Well, it’s certainly snowing and blowing enthusiastically, out there!
That hasn’t stopped the birds from enjoying the suet feeder.
The driveway is so white right now, it’s messing with the camera’s ability to “see” it, making for some interesting rings of colours on there.
I took this screencap of the weather app on my desktop, just minutes ago. According to this, the worst is still yet to come. It is still conflicting with what’s showing on the weather radar.
Well, it will be what it will be. My main concern is with the high winds, of course. When this is over, we’ll have to do a walk-about to see if any more dead trees have come down, or what branches have fallen.
From the looks of the weather radar, the most severe conditions are hitting the US, as the system sweeps across the Eastern states. I hope those of you living in those states are keeping safe!
While it’s snowing and blowing, we got some bread baking done.
A two-loaf recipe was divided into four small loaves. The prettiest one will be for our Easter basket.
Since I was baking bread anyhow, I made a batch of oatmeal bread, also divided into four small loaves instead of two regular loaves. That way, we get a loaf each. :-D
I’m looking forward to having one of them with a big bowl of chili, once it cools down enough. :-)
While doing my morning rounds, I walked through the feeding station a couple of times before I noticed.
Something was missing.
The suet feeder was gone.
I spent some time walking around, trying to find it, but a dark green wire cage on mud isn’t exactly easy to see.
It wasn’t until I paused to take this photo that I spotted the basket in the background. Minus the chain. A bit more searching, and I found that, too. The white arrows in the photo show where they are. They were actually easier to see from the side like this, than from directly above!
Something yanked it down with a fair bit of force! I was able to bend it back again, though.
The feeder was almost empty last night. Whatever did this may have been after the last little bit.
In other things…
The temperatures were below freezing when I headed out this morning, with the sun room at 5C/41F. The onion and shallot seedlings seem to be fine, as much as I can tell. They’re not doing very well to start, so we’ll see. I still left the lights on for what little warmth they can give. I should find a small thermometer that I can put in the shelf to better monitor that space.
Later this afternoon, though, I glanced into the sun room, and the thermometer on the wall was reading about 25C/77F! That’s just too much, so I opened up the inner door to outside, allowing air flow through the screen on the outer door. It’s only open a few inches, but that would be enough. The lights got turned off, too, of course.
Then I chased away the skunk that was in the kibble house.
*sigh*
The outside cats were happy to see me this morning, as there was no kibble at all left.
Gee. I wonder what could be eating it all?
Cats…
skunks…
deer…
One thing about the cooler temperatures – it’s a lot less muddy around the kibble house!
I counted 14 cats in total, this morning. I’m happy to say that Ghost Baby seems to be more accepting of human presence. While I was putting food in the tray outside the kibble house, she actually came close enough that I could have reached out and touched her!
Not that I tried. Too soon for that!
Among the things on the to-do list this morning was to get the burn barrel going again. Even in the outer yard, things are less muddy. Even the “lake” around the garage had receded a bit. The moisture is actually being absorbed by the ground, which is exactly what we need.
We’re at 5C/41F as I write this, which is warmer than predicted. The “real feel” is supposedly 3C/37F, but while I was outside, chasing off the skunk, it felt a lot warmer. That side of the house is sheltered from the current wind direction. The next couple of days are supposed to get even warmer – but a week from now, we’re supposed to get a high of -5C/23F, with “isolated flurries”! We’re supposed to have highs of 0C/32F over Easter weekend.
But if I look at another weather app, which gets its data from a different station, we’re supposed to have a high of -6C/21F on Holy Saturday and -5C/23F on Easter Sunday. The 30 year historical average for Easter Sunday is 10C/50F.
But I can’t complain. The record low for Easter Sunday is -24C/-11F, set in 2014. The record high is 20C/68F, set in 2005.
We are, if nothing else, a region of extremes when it comes to temperatures!
I think I’ll take our current, moderate conditions we’re having, thankyouverymuch!
Since we’ve unplugged the sump pump, I’ve been checking the old basement regularly. It’s dry, and the sump pump reservoir’s level doesn’t seem to have changed.
We’ve had some minor plumbing issues. When I checked the floor drain, it didn’t have any water in it at all, but I ran the hose through to the septic tank, anyhow.
Or tried to.
That bottleneck was clogged again.
It took a while, but I was able to get the hose through and washed the pipe out as best I could, but we’re going to have to get a plumber back to find out what’s going on. Judging by how much of the hose is through before I hit the bottleneck, I’d say it’s located outside of the basement, between the house and the tank. At that point, it may even be different pipe. The pipe in the concrete is cast iron, but at some point, it switches to PVC. I don’t know where, though. Perhaps it is at the join, that this problem is happening?
I don’t know, but I think we’ll be running the hose through every couple of weeks, rather than once a month, as I’d originally planned.
I sometimes feel like we’re fighting a losing battle, here.
With the wind knocking over the bird feeder so often, the hanging feeders were getting pretty damaged. So the last time it happened, I decided it was a good time to get a suet feeder for the winter.
I think it’s going over rather well, with the chickadees!
The Re-Farmer 