Red-tailed Hawk!

Yesterday dawned bright and sunny and we decided early to go out for lunch.  As usual our plans morphed as we headed out to drive to Kettles near Chatsworth.  So we by-passed the restaurant and headed around the by-pass for Owen Sound instead, out into Kemble Township looking for more of an adventure.  We ended up at the Kemble Womens Institute Lookout over-looking a brilliant blue Georgian Bay, a suitable destination.

Along the way we were surprised to see a Red-tailed Hawk simply sitting in a snowy field not far from the road.  We've never seen one this close before, and rarely sitting on the ground.

It rose to an alert position and appeared to be listening to something under the snow, perhaps a Meadow Vole.

Suddenly it spread its wings and pounced forward, giving us a glimpse of the reddish feathers in its tail.

Don't know if it caught something or not, but it sat for a moment looking around, looked right at us and abruptly flew away, possibly with a small mammal for lunch in its claws.

Hard to crop the photos too much with an iphone camera, but this was definitely one for the books!

The Sunrise Moves North

It's a bright beautiful sunny day and we're going out for a drive and lunch later on.  But dreaming up things to post about I went back and checked this date in earlier years.  My post of March 7th, 2015 struck me as interesting, because I had noticed the bright sun shining in the bedroom window again this morning and creeping steadily across the wall.  Earlier in the winter it rises too far south and is hidden by big Spruce trees.

At our former house in the valley I habitually took pictures out the living room window as I do now, but then I was facing southeast, and in the days before caregivers, was usually up for the sunrise.  This is close to the winter solstice, the furthest south the sun broke over the horizon.

Pay attention to the larger trees in the fencerow through this series of pictures.  This is mid-January.

Mid-February.

Late February.

March 6th - yesterday.  The seasons change relentlessly, even if there's still snow and cold.  And I'm looking forward to it more than ever!

This is NOT today; this is 2015, but I thought I'd share it anyway.  This year, 2020, has been the winter that wasn't.  I don't think the temperature ever dropped much more than a degree or two below -20°.  In most earlier years at least a few days fell below -30°.  I wonder how many bugs that we don't like didn't get killed off this winter.

Maple Syrup Season!

One of my all-time favourite seasons is upon us, the maple sap is running and it's time to make maple syrup.  I know from my contacts in the community that activity has started in the maple sugar bushes around Grey County and the next few weeks will be busy in the sugar shacks.

 It's the end product that counts of course, and we love our maple syrup.

But if you visit a maple syrup operation during the boiling time, it's the atmosphere in the sugar shack that's special, with its humidity and its sweet smell.  On the Kemble Maple Syrup Tour at the end of the season we've visited all size operations, from enormous gleaming stainless steel evaporator to a pan over an outdoor wood stove.  This is a fairly large one.

A sunny day in a maple sugar bush is just as special.  Nowadays modern operations use collecting tubes and reverse-osmosis pumps which save enormously on labour.  But they do make walking through the woods difficult!

But smaller family operations still hang the buckets on trees.  We made our own syrup for several years, decades ago now, using an old stove in the garage.  You learn quickly how few seconds there are between ideal syrup and a burnt pot!

These photos are from the first time we went on the Kemble Maple Syrup Tour, in 2015.  I hope we'll get there again; there's at least one farm that's wheelchair accessible.  And the church that sponsors it serves an amazing pancake lunch with plenty of maple syrup!

Sunny Breaks

We're getting a lot of nice sunny breaks, or sunny mornings with bright blue skies and that bright early spring sunshine.  It makes a big difference after a winter with a lot of dull grey days and it seems typical of early March.

It's certainly nice looking out the back window with its usual view and seeing the bright blue skies.  This was this morning, though it's clouded over now.

The sun slowly creeps in the bedroom window in the morning, so nice to wake up to!

I've even been sitting out on the front sidewalk for some sun and fresh air most days.

The Snow Isn't Melting, It's 'Sublimating'!

I've watched the snow would disappear at this time of year for years. The past two years I've had lots of time sitting in front of the window to just watch.   At the moment it's disappearing steadily as we have day after day that creeps up above the freezing line.

We all say the snow is 'melting', but in fact I hardly ever see it melting on the surface.  If there's a creek or ditch nearby you might see the snow melt along the edge and run away in a trickle, but I don't see this when I look out the window.  I still just see a sheet of white, although it's getting thinner and thinner.   So I've been trying to educate myself and I start from the fact that 'melting' is the change from a solid state (snow) to a liquid state (water).

In fact much of the snow doesn't disappear this way, it vanishes directly into the atmosphere, changing from a solid state (snow) to a gaseous state (water vapour) without ever becoming liquid.  You can't see this happening, but you can see that the snow is disappearing steadily, and sometimes fast depending on the sunshine and temperatures.  The snowpack gets thinner and thinner; green patches of grass appear, and the sidewalks are bare.  This, I've learned is actually the process of 'sublimation' a word that we don't use often, but we should use instead of saying that the snow is 'melting'.

The snow is certainly sublimating around here these days.  The resulting water vapour has even led to foggy mornings and cancelled school buses.

As I explore the process further though, I learn that the snow actually is melting at the same time.  It's melting at the level of individual snow crystals, and the water is trickling down through the snowpack to recharge the groundwater.  Maybe you could see this if you got out on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass, but I certainly don't see it.

As both these processes happen the entire structure of the snowpack changes.  Snow crystals may start out as light and fluffy, but as they melt or partially melt they recrystallize in the lower temperatures overnight and end up smaller, icier and more densely packed.  Squirrels walk across the surface of this snowpack instead of disappearing in the white fluff.  I've experienced a time or two when I could walk across the surface of the snow without breaking through, abandoned my snowshoes, and just walked on foot.

So when we talk of snow 'melting', it's actually disappearing in both directions, 'melting' downwards into the ground, and 'sublimating' upwards into the atmosphere.  You don't actually see much of either process happening, but my impression is that more disappears into the atmosphere than melts into the groundwater. 

What we need is a new word to express both of these processes happening at the same time.  Any suggestions?

Tulips

The Tulips friends brought over a week ago Saturday are still providing a beautiful splash of colour in the house.  They're fading, but just slowly.

Meanwhile, the snow is steadily vanishing, even though we had so much by Friday that it still looks like winter outside.

Mrs. F.G. finally had a repairman in today to fix the vibration in her big new (and expensive) quilting machine this morning.  I'm hoping she'll have a chance to get back into quilting more now.  We're off to Owen Sound for physio later, and probably buying her a new ipad, since her own, even though successfully restored last week, is still not working correctly.  And we have to have a way of staying up-to-date on the coronavirus and American politics.  Big day in the U.S.A. today!

And speaking of coronavirus, I think people are over-reacting; just wash your hands as you should be doing anyway!

Stuck!

Yesterday I got stuck in the snow trying to drive 50 feet from the car to the church door!

The parking lot had been cleared and the sidewalk had been shoveled, but there was a thin 2 inch layer of hard packed snow left behind.  You may not have experienced this if you haven't lived in this climate, but it can be hard to walk through or even drive through it.   My 300 pound wheelchair churned right through it, spinning on the icy sidewalk underneath.

My wheelchair veered to the right and immediately I was headed for a snowbank. I went back-and-forth but my wheels were just spinning in the 2 inches of hard packed snow.

Another churchgoer thankfully gave me a slight push  and I was able to turn myself forward and head for the door. That's the first time that we've experienced this sort of problem and it was one I didn't expect. You always have to watch out for the winter conditions that interfere with a powered wheelchair!