What a Time

What a time I had at Mammoth.  The scenery and vistas and wild mountain splendor of the Sierra Nevadas was awesome, and the time with both boys was priceless.  I skied pretty well!

Disappearance

Snowing again, only a few inches this time.  Temps are in the 30s.

The Black eyed Susans have finally disappeared.  Only one last seed head barely peeks above the level of the snow.  The heated birdbath creates its own salvation in a hole in the snow cover.

Tomorrow I leave for California and a long weekend skiing at Mammoth with Tom and Greg.  The weather should clear and I should be able to get out.  Can't wait!

Crystal Scenes

Minus 1 degree when I got up this morning, but with the bright sun today it will get into the low 30s.

Everything outside was crystal coated in the bitter cold.  Very pretty.

 

 

I skiied yesterday at Sundown, but didn't dress warmly enough and got really cold.  This has been quite a winter so far.  The Black eyed Susans are just about completely buried, with only a few seedheads peeking above the snow.  The birdbath is buried.

Ice dams and icicles are forming everywhere, and impossible to keep clear.  The news is full of roof collapses all over the state.

And more snow / sleet coming tomorrow!  Can it be?

Relax

Icy rain today on top of several more inches of snow yesterday.  In the 20s, gloomy and bleak.

Relax.

Real Gardening

Sunny and in the 20s today.

I actually did real hands-and-knees gardening today, with pruners in hand!  I decided all the overwintering plants on the porch needed haircuts.

So I cut back the dried stems of the butterfly bush and all the sages (the Lady in Red coccinea and the black and blue sages had actually bloomed all winter).   I chopped back the begonias in the black troughs, which were finally mushy.  I was surprised at how the gaura is green and seems to be thriving.  The Angelina sedum is green and growing too.

And the soapwort in the containers seemed to still be growing, but I did cut that back.  The rosemary is looking good.

And when it was all done, I watered.  Everything was quite dry. Although most plants are dormant, they do need water in winter, just as they would get from winter snowmelt outside.  The porch is staying in the 20s at night, and up into the 40s in daytime.

It all felt so good: trimming, cutting back, watering, snipping and generally doing real gardening.  And everything looks a little neater now, ready for spring to come someday.

But in spite of doing some real gardening today, I still can't get out the back door:

Snow Damage

In the 20s today, with some sun.  No wind.

I made an attempt to go out in the yard and try to dig the evergreens out of the deep snow that is weighting down the branches.  The fir by the front door has its lower branches bent down under a weight I can't shovel.  The Austrian pines out back are weighted down.

The hemlock looks stripped, with its branches all pulled down.

The little Swiss Stone Pine looks ridiculous, peeking up out of the snow.

So I put on my ski pants, got a shovel and plunged into the snow at the edge of the driveway.  It was scary.  I sank into snow up to mid thigh.  I later measured: that's 28 inches. It is not light enough to swish through, there is a crusty hard layer about a foot down, which is what is trapping the evergreen branches and pinning them so firmly to the ground.  It trapped me in each step, and I had to pull my leg entirely out of the snow, lifting it 28 inches to place the next step.  It was truly a feeling of being trapped!

I made it out to the hemlock, but it took a lot of effort, raising each foot so high and plunging back down.  I finally was able to dig down and free some of the snow and ice bound branches.

But I fear I did more damage.  Hemlock sprigs were torn off and ripped up with each shovel thrust.  There was no way I could avoid stripping some of the branches.

The little Swiss Stone Pine was freed from snow a little more easily.  It's smaller than the hemlock, and not as wispy.

But after that, I struggled back in.  Just moving in that grasping sucking snow, up to my thighs was exhausting, and it really did give me a scary feeling of being helplessly trapped.  And I think I was doing more damage than if I left the limbs pinned under all that weight.  I didn't even try to get to the Austrian pines or the spruces or the poor fir tree by the front door.

What  a winter.

Pristine

Another foot of snow, maybe more, last night.  Abundant sunshine this morning, and all looks pristine and virginal.  The deer can't get out, nor any other creature, so I am not seeing tracks all over the yard.

The sign under the half buried paperbark maple should say "chill" rather than "relax".

Is it over yet?  Is it gone?  The snow?

there is a 3 foot high sundial somewhere in front of the birch

the heated birdbath, 3 feet high, is almost gone

I'd go out, but I can't open the door

Advancing . . . .

. . . . and retreating

Japanese maple in snow.  How zen like.

Fun with Google Maps

Snowing again, but not so cold.  Last night was about 10 degrees, but today is in the 30s.

What to do on a snowy house bound day in winter?  Play with Google maps.

I got an overhead view of our lot complete with landscaping from last summer (during the worst of the heat and drought in July, so the grass and weeds look awful).  And I got a view of the actual lot lines in the same scale and overlaid the two screenshots in Picasa.

The superimposed picture, with the lot lines highlighted in blue, shows where all of the major gardens and trees are.... and some are outside the lot boundaries, as I knew they were.  Click the photo to enlarge.

I knew the spruce berm was angled differently than the lot line and the right side of it fell outside the boundary, which the map shows.

But I was surprised that the whole line of buckeyes at the back are over the line.  The hemlock and bayberry at the back of Meadow's Edge are over the line.  The deepest part of the V behind the house comes to a point just behind the end of the dry creek bed.

Pretty amazing that you can get this level of aerial detail!

And It Snows

Not so cold, in the single digits overnight, but up into the 20s today.

And still it snows.

And Colder

It just keeps going on.  Colder and colder. It was -8.6 degrees at 5:45 this morning.  Eight below!! We haven't had a winter like this in years.  It's well within our zone 5 limits, but we just haven't seen such frigid temps for so many days in a long time.

My hope is that this will knock down the deer tick populations for next summer.

While it's below zero (and it was windy yesterday, creating a special kind of misery), the snow cover is so deep that plants are snugged away, sleeping comfortably and well protected.  An ideal situation for this kind of winter.

In these cold nights, the porch stays in the mid 20s.  Freezing, but not close to zero.  The plants that I have stored there should be able to take these temperatures, out of any winter wind.