No ugly duckling---A rare Sunday morning treat!
(click on the picture to increase the size)

This is our resident Sandhill crane walking in our yard on Sunday morning with a flock of turkeys. This crane has been spotted in the fields near our house for the past few years. We like to go out in the evening in hopes of catching a glimpse of our friend in a large field across the road from our house. This was the closest we have been to the crane, and the first time it has been ion our yard. He (or she?) is always alone, so we were happy to see that it has found some feathered friends.

This amazing bird is one of the largest of the cranes. It has an unusual and distinctive cry, which can be heard when it is feeling threatened. Watching this bird take off is a truly wonderful sight. It is so large that it seems as if take off may not be achieved, but once airborne it flies quite easily. On takeoff and in flight the beating of the crane's wings is very audible, and once in the air the wingspan is tremendous!

The coolest thing about our crane friend, though, is that Sandhill Cranes do not frequent New England. They tend to stick to the middle of the country, summering in the north and wintering in the southwest, although there are several types of Sandhill Cranes. We wonder where our crane spends the winter.

Fabulous!

Here is a link to information about Sandhill Cranes: http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/wildlife/guides/migration/sandhill.asp
I guess it has to be pasted in the browser since I don't know how to make it clickable, sorry!

SHS loop-mates meet!!

Last week my ds and I had the great pleasure of meeting our Cynthia and her two dd's for dinner. We talked so long that her dh called to see when she would be home. I hope he didn't worry that she'd met with a nut from the internet.

Anyway, it was a great time! It is such fun to meet cyber friends for real.

Thanks for getting together with us, Cynthia and dd's!!

Note--date is the date we got together. I like to do it that way so that I remember things in the right sequence. That is why when it rains here I will post pictures from February. I don't want to spend that much time on a beautiful day. They are too few and far between. Cynthia on left, Karen on right.

Welcome to the world, Shadows End Clove!
Little Clove was the first Shetland lamb born here, and the first lamb of the year.
She will be 2 weeks old on Wed. and is really doing well. You can see a bit of her mother's fleece in the background on the left.
This picture was taken when Clove was less than a day old.
The best part was that I got to see her being born! it was amazing. That little lamb came out head first, landed on the ground with a thump and a splash and soon thereafter was being cleaned up and was trying to stand. It was not long before she was following her mother around on wobbly little legs. So sweet.

The muddy road ahead
Mud season!! The end of my road, before it reaches the black top, gets very rutted and muddy when the snow melts each spring. It is always an adventure driving the car through the mud, swinging from side to side and hoping another car doesn't come along going the other way.
Sometimes the ruts are quite deep, and then it is great to have a high car so the undercarriage doesn't scrape. Sometimes mud season happens all at once, with days of muddy roads and slippery driving. Other times it happens in stages: mud, freeze, mud, freeze. When the mud freezes cars can get trapped if it doesn't thaw during the day and if the mud is deep enough.

Old snow
Snow is beautiful when it first falls, and here for some time afterward because there isn't much traffic exhaust to blacken the snow. But eventually it does get dirty, and it does melt, and then everything looks really yucky. There is no other way to put it--yucky.
The ground is muddy with clumps of dirty ice melting, the snow is rotting with blackened edges, and all sorts of long forgotten things surface from below the snow. It is not a great time of year, and certainly one never featured in calendars!

Hydrangea in snow


I saw this dried blossom lying in a footprint in the snow. It amazes me that something so delicate could survive wind, ice, snow, rain and now melting snow.
I do not know if it was blown into the print by the wind or if it was under the snow for sometime, blown and buried during a storm.

Spring Forward!!!
Or should I say, "sprang forward??" Springed? Sprung?? Who cares? After all, it is after 6 pm and the sun still has not slipped behind that hill.
The sun is moving north too, not long ago the sun was setting further to the left in this picture.
Moving the clock forward is one of my favorite days of the year.

Sedum with cat tracks.
Remember the sedum with snow on top? It is almost buried in snow now. Even with all of the snow we got it was never completely buried. The recent warm days have receded the snow, but it is still quite deep, particularly in this area of the yard where the wind blows it into drifts made deeper by the snowbanks from the road.

March 7, temperature in the late afternoon.

What a difference a day makes.












March 8, Morning temperature





And the next day:
March 9, morning temperature!! A heat wave!! Bring out the bathing suits, shorts and sandals.

Coffee stop.
This is a place where I sometimes stop for coffee on my drive to work. It sort of looks like a last outpost or something. Often there are a few snowmobiles getting gas.
It is a general store and a small restaurant. I like it, because the road beyond, while beautiful, is long and there is no where to stop for many miles.
An outpost indeed!

Our house in the snow.
There really is a lot of snow! These are the snowbanks along the road, but it is almost as deep behind the banks.
If you click on the picture to make it full frame you can see that the snow goes up to the porch (we did shovel a small path, though) and up to the front door.
There are tamped-down paths where I walk across the yard, but the snow is over my knees.

Off to Austria and Germany!
Away goes my son, meeting his school's bus, which we jokingly call Das Bus, to the airport and off to Europe for two weeks. He has his ski boots, helmet, ski pants, and oh, yeah, a few clothes in those two bags.

Full moon in February.
Even though I am posting this after the date it was taken I was surprised at the time that a whole month had passed since beginning this project. I love watching the full moon rise over the field and the barn. For several days the nights have been bright with cold silver-grey moonlight, but here the light, with the pinks in the eastern sky, almost look warm.

From scenic to mundane
Not all of VT is landscape and picturesque! This is the coop I go to a couple of time a week for various grocery purchases.
They have beautiful produce and many other healthy-types of foods. It is actually quite large, and a nice feeling store to shop in. It is not my only grocery store, but I can get some of the different items I need or want here. Soy milk, coffee, salad greens and dressings, shampoo and face soap to name a few.

Sunset

This picture looks to the east, which is what I thought was neat about this sunset. The reflection of the sun across the sky was really spectacular on this--much warmer than a few days earlier--January evening.

Misty sunset
this photo doesn't really capture the strange pastel nature of this sunset. There was a lot of mist in the sky this evening, turning all color soft. The hills in the background looked one dimensional, like pictures I've seen made from pasted pieces of paper.
The degree of variation in the same landscape never ceases to amaze me. I often marvel in the fact that the scene will never look exactly the same way again.

Frosty Rose
When it gets really cold, below zero cold, the horses's muzzles get all frosty from their breath. Rose's forelock and mane also have a touch of frost.

Note on posts--for a while, since I am trying to catch up, the pictures will not necessarily be ones taken on the date of the post. I decided that was best, since I got behind on taking pictures. I kept getting a chance to take pictures at the same time of day and did not have a lot of variety, so I decided to post pictures from days when I took more than one.

Frosty milkweed
It was very cold this morning, and everything seemed to have frost on it. This is some frozen milkweed near the horse pasture, its seeds still in the pod. I often wonder with all of the wind we have here, how those seeds manage to stay fast.

Relief
This is my son, just after finishing everything for his college applications. It was an ordeal, but it is done!!! If you could see the face behind the camera it too, would have relief written all over it.

Spruce in snow storm

We have five spruce trees that were planted to block the wind, I think. They line the driveway and are quite tall. I once met the person who planted them, but I can't remember when they were planted. I don't think they block the wind much either, but maybe they do.
Here they are in a light snowstorm.