Snows the Word - February 16,17,18th

Well, after all this time we finally got stopped at the driveway by a mountain (OK - a hill) of snow put there by the plow.  We have always worried that we would arrive in the dark, in the cold and have to dig out the driveway and that's what happened.
There was no where for the dogs to go, so I sat in the truck with the headlights on while Paul used the snow shovel to dig out a track for us to get through.  When we pulled into the driveway, we realized the dogs still couldn't get to the cottage so Paul had to dig a path for them over the deck and around to the door.  Ah... the problems of having dogs with short legs!

Unfortunately during all of this manual labour, the snow blower was in the shed with no gas in it - the gas was in the tractor shed with the lock frozen shut!!

The next morning, we woke up to a winter wonderland.  I think the snow was probably the deepest that it has been since we owned the place.  Paul used the snow shoes to create a path and was luckily able to unfreeze the shed lock to get the gas for the snow blower. He then set about creating a space for my dads truck since they had planned to come by for lunch on their way to Woodstock.

After the bird feeders got replenished, the birds came out in full force - well, all except the woodpecker, who came to see what was in the suet feeder before we got it filled, I guess he got his nose (I mean beak) out of joint, because we never saw him (or other woodpeckers) all weekend!! (See my bird page for a discussion of types of suet and who likes what). I think that left the door open for the whole flock of blue jays - I have never seen so many at once, and witnessed the secret (to us) pecking order in play.  I need to find out the who and why of which jay is king of the feeder. 

Anyway.... Mom and Dad Ward arrived right around noon and I was just in the middle of making a pot of cauliflower soup for lunch. I forgot again that I need to get a hand blender for the cottage - its hard to keep track of which item is where, home or cottage - so had to puree the soup with a wire potato masher.  Lunch consisted of the cauliflower soup and cheese buns with a little thinly sliced turkey inside.  Mom brought some cinnamon coffee cake that we polished off with our tea.

Before they got on their way we took a little walk - even walking in the previous footsteps it was a good little workout.

I have to mention that the game camera is still a bust!  The back-story is that Paul had given me a game camera (a camera that hunters use to track where the game is!!) for my birthday (I know how romantic right!!).  Most of you know that I always complain that even though we see lots of 'signs' of animals at the property, I have never seen anything more than a mole and a snapping turtle.  Paul has seen deer and a coyote (UP CLOSE) but not me!
So every time we see a trail of animal tracks we attach the camera on a tree pointing toward the tracks. This camera snaps pictures based on movement .....so we now have about 8000 pictures and NO ANIMALS!!!!!!!!  I don't know whether its working properly, or what but how disappointing.  When we first put it up and left it for the week, we would come back on the next weekend and be so excited to find out what was on it...not so much anymore!

The only time we have had any success was when I had the brilliant idea of mounting it 'inside' the tray bird feeder.  We ended up with a ton of pictures and some are pretty hilarious because the birds are actually looking at the camera - I don't know if it is because they can hear it or whether it is just a strange entity in their space - the blue jays especially like checking it out!

After our company headed off to Woodstock, we headed into town to grab some wine and check out the types of suet at Home Hardware.  The temperature was still -10 degrees even though we were lucky to have sunshine.  When we got back Paul decided to try out his old cross country ski's (mine went off in a garage sale and the boots disintegrated... that's how old they were).  I guess it was pretty hard going without a groomed trail!  He thinks he only needs to have wider ski's.  

Sunday, I tried out the snow shoes and liked them quite a bit. They don't keep you up quite as high as I had anticipated but you can certainly move quite a bit faster in deep snow.

I found some of my old notes from March 2011.  That year, the ice broke on March 13th with lots of flooding.  So it is interesting that our ice already broke this year on February 5th with violent floods - I sure hope that doesn't mean it will freeze again and flood again, although we did miss the breaking up of the ice - which is a big event for river people!!

River breaking up March 2011

Sunday night we decided that we would go home early Monday to spend "family day" at home, as both of the kids were there.  Emily's boyfriend Chris was also in Burlington, so we headed home at about 3:00 pm for a nice family dinner and games night.

Snowy scenes from 'Our River Place'