Saturday February 24 2007

This morning was clear and bright. It was about 5 below, don't know what it got in the night, calm and sunny when I went out to photo the drifts again and fill the bird feeders for the birds right after breakfast. The cold just sucks all the energy out of my camera batteries. As I was out there the breeze started coming up and its blowing a gale off and on again. The piles of snow have increased yet again. The horses aren't going into the corral for water yet its so deep going through the gate now. Not that they couldn't make it. If they don't go I'll try to entice them in with some treats, or else they will have to eat snow. I don't think I'll carry them buckets of water just because they don't want to walk through the drifts. They are pretty roly poly and not suffering. Also their legs are longer than mine.

I keep thinking of the year when Sox was young and we had Ginger. We were feeding 15 horses with the team and sled. They and Sunshine stayed in the corral (team). The drifts were deep like this and packed hard as a rock. Sox would get up on top of that drift I call Big Kahuna - inside the corral - and she could have walked right out, snow clear over the corral, but she never did. I never could decide if she was afraid she would sink in, or if it was the idea or habit of the corral fence having her captured, or some of both. I have pictures of her up there.

I have to keep digging out the kitty door in the shed so they can get in and out. Its at ground level. I saw Rascal, the mother cat, up in the shop eves this morning. She likes it there or on top of the woodpile where she can get down in the logs and hide and be sheltered. I think all the cats have wintered o.k. so far, even though we had the fox around for a while.

Betty called and we had a nice visit. She's getting her yard and surroundings all fixed up just in case she sells the house (Mesquite NV). Over the last few years we discussed so much about what was needed to spiff the place up. Anyway now she's happy its all getting done. She has a favorite worker, Martin, who was gone for some years and he’s back and able to help her on days off from his regular job. I hope to go down and see all the results she's accomplished maybe in April. Some of our other high school friends might get together then, so that will be fun. (Its our 50 year high school reunion year.)

My sister Gloria wrote me during one of our blizzards and said she was mailing us some lemons off her trees. They live in Green Valley south of Tucson. She kept them from freezing down there in their cold spells, so I hope they don't come up here to freeze in the mailbox! I'll do that thing .......when someone gives you lemons, make lemonade. Maybe have a bbq and pretend its summer.

Joe's doing fine. Does his chores and watches the news and sports. Joe's job is to keep the stove going, bring in wood and stuff. He makes a mess of it all though and then its my job to clean it up. He's gone out to bring in the stove wood, and that's when I usually vacuum so he's not sitting in the middle of me working. People liked the emailed picture of him up close and personal with the stove. We named it "Watching the Warm Channel".