The Winter Wood Shop Beckons

The family car infringing on the "wood butcher's" lair.

I may not be much of a wood worker, but I do know how to buy lots of tools!

As you regular readers know, Winters up here in the North Country are long, cold and dark.  As we begin to forlornly count the days until Spring, it helps to have a hobby to stay occupied.  And now that the holidays are fast slipping away, we are once again sinking into that three month period of the year where everyone up in these parts focuses on these essential hobbies.  Why are hobbies so important you might ask?  Because intense activity is the only way to escape cabin fever, stir craziness, snow hallucinations, paranoia and snow blindness.  Anyone remember "The Shining"? Case closed, and oh by the way, writing your first novel is not a recommended hobby.  My hobby is wood working.  Real wood workers would call what I do "wood butchering", but at least it keeps me busy during the long Winter months.  Last year I completed a built-in entertainment center and library for our t.v. room.  It turned out pretty good, if you turn the lights down real low and squint sideways that is.  This year I'll be making a side table/stereo cabinet and a coffee table for the living room.   My wife, Catherine, is very keen for me to get started as she has been without her stereo for almost a year now, and I have to complete the side table to be able to re-install it.  I guess that means that an alternate title for this post might be "Wife beckons to get busy in wood shop."   The good news is that I was able to get enough high quality rough cut lumber from a local mill to finish these projects.  The bad news?  The garage isn't heated and it's hard to do woodworking with mittens on.   

Pies for Christmas

The pies, set amidst christmas decorations, grace the family heirloom china cabinet.

The great American classic, apple.

Up close and personal with three berries.

Tis the season to over-consume, and for me that means pies.  My Mom, a phenomenal cook, made great pies and I guess that set me on a lifetime path of pie appreciation.  My wife is also a phenomenal cook, but she's not particularly interested in cooking pies.  Which means that I am the pie cook in our household and I have been trying to perfect my skills off and on for years.  I did two pies for our Christmas dinner this year, an apple (using my secret recipe) and a three berry pie (blueberries, blackberries and cranberries).  For the first time I made lattice tops.  All of this of course is to approximate as closely as possible a Norman Rockwellesque Vermont Christmas.  And it seems to be working out.  We've got the snow, the cheery fire and now the pies.  The good news is that the pies seem to have turned out pretty well.  The bad news?  Looks like I'll have to share them with the rest of the family.  I guess Christmas isn't all it's cracked up to be after all.

White Christmas out the Wazoo

The cars new body work.

The dogs plow through the powder.

My snowshoe gets swallowed by the new snow.

The ice and snow close in on the river.

Well, the storm has passed, and we've pretty much dug our way out of the house. With the worst of the shoveling out of the way, I'd like to make a holiday prediction; we will have a White Christmas (notice the capital W). Of course, we almost always do up here in the North Country, but you never know. There was that sappy movie with Bing Crosby back in 1954. In the movie, Bing's character visits a ski resort owned by an old Army buddy. The resort is about to go bankrupt because of a lack of snow. This fictional ski resort is located in, you guessed it, Vermont. I know, pretty unbelievable. We all know that ski resorts go bankrupt on a regular basis, but from a lack of snow in December in Vermont? Boy, movie audiences back in 1954 must have been pretty gullible. When they made the film everyone knew the whole storyline was preposterous, but it did give Bing a chance to sing that song. I guess everything good comes with a price. In any case, this year the skiing and snowboarding over the holidays promise to be phenomenal what with 2 feet of new powder on the ground. I'm not much of a Winter athlete myself (not much of an athlete at all really), but I encourage everyone who does enjoy Winter sports to make the trip up here and enjoy our White Christmas. Even if you're not into Winter sports you're still invited. You can help me finish the shoveling.

Nor'Alberta Clip'Easter

The Christmas tree and lights soldier on during the storm.

The weather folks around here talk about two types of typical Winter storms, the "Nor'easter" (see previous post) and the "Alberta Clipper". An Alberta Clipper is a fast moving storm system with very cold air but very little moisture that zips out of Alberta, Canada and right across our region. Usually they move fast, bring only 3 or 4 inches of snow, and drop the temperature by about 10 degrees. I mean, they are from Canada after all; how could they not bring cold? I'm not sure whether the "clipper" part of the name comes from the idea of "getting clipped" as in tangentially hit or from the old clipper ships which moved very fast just like these storm systems. In any case, for the last 10 hours we've had an "Alberta Clipper" and an old-fashioned "Nor'easter" meet head-on right over our house. (Hence the title of this post.) That means lots of cold air from Canada running headlong into lots of warm moist air from down South. The result, again, lots and lots of fluffy snow. 12" so far and no let-up in sight. The bad news is that it's projected to snow continuously until 4:00 p.m. Monday. The good news? The last 12 hours of that will be only "light snow".

Bambi the one-horned deer

Our visitor looks for browse under the old apple trees. Good luck Fella!

A decent look at our deer's unbalanced rack.

Last year we had a good sized young spike buck transit the yard all Winter. I saw him under the old apple trees several times but never got a photo. He actually had the longest pair of spike horns I've ever seen, about 10 inches long. Well, this evening another or the same young buck crossed the yard via the old apple trees with an even odder rack. This deer had a small two-point horn on one side and nothing (or just a little stub) on the other. As you can see from the pictures, he looks pretty fat and appears to be in good shape which is important at this point in the year. It's a long slog till Spring. Maybe this is the same deer as last year, and he just has a different irregular rack. Pretty hard to tell from up on the deck, and I didn't feel like running him down to take a closer look. After all, the snow's pretty deep .

p.s. After originally posting this I had an additional thought on how Bambi might have gotten his wretched rack. He could have had the right horn broken fighting with other bucks during the rut.

And now...A moment of Zen

The house on a pre-holiday Winter's night.

We've had a light, fluffy 6" snow over the last 18 hours and the house looks quite inviting all lit up under this new blanket of white. Almost postcard perfect, so I thought I'd take the outdoor Christmas photo and post it tonight. Indoor Christmas photos coming soon.

Moon Over Vermont Redux

What can I say? We had a beautiful full moon as a backdrop for our newly lit Christmas tree tonight, and I couldn't resist trying to get a decent photo. Maybe one of these days I'll actually succeed. I promise it was much more impressive in person.

Nor'easter

What a Nor'easter looks like on colorized radar. Blue is snow and as you can see the storm's epicenter is right over our house.

As seen from the deck.

And then the sun came out. You can almost hear the Hallelujah Chorus playing in the background.

I'd like to take this opportunity to educate the readers on a quaint weather phenomenon up here in the North Country, "The Nor'easter". Despite what the name Nor'easter might lead you to believe, this phenomenon has nothing to do with the holidays as in, "I won't be home for New Years, Nor'Easter". No, this phenomenon is primarily a matter of snow and lots of it. The name 'Nor'easter' is a New England colloquialism that loosely translates to "S**t, not more snow!" (In reality the name is derived from the direction the wind blows during one of these legendary storms.) Now, despite the fact that Nor'easters bring plenty of snow which blows in from, you guessed it, the Northeast, we have our friends down South to thank for this particular brand of miserable weather. That's because a Nor'easter results when a depression forms in the deep South, picks up lots of moisture from the Gulf and then makes its way up the Atlantic coast before slamming into the cold air that hangs out up here in the North Country for most of the Winter. At some point the storm will come to rest right over our house where it will proceed to dump a whole lot of frozen moisture. Given their geographic origins, maybe we shouldn't call these things "Nor'easters", but Stonewall Jackson's revenge. In any case, we have been enduring our first Nor'easter of the season over the last 24 hours and it hasn't disappointed, dropping about 9" of wet snow and freezing rain. The only thing that would have made this any better would have been a long power outage. Guess we'll have to save that for later in the season.

An Early Evening Visit From Rocky the Flying Squirrel

Rocky takes center stage in another one of my stunningly bad wildlife photos.

All of you regular readers will remember Rocky the Flying Squirrel from last year. We hadn't seen our little gliding buddy for months and I feared he might have ended up as a dinner for Barry the barred owl. Apparently barred owls love flying squirrels, in a culinary sort of way. But Rocky appears to have survived the Summer, and he showed up at the bird feeder this evening around 05:30. Perhaps he's been coming to the feeder regularly and we just didn't see him. I'm guessing the flying squirrels are out earlier in the evening these days because the days are so short. It gets dark pretty early after all, around 11:00 in the morning most days. (Just kidding. It gets dark around 5:00 p.m.) In any case, Rocky was pretty fearless, letting me click several mediocre photos and even shine the flashlight out the window to get a good look. I'm surprised the flash on the camera and the flashlight didn't bother or scare him. Maybe he was just really hungry.

Channeling the Teutonic Fertility Gods

Paul Bunyan prepares for the sacrifice of the vestal tree.

The deed is done.

Catherine, affectionately known as "The Mule", lugs the tree towards the house.

A short break for the beast of burden.

The tree newly installed on the deck. Tomorrow, lights!

Hope that title got your attention. Despite the titillating and overblown title, all this post is about is Christmas trees. Christmas trees are apparently a German tradition brought to us by those savage barbarians who used to slink around the Black Forest just looking for a Roman legionnaire to slaughter. One thing led to another and presto, evergreen trees, real and fake, are now in every American home during our much beloved holiday of outrageous materialistic excess, Christmas. Originally the "Christmas tree" was a prop used by the pagans to mark the Winter solstice. The Winter solstice is that day in the year when for one brief moment you seem to think that Winter is O.K., what with the holidays and beautiful snowy landscapes and all. Shortly after the solstice of course everyone sinks into a deep "when will Winter end" depression that generally lasts through June up here in Vermont. Beyond that, I don't really know if the Winter Solstice evergreen has any fertility connotations as I imply in my title. That was just a cheap marketing ploy in the spirit of the season. In any case, up here in the North Country we take our Christmas trees pretty seriously. That might be because we have quite a few evergreens growing around the region and Christmas presents a good opportunity to thin our overgrown forest. Catherine and I take the Christmas tree tradition so seriously that we have two trees, an outdoor tree and an indoor tree. Today we went and cut our outdoor tree which we will display proudly on our deck until shortly after the first of the year. At that point the outdoor and the indoor trees will be unceremoniously dumped in the woods somewhere. That usually happens around the same time that the holiday champagne runs out and the "when will Winter end" blues set in.

In Praise of Chocolate

A Champlain Chocolate Family Portrait

The destination for tonight's pilgrimage. The sign says it all.

When we lived in Paris, I used to walk by one of the best chocolatier in the whole city on my way to and from work. Hevin was his name and chocolate was his game. And what a game it was. Good lord that was good chocolate! Well worth the $40 or $50 a pound that it cost. But all good things eventually end, and our access to Hevin chocolate abruptly ceased when we moved back to the States. Enter stage left, Champlain Chocolate, our local Vermont chocolatier. Their small factory is up in Burlington and although their chocolate isn't quite Hevin heavenly, it's pretty darn good chocolate and the sales people are infinitely more pleasant. They have a big retail store near Stowe, one of our big ski towns, and we try and go by half a dozen times a year to get a big chocolate fix. Christmas is one of those times obviously, and we buy enough chocolate to both send out care packages to deserving family members and get us through the holidays. Lucky us, tonight was the night for our Christmas run. As I post this I have just finished eating enough chocolate to be both very content and slightly nauseated. It may be another couple of hours before I can eat any more. Chocolate is, sadly, one of those exquisite pleasures that the many scolds in our society would like us to feel guilty about. It's fattening, it's too overtly sensual, it's expensive and unnecessary, it contributes to global warming, it's not free trade, it contributes to diabetes and on and on. In this regard chocolate is a lot like sex. Most everybody loves it and would like to have more, but somehow we're not supposed to. The good news is, I've pretty much freed myself of any feelings of guilt associated with societal scolding, and there are 10 pounds of chocolate in the house. Now if I could just get back to Paris to visit Hevin...

Surprised by Winter

First of all, my apologies for the lack of photos for this post. I got back from Benin on Monday and have been adjusting to jet lag and the 70 degree temperature differential. It was 105 F in the shade there most days whereas it has been around 35 F here during the day. I prefer the latter. I'm not the only one going through an adjustment period. On my walk today I saw, of all things, a male kingfisher. I had seen what I assume was the same bird back at the end of October before taking off on my trip, and at the time I wondered what a kingfisher was doing hanging around here so late in the year. Waiting for all of the ponds to freeze over I guess because that's what's in store for our fishing feathered friend. Our pond still has a narrow band of unfrozen water and the river hasn't frozen at all of course. Still, I wonder how our kingfisher can find enough to eat. On the other hand, lots of migratory birds hang around longer than we might expect. Catherine saw a great blue heron a couple of weeks ago and they are also migratory fishing birds. I'm hoping that this kingfisher is just hanging around a few extra weeks and will soon be on his way. The alternative is that he is a youngster who somehow missed his family's migration and now doesn't really know what to do except hang around the steadily freezing pond. We'll just have to trust Nature on this one.

And then...it was Winter

No,not a black and white photo. Just a black and white landscape.

The sun setting on Fall just a short week ago.

I had intended to do a post entitled "And then there were none", referring to the leaves. That would still be an appropriate title of course, the vast majority of the leaves are gone, but a funny thing happened on the way to that post. It snowed. We only got about 2-3 inches, but 50 miles to our West in the Adirondacks they got over a foot. So the shovels are out, I finally got the last of the wood stacked on the porch and the garden is definitively put to bed. I leave again for Benin, Africa today where the temperatures are about 100 during the day with a humidity of 63 percent. That contrasts with a high of 39 degrees here yesterday. Just a 60 degree differential. Shouldn't be any problem at all acclimating. I'll be back 1 December. Hopefully it won't snow so much while I'm gone that I can't find the house when I get back.

Table Manners of the Eastern Chipmunk

Not having access to reusable, sustainable and all organic shopping bags, the eastern chipmunk uses its cheek pouches to haul the groceries home.

I have sometimes been accused of stuffing too much into my mouth, scarfing my meals down in a matter of nano-seconds. I blame this habit on the Army where before any meal no one says "bon appetit" as the French do, but rather "get it and go" as in, why are you taking so long? But even with my tendency to scarf food, I'm an amateur food-stuffer compared to the eastern chipmunk. I offer the photo above as evidence.

Fade to ... Yellow.

Say hello to yellow.

Framed by our quaking aspen, some late season reds and oranges peek over the treeline .

Even the ferns are turning yellow.

A highly colored beech behind the house.

After a pretty good color season so far, the maple trees are really starting to shed their leaves and leave the stage to the aspens, birches and beeches. All of these trees tend to have yellow leaves in the fall although the beech has a pretty pronounced brownish-orange tinge. I miss the reds of the maples, but the new stars of the show look like bright splashes of flame across the backdrop of the hemlocks and firs. We're headed to southern Vermont this weekend, and we'll see if the colors down there are worth any pictures.

The "Bounty" of our Harvest

Our Winter stock of corn. Could be grim.

None of our pumpkins won first prize at the county fair.

The apples on our old apple trees seem to do fine without any help from us.

Just a random shot of the house.

O.K., American Gothic we're not although we did spend a lot of time, energy and money on the garden this year. With mixed results I have to admit. The greens and the tomatoes did pretty well. The cucumbers threatened to overwhelm us. The herbs and our first year strawberries on the other hand were pretty much a bust. The black-eyed peas that I planted (late unfortunately) grew tall and strong and produced narry a bean. The pumpkins and the butternut squash produced only laughter or pity. The corn I planted was, happily, only for decoration because there wasn't enough of it to keep a chicken alive through the Winter. Still and all, we did get our raised beds built, the strawberry patch promises many more fruit next year, and we learned a lot from our mistakes. It would have been a pretty satisfying year except that with what we spent on the garden, we could have financed our vegetable needs for the next 10 years at the supermarket. On the bright side, we don't have to actually live off of what we raise.

Fire Season

One of our first "cheery" fires burns happily away.

Some of the colors that accompany the coming of cool weather.

A lonely adolescent merganser makes a pit stop on the pond as he flees the coming of Winter.

It's fire season here in the North Country in more ways than one. On the one hand, with the coming of cool weather, cheery fires are burning in fireplaces and wood stoves all over the region. On the other hand, lots of buildings tend to burn down at this time of year, mainly because of all those cheery fires in fireplaces and wood stoves. That and the electric space heaters. It can be a grim choice here in the Winter, either freeze to death or burn up in a raging inferno that was once your house. We've opted for the second option and have had fires the last three days.

Encounters of a Porcupine Kind

On our way to see Pauly the porcupine.

A porcupine showing off the latest in pain inducing coiffures.

Four of the little gifts Pauly left Nella. The dark end is the business end.

Late this afternoon I took the dogs out for their last walk of the day, and we decided to do a short loop up through the woods. When we were 20 yards or so from where the trail runs into the neighbors gravel road before looping back into the woods, the dogs took off in a flash and accosted something on the road. I called them back and went up to investigate. By the time I got to the road, a large porcupine had scrambled into the treeline on the other side and was busy climbing out of reach. The porcupine climbed a good 30 feet up the tree before stopping. Now safe from the porcupine's quills, the dogs barked and jumped up on the tree, ready to tear the porcupine limb from limb (as long as the porcupine stayed up the tree with his rather painful defensive mechanism). In the initial encounter Nella managed to collect a half dozen quills which I pulled out before heading home. The quills are not only sharp and numerous, they are barbed at the end, so pulling them takes a little effort. Nella was very brave and let me jerk them out without so much as a whimper. The good news in all of this? It wasn't a skunk we ran into.

Out of Africa and into Peak Color

When I did my last post, Summer was in full swing, but the first colors of Fall were starting to peek out from under a blanket of green. What a difference a month makes! I returned from my working jaunt in Benin, Africa to find Fall in firm control and the colors rioting across the landscape. The question of course is whether we are already at "peak color". Up here in the North Country the concept of "peak color" is much debated and very important. Peak color is a mythical moment when the Fall colors are their most vibrant, most beautiful and most plentiful. It's a fragile moment that a strong wind, too much rain, not enough rain, above average heat, above average cold, inadequate sunspot activity, earthquakes or large swamp gas releases can adversely affect. There is never broad agreement each year about when we have reached peak color although most people can come to an agreement about when it has passed. As a flatlander, I have never had the privilege of witnessing peak color although native vermonters promise me I will some day if I manage to live here for at least 20 years. Still and all, I would have to say that in our little corner of Vermont we have reached peak color or something very close. That's not true West of us where Lake Champlain moderates the temperatures, and peak color is probably long gone up along the Canadian border. We're going to take a drive up the Mad River Valley this Sunday to see how the colors look over there. Updates to follow.

p.s. It was the rainy season in Benin and apparently it's the rainy season here as well since it's rained every day since I got back.

And so it begins...

Can you find Winter in this picture?

How about here?

Ah, there it is, lurking in the first colors of Fall.

Fall is easily the best season here in the North Country. The colors can be extraordinary, it's football season, the air is crisp at night but comfortable during the day and everyone has that contented feeling from knowing the hay is in the barn and the hard work of Summer is over. The only problem with this is that you have to make a conscious effort to forget the fact that Winter, a hard Winter, is just around the corner. So we bask in the fleeting beauty and pleasantness of Fall while willfully ignoring what is just around the corner. In other news, I'm off to Africa today for a month. When I return the Fall colors will be at their peak (even if I'm not) and I promise everyone the full treatment of beautiful pictures. See you in a month!

Summer's almost gone...

The neighbor's son with his first trout.

The late Summer garden.

Ditto.

Our late season wild flowers around the pond.

The daily swim.

Indian Joe Pye Weed, a beautiful late Summer flower around the pond, much beloved by the bumble bees.

The folks around here call the period from 15 July to 15 August "High Summer". Other regions of the country may employ the same term, but I first encountered it here. The weather didn't really make it feel like "High Summer" during that stretch this year, but we are now enjoying some really nice warm sunny days with moderately cool nights. So even though the dates have come and gone, I thought it would be nice to capture the feel of "High Summer" with a few photos even as Fall is pushing its way into our consciousness a little more each day. More about that tomorrow.