Saturday, April 12, 2008

Mud Season


The yard as seen from the shed. Hard to tell where the pond starts.


Typical mud season road.


Why we're buying a 4WD car this year.


The river has gotten over its banks.


The yard flowing into the pond.


A tough Winter for the canoe.

Unfortunately to get from Winter to Spring up here in the North country, you have to go through Mud Season. Mud Season is that quirky time of year when all of the snow pack is melting, but the ground has only thawed down about 6 to 12 inches. What's that mean practically speaking? All of those thawed 6 to 12 inches turn to mud. This is a particularly quaint phenomenon on any of Vermont's 12,000 miles of dirt roads (see photos above). We're fortunate because we live off of a paved road although it reverts back to dirt about 100 yards past our house. I did however have an exciting first hand encounter with muddy back roads on Wednesday when I took the car to have the snow tires taken off (always a big moment of renewed hope around here). Needless to say, without 4 wheel drive it was exhilarating (and terrifying). Our yard seems to be turning into one big mud patch as well. As you can see from the pictures, the yard has become one big sheet of flowing water.

2 comments:

Numeriklab said...

Yall got to get a pickup!

Flatlander said...

It's a state law in Vermont that if you buy a 4 wd vehicle it has to be a Subaru.