Finally wonderful

The meteorologist was right Friday morning, when she described the coming weather: finally wonderful!

Wildflowers are popping up everywhere. I've been out with the camera, and will post some pictures soon. (It's raining this morning, or I'd be out trying to find more.)

I should know by now to take the camera everywhere, though, since I ended up really wishing I'd had it yesterday in Birmingham. You just never know when you're going to be surprised by bagpipers.

Evidence

Pileated woodpeckers wuz here... Dryocopus pileatus calling card.

This fallen log is along the path that I've been taking to scout wildflowers. They bloom first on the higher elevations, and I've made the trek two or three times in the past week, with no luck. Nothing blooming yet. It's been an unusually cold winter, followed by an annoyingly tardy spring.

Since it's been raining in near-biblical proportions, I get to tromp through plenty of mud and standing water to reach the higher elevations. A good test for my new rain boots, I guess, but now I feel slightly guilty at how abused they look, so soon out of the box.

Plants are starting to emerge, at least. It won't be much longer.

Via my superior weather radar-sleuthing skills, I suspected that it would rain again before we got back. I was right. Next time, we're taking two umbrellas... I keep forgetting that somebody is a lot taller than me, for umbrella purposes.

Spring Break

It was warm! It was dry! Very unusual for our winter this year. I was afraid we'd missed the bluebells coming up, since last year by this time they'd been budding for at least a week.

There was no sign of bluebells at all, though; not a single leaf was sprouting. It's been cold. Unceasingly, mind-numbingly, give-no-quarter cold.



We did find a few little decumbent trilliums poking up (Trillium decumbens).



There were very few of them. These individuals were on one of the warmer, sunnier slopes. I thought I heard one of them sqeak, "First!"



A single budding Toothwort was nearby.



I was sure we'd find a few Hepatica blooming, but we had to be satisfied with their lovely leaves.



We grilled some salmon, took a nap, went on this little hike, then lounged in the sun. It was nearly 70°F (21°C). It's been so cold and wet and dreary lately. It was wonderful to have a break from all that, even if it was just for one weekend.

We cleaned up in the garden a little, pulling dry vines off their supports. This had been maddening, gloppy work when they were wet. We didn't even care that we were probably popping off dozens of morning glory seeds straight into the garden soil. There are hundreds of them there already. No, probably more like thousands. They were in this dirt when it was brought in. Every spring, we pluck the sprouts with zeal, but by summer's end the morning glories have always won the battle. But on a weekend like this, we just didn't care.

Early snow

Nothing like a little snow, to bring one out of a blog slump.



Every channel forecast snow, but I didn't pay much attention to their percentage predictions. My belief that it would actually snow, in Alabama, in early December, was exactly 0%.



But it did snow, a little.



Jasmine romped. She adores cold weather.



The chickens were wary. It might have been some evil plot, after all.



I don't remember the trees ever looking so nice, after such a light snow.



I hope the rosemary didn't get too frizzen.

Green green green

Much better than last year's drought, but my nose won't stop itching.

Cottontails

We've gone from snow to temps in the 70s in one week. Don't plant your tomatoes yet though, says our Extension guy; there's still more cold weather to come.


Divided heart-shaped rock that has nothing to do with this post.

I'll be at the Cottontails craft show this weekend at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic center. So if you are local and have $6, come see me. If you come Friday morning, you may see a friend of mine too. Two blogging soapmakers for the price of one. And if tell me, "You said on your blog that you'd give me a 10% discount," then I will.

Snow! (Part 2)

Snow in pines.



Snow in beeches.



Now they look like Christmas Ferns!



Rabbit trail revealed.



Snow in swampy area.



Snow in other beeches.



Snow on Rudbeckia skeletons.



The Virginia Bluebells are over there - hope they're ok.



Deer tracks in snow. I have been wanting to track wild animals in the snow ever since we moved here. Unfortunately the snow was all gone by early afternoon, and not many animals had moved around in the morning.



Duck tracks in snow. (The chickens were afraid of the snow. They refused to come out of the coop! It was hilarious.)



Mystery tracks in snow! There is my gloved finger for size comparison. Now if I could only remember where I put the tracking book.

Snow!

The forecast was for two to four inches by daybreak.



The TV is full of snowmen and snowball fights and cantevenseethegrass, but here - not yet.

We had five inches of rain day before yesterday, so I'm thinking that the persistent puddles are melting all the snow.

It's still coming down though, so I've got my fingers crossed.

Diluvian New Year

Holy cats, has it been raining!



We had 4.5 inches one night, then 2.5 inches fell the next day. (That's about 11.5 cm and 6.5 cm.)

I'm a few days late in posting these pictures, and the ground is still boot-sucking soggy.

If "beaver-drowning rain" isn't an old country expression, it should be. Driving towards town, I saw two dead beavers on the side of the road. You know it's a lot of rain when that happens.



It's hard to complain about this much rain after 3 years of drought. But it was starting to become worrisome.



Jasmine fretted. She whined. She barked at the water!



Just starting to recede.



Ahh. Much better.

This is a little drainage ditch that hasn't had water in it for 3 years or so.

This was the last time the water was so high. That was in the spring (when you expect that sort of thing), almost 4 years ago now.

They say it's going to rain again tomorrow...

What the storm hath wrought

We could have used all this rain last spring or summer, but it's still welcome.



Even if last week's storms are going to cause a little extra work. I wish I'd put something in there for scale - this tree was huge. I had to hop up on it to get over.



This ex-Sycamore was definitely dead already.



I think the fish and ducks and flittery little birds would like this a lot, but hubby thinks it needs removing.



Collateral damage... I wish it hadn't taken two live trees with it.



It's amazing how fiercely the Sycamore balls still cling, this time of year.



Except for this one.



Flocks of Cedar Waxwings celebrated the rain. (Click to enlarge.)

Teakettle frostflower

I've written about Frost Flowers before, but I don't remember ever seeing them this early.

This teakettle was formed from the stem of a White crownbeard flower (Verbesina virginica). Dr James Carter has the definitive page on Frost Flowers. He's also done a lot of fun experiments on extruding ice from pipes (also here).

The forecast was for 23°F last night (-5°C), but here in our glacial little microclimate, it was 13°F (-11°C) when we woke up this morning. Too bad it's not always 10° cooler in the summer too.

Inconceivable!

I told people that I'd spent most of last week sticking my head out the window, yelling, "Inconceivable!" Storm after storm passed by, edging just to the north or just to the south.

How this line missed us, I have no idea. Storms here generally march from left to right, or rather, west to east. We are in the area outlined by the white box, yet once again, we didn't get a drop of rain. Inconceivable!

K.O.

Thunderstorms with lots of lightning knocked out our high-speed internet. Posting will resume whenever it gets fixed... I've gotten spoiled and have lost all patience for dial-up.

Also, I missed most of the American Idol finale. (Storms + Dish Network = no TV.) So my teeth are still busy with their gnashing.

In the meantime, you can check out Last Friday's Ark, which I forgot to link to earlier.

Keep your fingers crossed that I don't get the same repairman as last time, who did not appear to ever have been on the internet.

Red-winged blackbird

One of the early sounds of spring, for me.



Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) singing. You can't actually see him in the video, sorry.¹

There's also a Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) near the middle, and an Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)² at the end. You may need to turn the sound up to hear them.

I wasn't even aware of the background highway noise until I uploaded the video. I'm not sure if the camera is just sensitive to it, or if I've desensitized myself to the point I no longer notice it.

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¹That's my workshop, aka Handmade Soap General, that you see through the cedar. Hubby calls it the Soap Empire sometimes, especially when saying things like, "When is this Soap Empire is ever going to make us any money?"

²The bird formerly known as the Rufous-sided Towhee. He's the one singing, "drink your teaaaaaaa".

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P.S. To everyone who didn't call yesterday: we're fine. An F2 tornado came through the county in the morning, but didn't touch down too near us. We got a little hail though. And a lot of phone calls afterwards.

Funny sentences I have read lately

"Note that exploding head syndrome is not an example of spontaneous human combustion, nor does it involve the head actually exploding."

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I've been busy getting ready for the first spring craft show (Cottontails), so haven't been out and about much. But I can't believe I forgot to post these pictures from a couple of weeks ago:



You may have to enlarge the picture to see it, but this is actual snow.



It only stuck this much, though.



People in the north probably have no conception of this, but around here, whenever snow is mentioned, you have to also discuss whether or not it will stick. (It usually doesn't.)

In other terribly exciting weather news, it has been raining.


Recent view...


which is better than this...


but still not back to this... which is what we used to call "normal".

We didn't have nearly the number of winter Hooded Merganser visitors that we are used to. But lately there have been quite a few Wood Ducks hanging around. (They're extremely camera-shy though.)

Luna luna

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
-Sylvia Plath



The moon's an arrant thief,
and her pale fire she snatches from the sun...
-Shakespeare



I see the moon
and the moon sees me.
-Nursery rhyme

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It was cloudy most of the time, but every now and then we got a few nice glimpses of the lunar eclipse last night. Or as one of my friends calls it, the Moonar Clipse.

Clouds were ok though, since it meant that we got lots of rain, lovely rain, today.