Over the weekend, it was light jacket warm for walks in the National Forest at the Pond and up at the Conservancy.
Our mountain is an alluvial field from the last ice age and there are many boulder fields. Farms that grow hay and corn for their cattle have had to clear rocks and boulders to be able to cultivate. On some trails, you may walk through wooded sections with few visible rocks then go through a boulder field. In the boulder fields you often see a tree that looks like it is eating a rock, a tree that has come up under the edge of a boulder and then grown around it. They fascinate me as a biologist.
After getting home from our hike yesterday, it was warm enough to sit on the back deck and shell the dried beans saved for seed to be used in the spring garden.
Many of the pods were empty or held only a couple of seed, some full with 8 or more seed, plenty for two plantings in our garden and granddaughter’s garden as well.
As the temperature dropped overnight, it rained and rained. The culvert still has not been opened by VDOT, so the driveway took another hit. I refuse to grade the driveway again until the culvert is opened as it will be futile. The high for today occurred just after midnight and has fallen all day. As the rain ended, the wind picked up and has ripped at the house all day. The chickens came out in the rain this morning, looked for scratch and retired back into the coop for the rest of the day. We are facing a frigid night and a winter storm on Wednesday. Winter storm = freezing rain, snow, sleet, ice (they don’t know), it is a safe term to use in winter when it is going to precipitate and be cold. The prediction currently is 2 to 7 inches of snow with several tenths of an inch of ice. We will just hunker down and build fires in the woodstove and fireplace to help keep the house warm and hope the ice doesn’t take the power out. This early in the season, whatever falls won’t last more than a day or so before it is melted. About a dozen years ago, we got 22″ of snow on the last day of school before winter break and it wasn’t gone when we got another 18″ about a week later. That is not typical here, especially that early in the winter.
Hopefully, we are going to have a socially distanced meet up on the weekend with Son 1 and our grandson, maybe DIL if she isn’t working and hand off soap I have made for them to use as gifts and their Christmas gifts as they won’t be spending this Christmas with us.
The seed catalogs have begun to arrive. My go to one, the first to arrive. Granddaughter and daughter have been tasked with deciding what they want to plant this year so that I can begin planning for the two gardens and getting any additional seed that I haven’t saved from last year. Maybe by garden time, we will have been able to get COVID vaccines and I will be able to help or at least visit her garden. Garden catalogs make for great winter reading and dreaming about the goodies that will be grown for the next year. Now it is time to hibernate and listen to the wind howl.