I brought some corn for popping

I woke up to snow on Tuesday morning. I didn't realize it was snowing (even though I knew it was predicted) until I was outside with Tasha at 05h00. Then it hit me. Literally. As the sun came up I snapped a few photos from inside the house, then took the camera out on the morning walk. Tasha didn't seem at all curious about the snow, which until yesterday she had never seen.

Looking west out one of the skylights in the loft just before sunrise on Tuesday morning.

It was snowing pretty hard for a while, but it didn't really pile up. The roads were just wet. Most of the snow was on the grass, the shrubs, the grape vines, and the trees. Still, it was pretty. This morning it's colder, below freezing. The snow is sticking on the roads now and there are about two inches on the ground. And it's still falling, albeit very lightly.

The view from the front deck toward a neighbor's house as it starts to get lighter on Tuesday morning.

We get tend to get excited about snow because we don't get enough for it to be a pain in the butt. I don't even own a snow shovel. I do have an ice scraper for the windshield which comes in handy every now and then. The temperatures are expected to stay below freezing for the next couple of days. That means the water and melted snow will likely change to ice. I planned to go the pharmacy today, but I decided to go yesterday while the roads were ok rather than wait until the freezing weather ices them over. Now I can just hunker down in the house for a few days.

Tasha Tuesday

Here's a not very artsy shot of Tasha standing on the road through the vineyard. Our walks lately have been very wet and muddy. Until Monday, when everything froze. I like when it freezes because I don't have to wash and dry the dog after our walks. Tasha is also learning about ice. It's much harder to drink from the puddles when they're frozen.

Tasha has an appointment with the groomer at the end of the month.

She's doing fine while Ken is gone. During the day she spends part of her time down by the front door looking, waiting, for him to get home. To be honest, she does that even when he is home. On Sunday morning, she let me sleep until 05h30 before wanting to go outside. On Monday, however, it was 04h30. And did I mention it was below freezing?

The waking up process goes like this: first there's a barely audible whimper. Then maybe another, a little louder. When I don't respond, she goes into a low growl that gets a little louder each time. By then I'm moving under the covers. "In a few minutes..." I say. She doesn't buy it. If she's not already on the bed, she jumps up and starts pawing me. This can be painful if I don't cover my face in time. Then there's the shrill bark. I'm up. Socks, shirts, pants, and she nips at them as I put them on which is, in the groggy darkness of the pre-dawn hours, loads of fun. Then we head downstairs. Coat, hat, shoes, flashlight. Bark, bark, bark, until we're outside. I can't wait for summer.

It didn't work

A few weeks ago, a town crew came through the vineyard on the dirt road behind our hamlet to fill potholes. They do this every year. But this year it seemed to be a little early. At any rate, they took a good hour and a half to do the job. They filled all the big depressions where water collects. The gravel mix they use compresses when vehicle tires run over them. This is what they look like now:

Tasha doesn't care about potholes (except to drink from them). She does care about field mice in the tall grass.

I suppose that all the rain we had in January was just too much for them. Maybe there wasn't enough time for the vehicles that use the road to pack the gravel down, and it stayed loose while it rained. Most of the "filled" potholes along the road look just like these. I wonder if the crews will be back to do it again come spring?

By the way, a pothole in France is called un nid de poule, a hen's nest.

What is it?

At first glance, it looks like sap oozing from a tree trunk. But this is a vineyard post. Granted, it's made from wood, so sap could be oozing from it. But the color is so yellow, I wasn't sure what to make of it. And I don't see it anywhere else but on this one post. Maybe it's a fungus? I didn't touch it. But again, why only on this one post?

Whatever it is, it's kinda pretty.

Well, a little internet research indicates that this is, indeed, a fungus. It's tremella mesenterica, sometimes called yellow brain fungus or golden jelly fungus. The post might be one that the grower pounded in on the fly using an untreated log. It'll likely have to be replaced again soon. The Wikipedia article I read says that this fungus is easily confused with two others, so I don't really know which one it is. And I'm not really sure that I care...

Today is hunt day. However, I just read that the season for individual hunting (game birds, rabbits) closed on 31 January in our area. The organized hunting of foxes, deer, and boar continues through the end of February. We'll see what happens out there this morning.

Last night I watched Carrie Fisher's one-woman autobiographical show, an HBO special from 2010. There were quite a few chuckles, but I expected more. One thing that I really liked: she did her mother's voice to perfection.

Frosty

Friday morning saw the temperature at the house go down to about zero. That's freezing in celcius, or 32ºF. I'm sure it was a degree or two cooler out in the vineyards. Consequently, frost formed in the exposed areas, including on our roof. It's quite common and not at all unusual, except that it's been so warm for more than a month.

Our frosty roof on Friday morning at sunrise.

The central heating warms the house up in the morning until I get a fire going in the wood stove. First, of course, I have to take Tasha outside for a few minutes, feed her and Bert their breakfast, publish a blog post, clean the previous day's ashes out of the stove, take Tasha for her morning walk, then split logs and carry them into the house. Phew!

The sun rises today at about 08h15. We gain a little more daylight every day. Too bad another weather system will be moving through this afternoon. That means overcast. The periods of sun we had on Friday were wonderful.

It's so wet...

How wet is it? If I were Johnny Carson, I'd have a better comeback for that line. As it is, I have reality: it's so wet that mushrooms are sprouting in the lawn. These are likely not edible, and I have no intention of trying to find out. We racked up a total of 150mm (almost 6 inches) of rain during January, three times the monthly average for around here.

Soggy grass with mushrooms.

For the non-Americans out there (or the younger Americans), Johnny Carson was the host of the Tonight Show for thirty years between 1962 and 1992. He and his sidekick, Ed McMahon, did that bit (it's so X, how X is it?) for years. The Tonight Show is a late night talk show on American television. It's the longest running talk show in the world having debuted in 1954 with Jack Parr Steve Allen (Parr came after Allen) as host, continuing to the present version with Jimmy Fallon as host.

Liddle lamzy divey

One of the most common plants around us is ivy. It's everywhere, growing on the ground, on rocks, on walls, on trees. Every spring we go around the yard and cut the ivy off at the bottom of tree trunks to keep it from getting a stronghold and hurting the trees. No one does that out in the woods, of course, and the ivy does its thing.

A kiddley divey, too, wouldn't you?

The moon was full on Wednesday and this morning the sky is clear. That means two things. Thing one: the night is bright with moonlight. Thing two: it's cold out there. Not quite freezing yet, but much chillier than it has been. Lower lows are expected over the weekend.