Good morning!

Appalachian glow on Nell's Hill, shadowed by Roundtop Mtn.

 Two things I can’t get away from this week—more snow and foraging raccoons. The snow hasn’t arrived yet. The raccoons have disrupted my sleep every night for the past three or four. Actually, most of the time it’s not the raccoons that disrupt my sleep. It’s Baby Dog barking at the raccoons that are raiding my bird feeders and anything else they can find that disrupts my sleep.

Currently, a pair of them are in league with the devil and scavenging together. Both are moderate-sized raccoons, not babies and not nearly the size of the huge boar that killed one of my chickens two years ago. They do not mind if Baby Dog barks at them. In order to quell her barking, I have to get up and open the patio door and wave my arms or shout at them. The bird feeders are empty, too, before someone mentions that. But still they come, nosing around and pooping on my back deck.

And then this morning as I was driving to work, I spied yet another raccoon, high in the tiniest branches of a very old apple tree in an abandoned orchard some 3 miles from the cabin. Was it chased there? Injured? Just looking at the view? As best I could tell, it appeared healthy enough, which of course doesn’t explain why it was up there.

The sunrise this morning, ahead of the snow was gorgeous for a few minutes before the sun disappeared behind a dense cover of clouds. It turned Nell’s Hill to the west a bright shade of orange. When the light faded, the entire mountain look dismal and dark, and the light was flat again.