Snow, beautiful snow!

Isn’t it amazing how snow can transform the look of a landscape?  Even though I’ve lived at the cabin for more than 20 years now, the forest around me looks like an entirely different place when it’s covered with snow.  Yes, I know all about the downside of snow—the constant shoveling, the dicey driving, the sore muscles that follow the constant shoveling.  And yet, looking at the forest covered in snow never fails to inspire me.  I wish more of the year was snow-covered.

So far this winter, I’ve had a few days with just a trace of snow—that’s not really enough to make me appreciate it.  Then I had the 31” storm that was nearly melted a week later.  Now, I’ve added another 6-7 inches of snow-cover.  This one is likely to stay on the ground for a while, as temperatures are to plummet for the next 4-5 days. 

Unlike the blizzard, which was as powdery and lightweight as a feather, this was a heavier snow that even in a rather stiff breeze is sticking to the trees, which only adds to the beauty of the winter forest.

Leaves falling down

This is the week of leaves falling down at Roundtop.  Leaves are everywhere, floating down like rain and crunchy underfoot.  So far no rain has dampened them or turned them into a sodden mess, the first step of decaying into new forest soil.

For the first time since May I can see the outline of Nell’s Hill to the west.  I can not yet see the porch light of my nearest western neighbor, who lives a mile or so down the mountain, across the narrow valley, across Beaver Creek, over the swampy area and starting up the next mountain.  When I can see those lights, I’ll know winter is approaching and that all the leaves are down.

So far this season, I have seen little signs of waterfowl migration.  I would have expected that to have started by now, but not even migrating geese have been spotted.  The local geese honk and fly over on their nightly rounds, pretending or perhaps thinking about migrating.  The instincts are there for them, even if they don’t head south.  A quick trip to Pinchot Lake this weekend saw it empty of any waterfowl, except for seven geese.  Those were certainly local birds, too.  Migration is late, perhaps a result of the warmer weather this week.

So this past weekend was a very nice one for the time of year, a tad warmer than it’s been and with no rain.  The photos with today’s post were all taken this weekend.  You can see that the brilliant falls colors are gone.  The leaves are not yet faded into all browns, but the drama of the season is past. It was a good time for enjoying the weather.  Not many more days this year can I expect the weather to be so balmy or so conducive to outdoor work.  I’ll take these lovely fall days however I find them.

Falling

Leaves are falling constantly.  Sometimes they fall one by one, sometimes they fall in a papery shower.  At least half are down now, which means I can begin to see the mountain a mile or so to my west again.  The mountain is not completely revealed, but I don’t need to know where it is to see it anymore.

Wind and cold temperatures from a nor’easter are gone now, so the mountain has returned to more seasonal levels.  I was forced to use my fireplace when the wind was blowing. My cabin stays warm enough with a little help from sunlight, but the wind stripped away any of the day’s heat.  Even so, the cats cuddle on my bed like another blanket—warmer than most of the real blankets currently covering my bed. 

The chickens don’t seem to mind the current weather, but the shortened hours of daylight brings ever fewer eggs for me. I’ve already had to stop selling the eggs, as I’ve dropped from 3 dozen a week to no more than a dozen now.  I hope I will get enough over the winter to keep me in eggs, but sometimes the girls stop laying all together.  That’s especially true if the winter is a gloomy one.  It will likely be late February or even March before egg production resumes on anything like a normal level again. My hens are now more than 2 years old, too, and even in spring their production will likely be less.  Doodle, my rooster, is probably going to be 5 years old, and I’m guessing it won’t be too long before I will need another rooster.  He’s very protective and more than earns his keep.

Got him!

Finally, the rain has stopped!  In the space of just 36 hours, I picked up somewhere between 10.55 and 11.74 inches (yes, you read that right) of rain.  That much rain is usually reserved for the remnants of hurricanes, not your average autumn low pressure system. Because the area had been so dry, my basement didn’t get wet until the rain total was somewhere near 10”, and then I only got about half an inch of water down there, which was easily pumped out.

The roads were bad on Friday, and the creeks were high enough to make me wonder if the bridges were safe to cross, but overall it could have been worse.  Still, I’m glad it wasn’t.

Grumpy, the giant snapping turtle I photo’d on Friday reappeared in the same spot on Saturday morning.  I don’t know if it commutes from one side of the road to the other, or if it still hadn’t found a way across the road in the first place.  If this keeps up, that turtle will soon get run over.  The spot where I find it is right along the edge of the road on a curve, and for cars coming in the opposite direction, they may well not see it in time to avoid it.  It does help that the road is one where it’s not uncommon for 20-30 minutes to pass between cars.

The deer that are feasting on various nuts around my cabin grow ever bolder. This young buck watched me for a good minute before moving out of my driveway.  The photo isn't great because at 6:45 a.m., it's still pretty dark--too dark for a clear photo.  I try not to look at the deer when I see them, as being stared at makes them nervous. It also helps if I don’t pay much attention to them. In this case I was feeding the chickens, except for the moments when I was snapping the shutter.  The deer always seem curious about what I am doing, but they don’t show much fear.

Now that the latest rainstorm is over and the clean-up I needed to do around the cabin because of it, my big ongoing work over the next few weeks will be brooming the leaves off my front and back decks.  The rain brought down so many leaves they were ankle-deep.  As many leaves are still on the trees, that scenario will repeat several times until all the leaves are off.  It’s work I don’t mind, as it keeps me outside and gives me a chance to surreptitiously watch the deer as they are watching me.

Coming out of the bubble

Yesterday’s storm brought down virtually all the leaves that had dried, withered or changed color, so the forest looks almost green again. That won’t last as now is the time when the fall color change really takes off. Many of the leaves that came down were off tulip poplar trees and smaller saplings of almost any species.

My forest is mostly white and red oaks, with hickory and beech thrown in for variety.  The oaks are usually the very last tree to change color, and sometimes I even have a three-phase color change, with those trees hanging onto their leaves past the first killing frost. This year I am assured of at least a two-phase color change. Some years everything works together, and all the leaves change color and drop at more or less the same time. That hasn’t happened in a while and won’t happen this year either.

For now, I’m just glad to have some of the leaves down so I can see the sky over my cabin again.  The thick forest canopy of summer helps to keep the air around the cabin cooler than when I’m out of the forest, but even knowing that, I weary of living inside the “green bubble” of summer.  But today, I can see the end of this year’s bubble, and I know I will soon have the expansive view of winter around me instead.

Plans

Pinchot Lake, September 12, 2012, 6:30 p.m.

Tonight a rare occurrence at Carolyn’s cabin: a evening free of other obligations and clear weather. So tonight I plan to do a little outside work, and though I don’t have to mow in my forest, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do.

First off tonight, I will clear out the pipe that drains the basement during heavy rainstorms. This is a chore I have to do many times in the fall. This cleaning will take care of the accumulation of summer’s leaves and twigs that clog the “stream” that’s created by the draining basement. Then once the leaves begin to fall, I’ll need to do the job every week or two until all the leaves are finally down and not being blown around.

My chicken pens also need attention. Last night the first egg from my new chickens was produced, a lovely little brown thing about two inches long—about half the size of the eggs produced by the 3-year old chickens. So I need to make sure the nest boxes for the new girls are deep with new straw and that they are happy with the arrangements. The rest of them will begin to lay any day now, too. The first pullet eggs from a chicken are always small, but they reach normal size within a week or so.

I also need to put anti-skid tape on all my outside steps and around the front deck. This is a yearly job, as that tape works well but never lasts more than a year. Those wooden steps are slippery when wet or iced up or snowed under. And the tape doesn’t stick well below a certain temperature, so I have to remember to do this chore before it gets too cold.

If I have time I will take a look at chopping down some of the undergrowth behind the cabin. I worked on that in the early summer, before July’s heat made that job too much to any sane person. Fighting off the multiflora rose is a never-ending job. Sometimes I think I’m making progress, sometimes not.

And I need to redo my bird feeders in preparation for the heavy feeding season in fall and winter. My feeder arrangement is different every year, partly because I’m always trying new things, partly because my feeders never last more than one season. Raccoons, opossums and the weather all take a toll.

Naturally, I won’t get everything done tonight, but it will feel good just to have the time and nice weather to work on it all.

What replaces "yard" work at the cabin

"Bouquet" of rue anemone

This week I’ve spent some time each evening dragging around giant branches, tops of trees and cutting back the multiflora rose that’s not-so-slowly taking over the area behind the cabin. This spring the clean-up is worse than usual. The remnants from Snowtober still litter the woods, and not just around my cabin.

Those downed treetops have dried a bit, and I’m now able to drag them around a lot easier than I could shortly after the event. They are still large and heavy. One that looks like at least half of a tree, keeps getting lodged between other living trees as I try to drag it away from the side of the cabin. I moved it another 10-15 feet before it got stuck. I think I’m going to need a chain saw to move it any further. Or perhaps I’ll just sharpen the hatchet and try that. At least that 20-foot monster is no longer up against the cabin.

Cutting back the multiflora rose, that gorgeous invasive and thorny bush, is an ongoing issue. This year, I saw the start of the growth and moved in quickly. Then in 24 hours the size of the patch doubled. Last night when I wore out after dragging limbs and treetops around, I worked on that for a while.

The forest still comes right up to the doors and decks of the cabin, but I have to keep working with the brush to keep the forest from covering the cabin. As it is, last year I got behind in my brush clearing when the rains of April went on and on, and I never did catch up. It was a jungle back there, and I couldn’t even walk through it. This year, I’m trying to prevent that from happening. We’ll see if I’m successful or not. So far I’m almost holding my own against it.

A summer surprise (or I have no flippin' clue)

Summer lane

Last night I had nice treat right on the doorstep of my cabin. The fact that I have no idea what it was all about doesn’t change the fact that it was fun.

I had fireworks. Big, professional, loud fireworks.

Just after dark, fireworks started on the mountain. They were located not far from the cabin, somewhere along the edge of one of the bunny hills. Trees veiled portions of the display, but I could still see enough to be impressed.

I walked out to the end of my driveway to see a little better. My nearest neighbor, a Roundtop employee, had walked out to the lane, too. He had no idea what it was all about either.

With nature’s fireworks flashing through the sky in the background, and manmade fireworks overpowering the thunder, it was quite a show and lasted a good 15 minutes.

As far as I knew or could see, nothing was going on down around the lodge to justify fireworks. I’d just walked the dogs not 15 minutes before, and the ski area was as vacant as you’d expect a ski area to be on a hot Thursday evening in June.

So who was setting off fireworks and why? I have no idea. Sometimes it’s best just to take little surprises as they come and not get too picky about the details.

There was even a finale.

The joys of fallen leaves

One of the good things about the open forest of November is all that I get to see the vegetation isn’t a solid wall of green. This morning it was two squirrels chasing each other around a tree and a pair of deer sneaking deeper into the woods as Dog and I passed.

In summer I hear what’s going on but am often left to imagine who is making the sound. I have gotten pretty good at guessing what noises go with what animal, but it’s still more fun to actually see them.

Of course, all those dry, downed leaves, as yet undampened by any rain since they fell, helps too. Not even the sneakiest raccoon or the most careful turkey can avoid the scraping and crunching noises the merest touch creates on those leaves. Any noise sets the dogs to barking, which prompts me to head towards a window to see what all the excitement is about. I’ve seen all kinds of things that I never would have seen if I hadn’t been alerted by the dogs or sometimes the cats. Fox tiptoeing through the back forest just past the deck, a person wandering over on a ski slope, the chickens out where they shouldn’t be—it doesn’t matter what, very little gets past the cabin without someone knowing about it.

Still Green here

My local area is stuck in an unusual weather pattern—a day of storms, followed by a day of nice weather, followed by storms again. As a result, nothing every truly dries out. Today is the nice day. Tomorrow will be the rainy day again. This is better than all rain, but it means I can’t get to much of the outside work that needs done around the cabin. Soon I will need a machete. Actually, I should probably have one now.

I don’t have a machete, so the plants encroach on the cabin, currently preventing a walk around it. The bushes are sneaking their way across my driveway and scrape the sides of the car as I enter. I am tempted, in a fantasy kind of way, to let their long, thin branches close the gap and hide the cabin from view entirely. It would be my secret, a driveway hidden by the forest, so no one else would know one was there.

The driveway is not far from that now, and if it weren’t for the nice young woman who drives the FedEx truck and delivers packages to my front door, I might actually do it. No one else even attempts to deliver packages to my front door, and she easily manages the drive up the mountain and into my driveway. The last time FedEx used a substitute driver, he got stuck and one of Roundtop’s tractors had to pull him out.

A little night "music"

Last night the wind roared across the mountain. I lost power so many times that I simply stopped resetting the clocks. It’s easier just to wait until the wind dies down sometime tonight. Hopefully by then the power will stay on.

Fortunately, the trees in the forest are so far staying upright. This morning I picked up various branches and limbs—mostly long dead—that littered the driveway. With a temperature hovering around 20 degrees, a 40 mph wind makes for quite a wind chill. Suffice it to say that neither I nor the dogs were interested in a long walk this morning.

The chickens are pretty much under the cabin for the winter and seem to be doing well, though it’s weather like this that makes me glad I’m not a chicken. I’ve placed tarps over their pen, which I hope blocks the worst of the wind. In the years when I did a lot of winter backpacking in below zero weather, I was always surprised at how well a thin nylon tent (and a good sleeping bag) kept me cozy inside. Still, I’m sure all of us will be happier when the wind dies down.

Where's that cabin?

My little cabin in the woods is almost invisible in this photo. In summer, it is invisible from this spot. In winter I need a little snow cover to keep it invisible. Overnight, another inch or two of snow fell, and then the rain started. At the moment everything is a slushy mess. Tonight, it will likely turn into a frozen mess, unfortunately. This morning I couldn’t even entice the dogs to play in the snow. They don’t much care for the slush either.

One thing about living in the woods that I never seem to get used to, for some reason, is that travel can be difficult to impossible up at the cabin, but once I get off the mountain, it’s a different world. Down in civilization, the roads can be just wet or sometimes even dry, when up at the cabin I can barely get out or around.

That sometimes extreme difference can make it difficult for me to decide if I should head in to work or not. And for those times when the difference between here and there is at its worst, I have to suffer the unbelieving looks at work when I tell them I couldn’t get out.

This morning wasn’t as difficult a choice as I’ve sometimes had. The schools had a two-hour delay, and I was thinking I might have my own two-hour delay as well. But I managed to get out and discovered merely wet roads once I reached a public road.

Most of the time, I love the difference between life at the cabin and life down in the city. After all, that’s why I wanted to live in the cabin in the first place. It’s only explaining to my boss about my difficulty getting to work when the roads are dry down in the city that’s a bit uncomfortable.

The Birds of May

According to Carolyn’s birding records, May 2008 is now (already!) officially the best May for the number of bird species I’ve seen since I’ve been keeping good monthly records at the cabin. The little pee-wees arrived over the weekend and in so doing became #52 for the month so far. Peewees are typically the latest of the regular summer residents to arrive here on the mountain.
Theoretically, I could reach at least 55 species by the end of the month. Whether that will actually happen is another story. Now that it has stopped raining, I might be able to locate a few of those sparrows that I don’t have on my list for the month.

The rose-breasted grosbeak has become a regular, if temporary, visitor to my feeders. The male that I see most often doesn’t have much rose on his breast, so that makes him fairly distinctive. He’s likely a younger bird. So far he shows no sign of leaving and heading northward into territory where grosbeaks more commonly breed. I can find no reason why grosbeaks don’t breed around the cabin, but I’ve never known them to do so. They don’t travel much further north of me, though, to reach areas where grosbeaks are common breeders.

I’ve also heard a yellow-billed cuckoo this weekend. The call was very distant and was perhaps not even on Roundtop. I haven’t decided yet if I will count this bird on my May list or not. It was definitely a yellow-billed cuckoo, but it might have been sitting on a neighboring mountain.

I’m not very good at matching my daily photographs with my blog writing, am I? Maybe one of these years I’ll get better at that. Today’s photo is my container tomato plants and the flowers on the front of the cabin. The tomatoes aren’t doing too well right now. I don’t get much sunlight, so I put the tomatoes in a container I can move around, hopefully to get them the most possible sun. But it’s rained all week, and they are now in desperate need of a few sunny days.

The Sky Overhead Diminishes

The weather is gray and rainy today, which I’m sure the forest vegetation around the cabin will appreciate. The leaves grow ever larger and thicker, a little more each day. I still have a small view of the sky directly overhead, but I will likely lose that in the next few days. To really look at the sky and see what the weather is like, I have to walk to the end of the driveway and down the lane to a spot about .2 mile away where the trees don’t crowd the edge of the lane.

I have yet to see any new fawns, but another batch of Canada goslings has arrived. This is a full brood of seven little ones. This morning mom and dad were parading them around the parking lot at Roundtop. Over the weekend I’ve seen scarlet tanager and this morning had a very wet rose-breasted grosbeak in my feeders. The Baltimore orioles were chasing each other and singing. I can think of just two summer residents that haven’t yet arrived—the peewee and the great-crested flycatcher.

Baby Dog and I took a nice long walk on Sunday afternoon before the rain started. I’ll post photos of that tomorrow.

An Evening in the Woods

The rain cleared late in the day, and the evening was beautiful, if windy. As you can see, the marcescent leaves on this American beech tree in my front forest are still hanging on. I'm starting to see buds on a few of the smaller trees and shrubs, so these remnants of 2007 surely don't have long to hang on anymore.

Last night the red foxes were barking. I haven't heard them since last fall. The one was very close. The voice of the second had a different sound to it, higher, and was further away. The sound of loons calling and Red-tailed hawks screaming are often mentioned as two sounds that epitomize the wild, but I'm starting to think a fox's barking should be right up there too.

The sound sends a chill down my spine. Something about it always sounds urgent, like a frantic alarm call, even though I tell myself it's just their normal communication. It doesn't feel that way to me, though. Standing outside in the dark and hearing the foxes just 50 yards or so away feels as though I am standing in the midst of some invisible danger--not from the foxes, but of something the foxes are reporting to the rest of the forest. They probably consider me the danger, but I share their primal alarm whenever I hear that sound.

Note: In this area trout lily, dog-toothed violets and yellow violets are all names for the same plant. I hear dog-toothed violet most commonly, though trout lily isn't far behind. This confusion is likely why true plant people use the latin names--no confusion when you use those--but I kind of like the different names.

When the Weather was Sunny...

It's a good thing I took photos this weekend when the weather was nice. This morning's freezing rain didn't offer much opportunity for a new photo. Gray and gloomy doesn't begin to cover it. Dismal is the word that comes to my mind.

The freezing rain is light, though it doesn't take much to make walking and driving treacherous. But perhaps because it is light, the birds that frequent my feeders aren't acting desperate, which is how I describe how their feeding frenzy before a big storm.

So this morning I am posting a photo that's three days old, back when the day was a sunny one. I took a walk in the forest behind the cabin (just visible in the background). It's a rocky section of forest, though it's not still too bad in this photo. Once past this easier section, the going is slower, which suited my mood that day. I can walk for an hour and not get too far, as I pick my way over or around the rocks and boulders. Because it is rocky, I usually try not to go too far uphill or downhill, as that only adds to the difficulty, especially when even this little bit of snow hides the smaller rocks enough to make balancing precarious. The boulders are easily visible, but it's still slow going as I pick my way around and between them.

Deeper into the woods I found the downed tree that you see in my second photo. It's covered with shelf fungus to an unusual degree. It's not uncommon to find fungus on a downed tree. It is uncommon to find as much fungus on the tree as you see here--and even that is just a part of it.

In spring and summer, it's easy for me not to notice things like fungus. Leaves and color both combine to obscure the view of smaller things, sometimes. The bareness of winter helps me notice things obscured in the lusher seasons. That's part of the reason I like winter walks. It's a little bit like traveling in different territory, even when I am not far from home.

Winter View, Back Deck

I took this picture from my back deck during one of the unending grey winter days of the past week or so. I’m facing due west, and my nearest neighbor in this direction lives somewhere over at the base of the far mountain—over a mile away. At night and after the leaves fall, I can sometimes see their porch light from my deck.

In the valley between is a small pond and a usually year-round stream and, of course, more forest. When I hear the great horned owls call, the sound usually comes from somewhere down in the valley. Years ago, at some point, there was a summer camp in the valley. I can still find the remnants of an old swimming pool and the bathrooms along the old two-track dirt road that runs along the stream.

It’s not unusual to have deer wandering through here. In some years I’ve had fox, but when I have red fox, I never also see gray fox, and when I have gray fox, the reds aren’t anywhere to be found. The cats usually let me know when the fox are around. They must hear them, even when I can’t. They will suddenly race for a window and line up along it to look out. I see wild turkey around the cabin, but I don’t think I’ve ever had them right in this view.

I can almost hawkwatch from the back deck, as it’s not unusual for migrants to travel along the valley, though the trees interfere with my view. I’ve seen red-tailed hawk, raven, bald eagle, kestrel, both turkey and black vultures and sharp-shinned hawks from here. I’ve never seen merlin, peregrine falcons, goshawk or rough-legged hawks at Roundtop, but I’m ever hopeful.

September 9, 2005

One of the things I like best about living in the woods is how quiet it is here. Often, I grow so used to the quiet that the noise of a town, let alone that of a city, seems loud and intrusive to me when I’m in one. But just because it’s quiet living in the woods doesn’t mean that it is silent or even that all the noises I hear are natural ones.

Here’s what I can hear at the moment, before work on this early September morning:
Cicadas
The call of a distant great horned owl.
The twittering of a flying goldfinch or two.
The whine of a distant siren, probably somewhere over in the next township
The Canada geese fussing about something over on the new pond, about a quarter mile away.
A barking dog to the west of the cabin—the nearest I know of, and the nearest house, is about half a mile away.
The sound of a car out on the road, almost half a mile away.
The sound of an airplane. This is a sound that I am rarely far away from. Even when the woods are silent, the airplanes aren’t. Although I am about 15 air miles from the nearest and not large airport, planes overhead and planes on approach create a lot of background noise. During the days after 9/11, when the planes were still grounded, I was astonished just how much noise they added to my sounds because the absence of them was so noticeable.
A crow some distance away.

It’s not that there are no sounds to hear in the woods, it’s that I can hear more sounds that are further away because there’s fewer sounds nearby to overpower the more distant noises. Imagine trying to hear geese a quarter mile away when you’re in the city. There, you’d be lucky to hear a sound from the next street over.

Even here, with little but forest around me and the nearest road almost half a mile away from my front steps, about half of the sounds I could hear in the space of five minutes were manmade ones.

August 28, 2005

"Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves." - Frederick Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

New blog. Yeah, I can see the excitement in your face. Just what the world needs. So why am I blogging? Because I haven't yet read the kind of blog I want to write, and I'm tired of waiting for someone else to write it. At this point the only viable alternative is to write the ding-dang thing myself.

Now that that's covered, what *is* the kind of blog I'm going to write? Here's the deal. I live in a cabin in the woods--pretty deep in the forest--off the public road system anyway. And no, I'm not Alaskan (unfortunately) or even Canadian or Montanan (is that the word?) or one of those other outdoorsy states. I live on the east coast, surrounded by encroaching suburban ghettos and the thought processes of urbanization that go with it. But I don't live like that. I try to live simply and in tune with the eastern forests that surround me. I don't care if pointy shoes are "in" this fall (are they "in"?), and you'll not find a single piece of lime green anything in my closet. I don't have a lawn or a garage or cable TV or any of that stuff. So I'm going to blog about what it's like to live in an eastern forest at the beginning of the 21st Century. I'm going to talk about the change of seasons, what I see off my back deck and around the cabin, and I'm going to comment on the foibles of those who buy into and live that whole "normal" lifestyle kind of thing.

Who am I? Well, you've probably guessed I'm a woman because of that pointy shoe, lime green comment. Right you are. I'm single and live with three cats (2 Maine Coon and 1 foundling and a large dog). I like hiking, birdwatching, hawkwatching and backpacking, and I'm tired of keeping my mouth shut when I'm in "polite" society. The rest you'll find out as we go along.

Pictures? Sorry you asked. I don't own a digital camera. It's on my wish list, but most of my little extra cash goes towards things like the new tires I need on the truck and if I'm really lucky and thrifty the storm door I need on the front door. I promise I'll work on it. In the meantime, I'll work on scanning some non-digital images and see if I can add those. Don't expect them tomorrow.

What I will promise tomorrow is more meat to the blog and less introduction.