I haven't yet dug a path to Clayton Road. I love the shadowy look of the trees in the early morning light, further muted by the falling snow.

Finally standing on Clayton Road and looking north (I mostly shoveled a path so I could get the newspaper - it was here!), you can see there has been little traffic, just a snow plow or two. For the most part, motorists are using common sense and staying off the roads. But where is there to go? Everything is closed.

The path in from the road is just wide enough to walk on. We'll wait for a neighbor with a plow to make a path wide enough for the car. It may be days before we go anywhere, anyway.

1:30 p.m. update: The snow depth is now a foot! 5" more just this morning!

Winter's Final Days

Winter - 2008 is down to its final 17 days and today you'd have thought it was already finished. A beautiful, sunny day with a high of 58 degrees. It was a time to work in the yard - pick up limbs, fix the loose siding on the barn where the wind has lifted it, sweep debris from the porch and even cut a bouquet of not-yet-open pussy willows. They'll open in indoors and we'll be assured of an early spring!
But with the day coming to a close, I noticed it was about time for sunset so I grabbed a jacket and walked across our back lawn, startling three deer (a mother and two young ones) who were grazing there. This is the view across the field behind the house.


A few moments later and the sun touched the horizon and dropped across the roof of the neighborhing farm. Bulls-eye! The field is empty and wet from all the recent rains but it holds promise for a bumper crop of corn this summer.

And yet another few minutes and the sun has drifted farther west and is gone from view, another day's promise fulfilled. A few wisps of cirrus are now highlighted by the sun from below the horizon and jet contails bloom above. A perfect day.

I ended "Pinehaven" with this line: "What wonders it will behold when finally it clears." One of the answers is here.

Total Lunar Eclipse & Polished Snow

A total lunar eclipse on the evening of February 20, 2008, began at 8:43 p.m. local time. This picture was taken seven minutes later and the Earth's shadow had made substantial progress in that short time. As the outside temperatures had fallen into the single digits, I decided to shoot my pictures through a firmly closed window. So the flare (and lack of detail) is due to two panes of (dirty) glass. I put the camera (a Canon PowerShot S2 IS) on a tripod, turned off the living room lights and shot away. Totality was from 10:01 p.m. to 10:51 p.m. so when I climbed into bed, I looked up and saw the moon was a muted and rusty red. Just above and to the left was Saturn; just below and to the left was Regulus. I don't remember seeing either when the moon was fully lit. The eclipse ended at 12:09 a.m. but I was already asleep. I did awaken at some point, though, and noticed the moonlight was returning.

Snow and more snow! And for the past day, we've had sleet and freezing rain falling and coating the snow. It almost looks as though the snow has been polished. There are strange reflections everywhere you turn.

Looking across the back yard, the shiny snow reminds me of a foamy sea. The snow seems to lie in waves of white froth. Walking on it is weird as it holds my step for a fraction of a second and then collapses and makes a remarkable crunchy sound underfoot all the while.

Icicles hang from the garage roof and we have to duck down to walk through.

Colder Still!

The Russian sage is covered in ice in mid-February though things aren't as bad as they look. The road, at least, is passable.

Looking back towards the house from the north, you can see that the snow isn't deep. The pampas grass in the foreground is usually torn apart by the winter winds. But not this year. Why not? It's been windier than ever.

A view of the house from beneath the pines along Clayton Road presents a pretty picture with the bare trunks of the trees, the snow and the meager winter sunlight punching through.

One of the first pictures I took with my 'new' (i.e used!) Canon PowerShot S2 IS in the macro mode gives a good idea of the ice the recent storms have deposited. It's a wonder anything is still standing. Though there are a few limbs down, for the most part there was no damage.

Winter's Cold

Last night was the coldest of the season at +1 degree. So far no temperatures below zero. I awoke to the bathroom window frozen over with ice crystals, a pretty pattern in the early morning light where the crystals formed interconnecting lines.

The window shown above is right beside my shower and I found a familiar sound when stepping upon the fiberglass floor - a creaking, crunching sound that is unmistakable: ice! My bare feet gave further proof. Later I sat the toilet bruch down there to drain and coming back to it a few hours later I found that it has frozen in place. Lifting it took bristles from the end. That's no place to take a proper shower.

I did manage my usual walk to Hemple a third of a mile to our north but I had to press a gloved hand against my face to prevent the wind from stinging my cheek. Upon arriving back at the house, I turned and looked back north and took this picture:

It doesn't look cold in that shot, does it? But it had only risen to about 2 degrees when I took it. A sunny day makes it look much more comfortable than it was.