Early morning frost

Roundtop has had both frosts and freezes this fall, but this morning was the first hard frost where I could get a photo.  Even though the temperature was a chilly 27 for a few minutes this morning, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, the warmup began.  Now, just 3 hours after the early morning frost, the temperature is already up to 50, and the frost is long gone. The photos are all that is left.

I like the shadow of the rising sun’s rays on the oak leaf.  You just know that frost will be gone momentarily.  The photo captures the coming warmth of the day in the sun shadows while still showing the result of a cool night. Most of the leaves are down now.  The few that are left are no longer even bronze but are more like a deep copper.  The color is not much different than the color of the bark of the trees, so the forest is nearly monochromatic today.  Even so, I find this a pretty time of year. The long vistas are back.  I can see the mountain to the west, the pond to the north.  I can even monitor the chickens’ whereabouts instead of just hearing their scratching.

I can see the sky again, and monitor the coming rain without having to leave the cabin to find a patch of open sky.  Already the air has a chill, nearly raw feel to it.  I was forced to clear as many leaves off the decks that I can, to avoid a sodden mess when the rain comes.  Likely, my work will only be partly successful, as more leaves are already coming down.  I hope the most of them are removed, but one good wind gust before the rain will be enough to negate my work. 

Freezing water

I ended up with a frozen water pipe last evening.  A combination of factors all came together at the same time.  The first was that I wasn’t paying attention to the wind direction yesterday.  The wind was from the WSW and was sometimes as high was 20 mph.  There’s something about that wind direction that has caused me problems for years. I guess that wind hits the back edge of the cabin where the water comes into the house just so.  Instead of paying attention to the wind, I was happy to see the temperature rising again, though it still hasn’t gotten above 20 degrees.

The second thing that happened to cause the problem was that my heat tape quit working, which I hadn’t realized. I hadn’t been into the utility basement since the temperature took its nosedive.  I did check it before the nosedive, but not since.  I’m going to have to get that taken care of.

I do let the faucets drip during the coldest weather, but I’d forgotten to turn one of them to drip, and at least one of the others wasn’t dripping very much.

So there I was just after dark last evening with my hair dryer in hand, running the dryer over the pipe where it’s been known to freeze in the past. In my case, the problematic spot is around bends in the pipe, down near the floor of the basement.  I was lucky this time.  It only took about 10 minutes of work to unfreeze the pipes, so they can’t have been frozen for too long.

Today, all faucets are dripping again.  The best news of all is that tomorrow the temperature will finally rise above freezing for the first time in almost two weeks.  That will make the chickens happy and me too.