Sunday Morning

Hopefully I'll get around to a proper post tomorrow, but this will have to do in the meantime.

We're still in our spring cold-snap.  2 degrees yesterday morning, and 1 below this morning.  So much for juuuuust barely makin' it through the winter with stacked, seasoned wood!  (I am having to burn freshly-cut, not so seasoned wood.  It's been drying for nearly a year, but it simply doesn't dry very well when it's still in 8' lengths.)

It seems that I've been conducting a scientific experiment this week:  'How Long Will It Take Before Alarm Clocks Finally Turn Off'.  Quite a while, apparently!  On Friday, I woke up VERY late - at 9:30 - and the 6:45 alarm was still blaring.  This morning wasn't quite as bad:  shortly after 8:00.  

In other news, when I was out doing chores yesterday morning, I found these tracks up on the driveway above the chicken house!

(Altoids tin for size reference.  Dog tracks inevitable.)

Almost every single morning that I drive out, I see fresh moose and wolf tracks.  Weird thing is, though, I have seen neither in an AGE!  Nor do I hear wolves howling (and I sleep with the window above me open).  I must have a particularly quiet wolf population.  At any rate, yesterday was the first time I'd seen moose tracks so close to the house.  It's not unusual to see tracks up and down the driveway, but they usually come from or veer up the 'Y' to the trapper cabin.  Not so this time, tho!  And as you can see, the poor thing was having the same troubles with the ice underneath that I am!

Then, last night on my way home at dusk, I came to the hill that overlooks the bridge over the river.  Down the hill and across the road against the southwest woods of my property, I saw what I first thought was a dead tree newly fallen.  There was a shape there that I didn't recognize.  As I fumbled for my camera (just in case), the "tree" moved, and it was a moose - about 2/3 of the way through blowing out his/her heavy grey-brown winter coat.  The rest of the hide was a beautiful dark, dark (almost black) brown.  But, realizing that s/he was no longer alone, s/he turned into the woods and disappeared.  Even though I didn't get a picture, I took selfish satisfaction knowing the s/he was hanging out on MY (vs. state or federal) land.  ;)

Lastly, look what I discovered when I looked out the kitchen window this morning?  Those little scheister squirrels (all we have is red squirrels up here) figured out a way to pry the top off the sunflower seed can!  Wonder if there's anything left - it was more than 1/2 full!