Odd collection

I've been enjoying some very nice late winter sunshine, and thought I would share these with you. As you can see, we have mud!

Snow!

This February had been fairly dry. In the mountains, we did have a few snowy days, but it was the kind where it would snow, but wouldn't accumulate. The end of January gave us a rainstorm, which had cut our snowpack by half. That ended last week. It's still snowing. Higher up in the mountains, they got a couple of feet, down closer to town, we got about a foot .

There is a certain beauty about a New England winter. You suffer through some hard times and you get rewarded with magic.

Iowa Bob's work.

"the discards...

Portrait of a friendship.

Friendships enrich and nourish us. We all know that. Some friendships last for years,lifetimes really, or can be short lived. A good friend of mine, one I have known since the third grade. He's more like a brother. But he lives in Iowa.

He's surrounded by corn and flat land. It's a long way from New Jersey ,where we both are from and Massachusetts ,where he lived before Iowa. I shall call him for the purposes of this post as

"Iowa Bob".

Iowa Bob is an artist. He uses too much pastel colors, used to be really good at drawing, and fancies him as an en plein air painter. Which means if he can drive his car to the spot, he won't paint. So he sits in Iowa dreaming of dreamy landscapes, and trying to paint dreamy landscapes.

This is all a good natured ribbing. His work is beautiful, and is a joy to see. But I have to be hard on him. Demoralize, tear down his view of himself. Push him to try hard. (and believe me Rob, you need to try harder, your work is lacking any emotion, you better go back to generic food labels).

I could needle him about Big Foot and ivory-billed woodpeckers being one and the same. Just push him a little further. It's what I do for him.

He really should give up, gather his family around and curl into a fetal ball and quietly sob. And squeal like a pig, little man.

I have a collection of his discards. He knows the ones, the ones he left at my house, hoping they would never resurface. Perhaps I'll post them here as a slideshow. Yes, perhaps...

Red fox

If you look out your windows long enough and keep your camera put away, you are bound to see something. So I looked out the back window and saw a fox. My camera was up stairs in a pack. Always happens. I see something from the house and the camera is another part.

I made record time upstairs, mounted the appropriate lens and looked out the window. Luck was with me, the fox was still there,stalking some snow buntings.

Friday morning breakout

I got out for a little while this morning, and headed out towards Cupsuptic Lake on my skis.

Peacefully quite, save for the couple of ravens calling in the distance.

Home ground.

Paying attention to home. It's something everybody should do. Cycles become apparent,neighborhood critters become known, and you find your sense of place.

To the south of my home is a grove of trees,mostly white birch, with some white spruce,balsam fir, northern white cedar, red maple,a couple white pine,some aspen and one red pine. On the west side is a white pine and 2 white birch. In a cone from that white pine traveling northeast, you will find some white pine seedlings spaced throughout the field. The field ,in fact all the fields were mown prior to my arrival. I want to see what, and how they grow. I also have a couple of apple trees in the field.

Now in the grove, (locally called the Buffalo,) I have a bird feeder and the past 2 winters. red squirrels would travel along the roads from woods to the Buffalo and visit the feeder. Some went as far as to move into a couple of the birches ,but just for the winter. This year I haven't seen a squirrel, so knowing that reds have a cycle, we must be at the bottom of their population. I have also noticed an increase in red fox and coyote tracks around here.

It's been snowing here the past 3 days or so. I lost track, it doesn't seem to matter, but right now, this very instant, the sun is coming out. Gotta go!