Clean New Snow

A light snow overnight has made everything pretty and white again.  Still not really much on the ground, but at least it looks like winter.  The birds are everywhere lately.  Lin next door gave me her peanut butter suet recipe, and we made a couple of birch log suet holders.  Many different birds seem to like them a lot, including the chickadees, a nuthatch, and woodpeckers. 

 

 

The favorite suet feeder in the yard seems to be the ceramic feeder in the gazebo.  It’s never worked well with seeds, because the holes are too large.  But stuffed with suet it attracts all types.  Looks pretty gross, but birds do seem to love it.

 

A group of English Sparrows has taken over one of the feeders, and they are also occupying the forsythia bush near the deck.  Don’t really want a sparrow tree in the yard, so I may discourage them. 

 

The new snow was pretty for sure.  I don’t love winter, and I don’t love snow.  But if I’ve got to put up with winter I would like some of the beauty of snow, especially in January. 

  

 

 

The gargoyle is still guarding the hole in the pond created by the aerator and sometimes the heater.  I haven’t been able to see the fish for awhile since the snow covered the ice over most of the pond.  Hope they are hanging on.  Looking forward to the melt in another month or two. 

 

Peanut Butter Suet Recipe:

Melt ½ pound Lard

Stir in 1 cup chunky Peanut Butter (or creamy PB and fine ground peanuts)

Add 2 cups yellow corn meal

2 cups quick oats

¾ cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

Store in Refrigerator or garage in winter.

January 9th? Seriously?

This winter has been amazing for sure.  We’ve had a little snow here and there, but it hasn’t stuck around for longer than a few days each time. 

Today the afternoon temperature is approaching 45 degrees.  It looks and feels like March, and its only the middle of January.  I’m sure that we will see some colder days in the coming weeks, but I’ll take this for as long as it goes.

Here are photos of the yard, including the remains of the willow tree that we had cut down in early December. They came to do it before the ground froze completely, so we will have work to do in the spring cleaning up. I hope the ruts work themselves out some before then. I think it will be nice to have that tree gone. Beautiful and dramatic as it was, it was messy for sure.

 

And the windstorm in early September really bent many of the branches and it was feeling dangerous to walk under there. I think we’ll also appreciate the earlier light on the vegetable garden, and the tree roots won’t be sucking up all of the nutrients we put out there.

The fish in the pond mostly hang around on the bottom, but come up to look around in the heat of the day.  There are so many of them that I’m afraid the air hose we have going may not be enough to sustain them if the pond freezes over more than it has.  But so far all are well.