Late Snow Storm

It's April 18th. We've had to restrain ourselves to keep from starting our vegetable garden. The rule is: "Never before Mothers Day" and, apparently, there's a reason for that.

We had 70 MPH winds and heavy rain early in the week and had a tree come down across the road.

The tree broke off about 10' up and fell across the road. Someone must have pushed it onto the shoulder before we were even aware that it was down. We got out in the rain and raked all of the remaining debris off the road and out of the driveway across the road. This picture was taken the next day.

We hauled all of the small stuff around to a new burn pile and cut the trunk up, stacked it and put a "Free" sign on it (as you can see, I took down that 10' stump). The free firewood sat there all day and then disappeared under cover of darkness {except for the splintery pieces from either side of the break - they were added to the burn pile).

I had thought that I was through with burning for the year. I had burned 12 piles and the weather had turned drier and warmer. With this good start on a 13th pile, I added some of my brush cuttings to it and had one last burn. My permit expires on May 2 so that will definitely be my last.

On Thursday morning, we had a 1/2" of snow. It never collected on the roads and was fully melted early in the day.

This morning, we had about 6" of very wet snow. Again, nothing on the roads (the roads get so much sun this time of the year that they are like heat sinks). It's almost 11 am and the amount on the ground is diminishing even as the snow continues to come down heavily.

I just fixed the windmill yesterday. The high winds had bent the blades back.

We're ready for spring with all of our garden ornaments out of storage.

The rhody on the other side of the door has a robin's nest that we can see out the window. Mama's been sitting on 2 or 3 very blue eggs. Today, it's piled high with snow. If mama's there at all, she's under it. Guess we'll see how that works out.

Our unplanted raised vegetable bed.

We're wondering where we're going to find flowers for our flower cart this year.

-JC-

Started quarantining on March 11

My 69th birthday:  4/13/20

Life under quarantine has been an experience.

This was driven home a couple of days ago when we received our Google Maps Timeline for the month of March. If you're not familiar with what that is, the Google Maps phone app keeps track of everywhere that you go and then provides a report with maps (daily/weekly/monthly), photos, milages, etc. It even knew if you are driving or walking (somehow). Nothing invasive or Big Brotherlike at all.

There have been interesting months that included Scotland and Ireland or San Francisco, Hawaii and Los Angeles. This wasn't one of them.

Kristen put a 'Q' in our calendar on March 11 to indicate that we had started to quarantine ourselves.

Before that, we were treading lightly but did some things that we knew were about to end for a while. We had lunch at 3 of our favorite spots, made trip to our local market and Kristen got her hair cut.

After March 11, grocery shopping accounted for just about everything. Kristen braved the local market a couple of times during the 6-7am senior hours. That was too stressful so, after determining that grocery delivery doesn't exist for Oakham, we landed on Wal-Mart. Kristen fills our online cart, chooses a pickup time and pays. Once we park in the designated spot, someone runs out groceries out and loads them into the back of the truck.

On March 15, I did take Gus to Lowes to get doors for his new home office (a break of quarantine but his truck wasn't working).

We did make one trip just to get out of the house. We'd never seen Quabbin Reservoir. It's just to the West of us and is the main water source for Boston and about 50 other cities. It stretches about 20 miles from North to South and the fact that the major East/West roads have to pass to the North or South of it explains why our area is as isolated as it is. We took a picnic and stayed in the car. We'll have to return when we can get out of the car.

Other than that, Google provided reports and maps of our daily walks.

Social distancing hasn't been a problem (except for my trip to Lowe's with Gus). Gus had a piece of wood that needed to be ripped down for one of his office doors. Briar gave me the measurements and drove it over while I got the saw set up. She handed it to me from 6' away. I made the cut and handed it back. Later, Gus needed to borrow my 1/2" drill. I set it down at the edge of the driveway as stepped back while Gus loaded it into his motorcycle an left. When I retrieved it a few days later, Briar just left it on her porch (the kids waved from inside).

One thing that was a problem with Wal-Mart was meat. Briar has told us about a local farm that raises grass fed beef and will deliver the meat. They also brew beer and have a taproom (several local farms brew beer and have taprooms). They will be delivering meat and a growler of IPA this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon (probably tomorrow since we're having a thunderstorm right now). They'll leave it in the ice chest that we have on the porch.

Glad that we got our raised vegetable garden built and filled with soil back when we did. Our normal sources for plants might not be open this year but we think that we've got alternatives lined up. We grow lettuce from seed. Briar is growing seedlings that she will share. People up the road have tomato seedlings in their greenhouse and will have them out on a table (payment via the honor system - we'd rather not touch cash but sometimes it's necessary).

-JC-