More Rain, More Baking, and More Bad Bugs

Ghirardelli dark chocolate chip mix skillet cookie

On Friday, I decided that Saturday would be pizza day. And whenever I make pizza, I make brownies or cookie bars for dessert. My arthritis now affects my baking, so I am taste testing prepared mixes. I got a bunch of Ghirardelli mixes and tried the chocolate chip cookie mix but baked it in a skillet (which relieves me of much standing time on the knees). It was such a success! I love the mix and I can't do better from scratch. There is no boxed mix taste, either. 

I baked Saturday even though the weather was great. I got psyched out by bad bugs on Friday—by ticks again. I hate ticks and this year the tick problem is unbelievable. Lucy, despite her flea and tick treatments, brings in one live tick a day. In the past, it has only been one live tick per season. I need to photograph each one in order to identify the species. Fortunately, Lucy has only had one embedded in her skin and she was fantastic when I took it off under the new guidelines.  Thankfully, all of the ticks have been American dog ticks; not the deer ticks with Lyme disease.

Friday night, after our short bug walk in the gorgeous weather, I found a tick crawling up my leg. That was the final straw for me. Short of Lucy and I dressing in hazmat suits, I decided to never go outside again. Ticks give me bad dreams for nights and creepy crawly skin for days.

Soon after I found the tick, Lucy came in with another deer fly riding on her muzzle. Every year, the time after black flies is deer fly time and they love Lucy's muzzle. She seldom notices them until they bite and leave her with a muzzle dotted with red splotches of blood. One deer fly bite gives me real itches for days.

American dog tick

Deer fly

And that is why I stayed in and baked instead of bug hunting.

Next was the pizza. I decided to try Gemma Stafford's dough and sauce.  The dough was easy to do but somehow resulted in a leathery crust. It was such a disappointment. I don't know what I did wrong. The sauce had the exact taste that I wanted, but was much too salty. I can easily adjust that next time. I tossed out the pizza, and it is expensive to make. It was supposed to be at least two days of meals, including breakfast. I love pizza for breakfast. 

While setting my Google Nest hub display to time the rising for the pizza dough, I found you can do this . . . 

00:17

You get a different show for each different item you ask it to time.  "OK, Google, set the bread timer for 2 hours" gives you a fun bread display.  I smiled when the timer ended:

00:06

Now it is Sunday.

Flash flood warnings, flash flood watches, hazardous weather alerts

The expected rainfall today only is four inches. That is not good. Amy and I are so bored at this point with our indoor lives that we are sending each other rain videos. This is her slow-motion rain drop video.

00:35

I made six videos of the rain from the garage. Lucy won't go out in the rain from the back door but she will from the garage. All of the noise you hear is pure rainfall. It was very, very heavy. I combined all six videos to one video. 

1:28

Being an accomplished and talented obsessive worrier, I am now more concerned about my fairly new and very expensive leach field flooding than I am about flash floods or washed out roads. Perhaps life never will be normal again.

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After the Cold

A wonderful sight: two huge ravens spotted on Thursday before the bad weather.

I've been so tired since the arctic air left here. Friday night was awful. Even though I raised the thermostat, the temperatures in the house simply fell and got me very nervous. How far would it fall? Despite setting the thermostat at 70°F, the house finally bottomed out at 60°F. That is what happens with terrific winds.

We could not sleep upstairs Friday night because the wind had lowered the room temperature to about 40°F. I pulled the cushions off of the couch downstairs and made a bed wide enough for me, Lucy, and the cats. Then I fell on both arthritic knees and my walker flipped over. But I righted myself and got settled in. Lucy, though, was extremely tense because of the fall and because we were not in bed and she didn't think she could be touching my body all night as she does.

I made extra room for her, she then settled in, and heaved a tremendous sigh of doggie relief and finally relaxed. Feeling her body relax like that almost made me cry. We actually slept late. The cold air eased all day on Saturday despite some huge wind chills, and finally by nightfall it was all over.

The arctic air, in only 2 days, took 1/4 of my fuel.

Amy managed to get to the house Saturday afternoon. It was safe to travel then. I needed her help because my knees were so swollen from the fall. It was wonderful to have her and her puppy Dori here. The weather had made me feel cut off from the world and living like a squatter. I immediately began making bread.

Salt-encrusted car

Because of the new furnace though, I survived the weather well. Back at school on Monday, I heard of frozen and exploded pipes, colder houses, no sleeping, and a dog who collapsed outside because she insisted on going outside to the bathroom and not have an accident in the house. But the owner got her dog in and sat with her the rest of the day with blankets, so it ended well. She never anticipated that the dog would collapse. I never would have, either. Lucy held it in all day Friday and Saturday and did her business within three minutes the two times she demanded to go. She is also older than the unfortunate dog, and therefore, wiser.

Tuesday morning we returned to very cold air.
But the temperature rose all day to just above freezing.

This week is recovery week. Plumbers and heating technicians are busy. I hope that -50°F wind chills never happen again. The sap will begin rising in the maples in March. The chickadees will begin to sing soon, the owls will begin to hoot, and the crows will return from the villages. Those are my signs of spring coming.

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The Cold

      

4 PM Feb. 3, 2023

It's going to get a lot colder tonight. They predict -23°F with a windchill of -50°F overnight. I have never experienced this before. I have seen it colder, have seen -30°F actual temperature at the house. But not this windchill. They say it is a once in a generation occurrence. Schools are closed. Nobody is driving by on the road.

As the day has gone on, the air has gotten colder from a high of +11°F at 5 AM to this. The wind has gotten stronger, also. I have been watching the trees leaning in the wind and the snow blowing through the air.

The air in the house is too dry. The furnace has not stopped burning even for one minute. I had 3/4 tank of fuel before this began. I dread to see how much is left when this is over Saturday night.

Lucy will not go out and I am grateful for that. But she has strong feelings about soiling the house. I will praise her when she has an "accident."

Lucy's nap this morning.

Lucy slept under her blanket all night last night next to me, keeping me warmer, and took her naps under a blanket on the couch. The cats? Same old routine except they have me home to pitifully cry for more food more often. 

I was going to wash dishes today (for me and the knees, it is almost an all-day chore). But this is my day off and I have taken it off. Movies, messaging with the kids all day, reading. I had supper at lunch time. My son and I exchanged piano performances of Schumann piano concertos and gossiped about the Schumanns and Brahms. We shared a couple of recipes and gossiped about TV chefs. 

Amy's district was the only district in the state that stayed open. She said when it was over that it was awful taking the kids to the busses wrapped in blankets. I can't even imagine. The state even reminded us not to let our dogs or cats outside, or to only let the dog stay out less than 10 minutes. Yet they allowed human children out in that district. 

I am so grateful we were kept home today so that I could monitor the furnace and the pipes and the animals. I will soon post about my post-holiday experiences that have kept me quiet for too long. So I needed this day to make sure all was still under control. 

Here is the map of the forecasted wind chills for my area tonight. I live between Newport and St. Johnsbury, to the right of the I-91 symbol and in the dark red at 1400 ft elevation—which will be worse than being in a protected valley. It is going to be bad. The wind chill so far has only been -43°F today. I don't even know if it is possible to sleep upstairs with the wind and cold tonight. We'll see. But I know Lucy will never leave my side. Oh, but the cats will! Those little hedonists! I suspect they are sleeping on top of the furnace!

• Tweet from Lake Champlain (2 hours to the west of me).
• Tweet from Newport this morning about 9 AM (20 minutes north of me)
• Mount Washington in New Hampshire (an hour east of me)

I survived today and I will survive worse tomorrow. But I won't go to my hair appointment tomorrow. Amy said she is (we go to the same hairdresser). 

When Lucy was awake, she took advantage 
and asked for extra cookies.
She got them.
Who could say no to this?

_/\_/\_

The First Day of Spring?

The annual "back of the house" shot showing how snow melt is progressing.
The semicircular tracks near the back door are from deer.

It was the annual Vermont Maple Open House weekend. We found no open sugar houses to visit. But it was also the first day of spring so we took a walk in the back by the road that John plowed (to ease his angst at there being snow). It wasn't a long walk but it was as long as we could make it. In the photograph above, you see the deer tracks around the back door. To the right of the door is a big shadow cast by the house and on the right border of that, near the garage, you can see a pile of snow. That pile, only one week ago, covered the entire living room window behind it. We're making progress! I love the snow half on and half off of the metal garage roof.

A deer run down the mountain.
That's a tamarack tree on the left.

There are deer trails all over out back. Here, above, is a photograph of one coming down off the mountain. See the tamarack tree in the foreground? It looks dead. It isn't.

American Pussywillow (Salix discolor)

Nearly all the pussywillows are in bloom! Now that is a sign of spring!

The snowpack has been cut in half this past week!

The brooks are all running and gurgling happily. Love that sound of running water! And the depth of the snow is half of what it was last week! Happy days are coming . . .  but wait . . .

Winter Storm Warning
Hazardous Weather Outlook

I’m going to bed now.

(Hopefully, if you click the link, they will have cancelled tomorrow’s storm and the link will be dead)

_/\_

October’s First Snow

Our white house is tucked under the mountain down the road on the left.

Why in the world, one week after a three foot snowfall, would I post photographs of a dusting of snow in October? Because I love the photos and with all the computer and software problems I have had the past few months, I have been unable to post these until now.

Our first snow this winter was on Halloween. I did a Halloween post because the kids had to bundle up in snowsuits to go trick or treating.

The photo above shows our house underneath Barton Mountain. A cloud is beginning to pass over the mountain. The monochrome colors are broken by the double yellow line down the road. The small barn on the left stabled two horses back then. They have moved to another farm. The flat land on the right is the beaver bog (a small slice of a very large area). We love it here.

Roofs

Old New England farmhouses grew over the decades. They have many roofs at different angles. I am fascinated by the geometry of these roofs. Do you see the two windows on the right of the house on the first floor, underneath the right chimney? Those windows are now invisible — hidden by feet and feet of snow. The backdoor could not be opened because of deep  snow blocking it. These windows and that door are always buried like this every winter. But some melting, some dripping from the eaves, and John's strength finally freed the door yesterday. He cleared a very narrow path from the back door to the left of the house so that I can go out and feed the birds. The spindly looking tree in the foreground is one of our tamarack trees — which I blogged yesterday.

I wandered out to the apple orchard to see the snow on the trees and brush. The first snow is always beautiful.

Tomorrow the weather here should be sunny and nearly 40°F (4.4°C)! I think I'll go outside. If I can find snow shallow enough to walk through.

_/\_/\_

An October Flood

The Barton River at the white funeral home on Elm Street in Barton Village.
The electric fence is for the horses that usually pasture here by the river.

We had a tremendous amount of rain on September 30 and October 1. The Barton River flooded over its entire length. I was able to go out on the afternoon of October 1 and photograph the flood as it started to recede. Earlier in the day, roads had been closed because they were covered in water. I did not capture that, but even receding, the water was impressive.

The Barton River flows through the village as it travels north to Lake Memphremagog. It is an old river on a flat flood plain and has many deep oxbows. In some places it looks like a muddy ditch and in other places it is quite dramatic, such as at Highbridge Hill where it flows under the railroad (which I haven’t yet been able to capture).In Coventry, the Barton River Marsh is a natural national landmark.. In 1810 Glover, people tried to change the flow of the Barton River, causing the huge Runaway Pond flood. The river is a popular canoeing trail in the summer.

Elm Street on the bridge looking south.

Elm Street

Route 5 north of the village.

A harvested corn field on Route 5.

Storm clouds are still visible in the north.

Route 5

The B&W Snack Bar, closed for the season, had been totally surrounded by water earlier in the day.

View from the B&W picnic area.

A logging operation on Route 5.

Because of the heavy snows this winter, we are anticipating more flooding this coming spring.

_/\_/\_

Quite the Week

Barton Village seen from the Welcome O. Brown Cemetery in September 2010.

It has been a week of disorganization: huge software failures, bad weather, meetings, construction . . . I have been disorganized and frustrated. There was a huge snowstorm here and the awful earthquake in Japan. But now it is Saturday and I can reorganize and move forward. It is snowing quite heavily here (of course), so it will be a quiet, contemplative day. We haven't suffered as millions of other people have suffered this week. For that I am thankful and prayerful.

The fall foliage photographs that I am posting here are from September. After my solo Pageant Park hike, I continued the day at the Welcome O. Brown Cemetery in Barton Village. There are good views of the surrounding hills and mountains, and of the village there.

We are blessed to live in a quiet, beautiful corner of the world.

I was torn whether to photoshop the wires out of the photograph above. I decided not to.

The steeple of St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church in Barton Village.

When I look at these photographs, and think back of all that has happened this week, I realize how fortunate I am. My problems and frustrations have been put into perspective again, and I pray for the safety and recovery of the millions around the world who are suffering this week.

_/\_/\_

Thirty Below

The thermometer actually reads -29F.

I've heard a lot of complaints around here about closing schools today because of the cold weather. But when it is -30°F (-34.4°C) outside and you have to wait for the bus, it can be a dangerous situation. I think we can all agree that one day of school is not worth the risk. The chickadees and other birds outside are doing just fine this morning. I don't think a child would do as well.

I took this photograph sometime between 6 AM and 7:30 AM this morning. The thermometer is on our southeast window. The temperature jumped at 7:30 AM when the sun hit it. This is the coldest temperature I have registered at the house in 10 years. I don't know whether it is a record breaking temperature for Barton or not. But on January 24, 1907 a record low of -34°F (-36.7°C) was recorded in St. Johnsbury.

Of mathematical interest: -40°F and -40°C are identical thermometer readings for air temperature. It is the only time that the two temperature scales correlate.

Stay warm out there!

_/\_/\_

Got On Your Snowsuit? Your Boots? Then Let’s Go Trick or Treating! It’s Halloween!

Yes, it snowed last night. It snowed off and on all day. It picked up this afternoon. But the roads are still warm and so it's a normal Halloween in the Northeast Kingdom. Kids have put on their snowsuits, boots and mittens under their costumes and they are being driven into villages everywhere to get their loot. They will waddle up and down village roads and come home warmed by sugar.

Our old house (under major renovations) in the early afternoon today.

On the left is Ironman as Transformer. On the right is Catgirl as, well, Catgirl.

And now, above and below, we are all bundled up with sweatshirts, snowsuits, hats, mittens, boots, and the costumes!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

_/\_/\_

WTF at NWS?

I woke up Friday morning to snow on the roof. There were patches of snow on the ground. The wind was roaring around the house and through the old windows. This is a very old house and there never has been heat in my bedroom so it was brutally cold — about 44°F. The fiercer the wind blows the more you feel the cold.

Buddy the Cat had slept under the covers with me all night and needed to be persuaded to leave his warm nest. We dragged ourselves out of bed and went downstairs where it was warm. I turned on the computer to see what the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted for the day. It said there was a 20% chance of flurries. Well, already it had flurried until it had accumulated. But at least there was no storm coming. Because I usually blog about the first snow every autumn, I grabbed the 20% snowy icon from the NWS for this post.

And guess what the URL for this icon is?

http://forecast.weather.gov/images/wtf/sn20.jpg

Yes, they keep the snowy icons in their WTF folder. I think it’s an appropriate place for them.

_/\_/\_

Snow, Oil, Dogs and Cellar Holes

On May 10, Ironman had the camera again and took photos of our oil delivery. We’ve never had to have a delivery in May, but it snowed the first two weeks of the month and we ran out of firewood. We should be set with oil now for a couple of years.

Then the 4 year old took the camera into the room that John is renovating and got this shot of the cellar hole. The boulder is part of the original 1900 stone foundation. It is a granite boulder that was quarried on Barton Mountain in our quarry.

These are some old farm implements that were tossed into the cellar hole. There were treasures and trash under the floor — some of it was over 100 years old.

Ironman’s self-portrait.

Scout (left) and Willow napping on the couch on the sun porch.

To see a naughty photo of Scout that Ironman took, click here. I won’t post the photo on the blog.

Ironman’s 6 year old sister, Catgirl. Ironman is on the right.

_/\_/\_

New England Weather Live

Our weather has been nasty this week. UMapper lets you create weather maps or any area you want. The maps are live, with radar. The viewer can choose F or C scales, also. You have to click and drag the map in the window because it is too big. I told you these maps were eating up my time!


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My Woolly Bear Winter Prediction

A woolly bear caterpillar, the larval form of
the Isabella tiger moth (Pyrrharctia isabella)

This is my mostly annual winter weather prognostication for 2009-2010: The equal sized bands of the woolly bear caterpillar that we found out in the woods this fall are forecasting a normal winter. Sort of disappointing for me. I wanted to see a good, hard winter for my first New Hampshire winter. The woolly bear became famous because

• In the fall of 1948, Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, took his wife 40 miles north of the city to Bear Mountain State Park to look at woolly bear caterpillars.
• Dr. Curran collected as many caterpillars as he could in a day, determined the average number of reddish-brown segments, and forecast the coming winter weather through a reporter friend at The New York Herald Tribune.
• Dr. Curran's experiment, which he continued over the next eight years, attempted to prove scientifically a weather rule of thumb that was as old as the hills around Bear Mountain. The resulting publicity made the woolly bear the most recognizable caterpillar in North America.

source: Old Farmer's Almanac

A funny thing: I can't remember ever seeing an Isabella tiger moth. You can see them at bugguide.net. You can also read more scientific information about them there!

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