Tag Archives: winter

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Digging out.

34 Comments

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Yesterday? A 20 hour snow storm .

Today? We dig out.

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The first path is to rehang the bird feeders so our fine feathered friends can have a nosh.

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Then a bit of shoveling in front of the garage so the husband can access the snow blower.

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A quick 11 inch measurement…

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And then it’s time to blow.

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Two neighbors offered to plow our driveway but the husband is persnickety when it comes to clearing and prefers to do it himself.

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If you’ve ever lived in northern climates you know the end of the driveway after the plow goes by is always the worst.

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This was a pretty snowfall. Light enough to move easily but damp enough to coat the trees.

I love winter!

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But there are perils to the arithmetic when you have three vehicles and a two bay garage.

There’s a car under there…. somewhere.

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Then… and now.

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I know some people don’t like them, but I enjoy the memories that pop up on my Facebook feed showing the photos I posted on a particular day 5 or 10 years ago.

Today?

I saw this one from February 2013.

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Then –

The husband walking on the road in front of our house with a high backdrop of snow.

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This morning?

It looks a little different.

It makes me sad that real Maine winter storms seem to be a thing of the past.

😢

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Things you should never say to a Mainer.

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As you know, I live in Maine. Land of lobster, rugged rocky shores and sturdy, no nonsense, salt of the earth people. We’re generally laid back and slow to anger so when I saw this article the other day about things you should never say because they piss us off? I had to share a few…

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They’re not.

Trust me on this.

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This goes for all of you except rawgod. His snow storms and cold temps are epic.

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Sumner in Maine is tourist season and believe me, the locals don’t enjoy much about that. We may need your money, but we can do without your attitude and desire to have a Starbucks on every corner thank you very much.

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Warm winters? You can have them… I need snow.

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I really had to laugh at this one. Though that doesn’t look like my husband physically, they’re definitely brothers in spirit. But I have to disagree with the last sentence … there’s not much room left in our cellar.

🤣

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Brrr baby, brrr.

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After an unusually warm winter in Maine, cold weather has finally arrived.

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The arctic blast that’s been moving across country finally found us and with the strong winds? Even my menopausal hot flashing self has to put on a coat to go outside.

There are places in Maine that are seeing 60 below zero wind chills today but Mount Washington, New Hampshire? They just dropped to the coldest wind chill temperature ever recorded in the U.S….. 108 below! Now that’s winter.

But a little brisk, even for me.

While I woke up to no cold water in the kitchen, which is normal when you’re an idiot who forgot to let the faucet drip last night, this was a new phenomenon at Casa River –

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The house was cracking and banging last night with the frigid temps and we thought we heard one giant contraction when we were watching tv in the living room.

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So this was our bedroom picture window when we woke up.

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Seal clearly broken and a circle of solid ice.

It also happened on a side window.

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Looks like we’ll be doing some replacing this year.

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Some winter snaps.

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I’m so glad winter finally showed up. Cold temps and snow! It warms my little menopausal heart, as well as cools off the rest of me.

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There’s the husband shoveling a path to the bird feeders so our feathered friends don’t go hungry. He’s such a good egg.

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We use this table as snow gauge. It piles up so perfectly, how could we not?

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Once the snow caps these boxwood shrubs, the birds take cover underneath. It drives Lord Dudley Mountcatten insane.

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Sunrise over the backyard reveals the deer superhighway.

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We don’t have virgin fresh fallen snow for long.

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❤️ 🦌 ❤️

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Finally!

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This winter season started off with a whimper. No snow, warm temps and entirely too much rain. But the other day?

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The sky started looking angry… and before I blinked?

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We had our first few inches that stuck.

And yesterday?

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An all day storm that really racked up the white stuff. I loved it, but our backyard birds probably disagreed.

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Poor little things. Their feet have to be cold.

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It came down for a solid 13 hours and now it finally feels like winter!

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Guess we won’t be grilling out for a while.

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How much did we get? About a foot, which was enough for our farming neighbor to come plow us out with his tractor last night.

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I love our community.

I love our state.

I love winter!

❄️ ❤️ ❄️

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Snow much for that.

13 Comments

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Lord Dudley Mountcatten’s idea of playing in the snow usually looks like this:

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But after the first small dump of the season last week the husband took his highness out for a winter stroll.

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But as much as Dudley loves the fresh air and being outside, cold feet is not his thing.

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So he found the one bare patch of stone wall…

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Loved on his favorite rock….

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And carefully avoiding as much snow as he could, made his way back inside.

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Lord Mountcatten is a fair weather feline and was pleased when all the snow melted the next day.

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A beautiful way to wake up.

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We had a small amount of the white stuff last night and crazy as it sounds, it was the first to actually stick on the ground this winter.

In celebration of that I thought I would share a few glimpses out our windows this morning…. because sunrise over snow is pretty damned spectacular.

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After I posted a few of these to Facebook, I saw our farming neighbor had posted some as well. Here’s his shot, with our house and barn in the background.

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There’s no such thing as free money.

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The husband and I each received a check in the mail the other day.

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No, it’s not another round of Covid stimulus money. It’s a distribution from what is apparently a huge stash of surplus tax revenue.

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Every Maine resident received them and while extra money is always nice, it does make me wonder why there was such a huge surplus to begin with. Clearly our taxes are too high and to be honest… I’d much rather they reduce that burden then send everyone a check. Or they could fix the roads and bridges. Or build affordable housing. Or expand the heating oil assistance program. With the current price of fuel, winter will break a lot of people.

And if you’re wondering how that money will be used at Casa River?

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It will try to slake the never ending thirst of our twin oil tank beasts. And at just over $5 a gallon? Both checks combined won’t come anywhere near to filling them.

😫

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Of icicles and emus.

18 Comments

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A melting and refreezing winter means ice. And ice means icicles.

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I don’t know why, but this one downspout on the edge of our garage always puts on a show.

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A few years back we measured it at four and a half feet. Of course come spring, all that melting and freezing will yield this:

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And that’s not nearly as much fun.

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I still haven’t discovered where the local emus are hiding, but from the price of those eggs I’m thinking maybe we should start raising them. $15 a pop? Yikes!

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