Tag Archives: spring

When Winter and Spring Collide

Posted on by under chickens, country life, Photography

What a time of year in what a wonderful part of the country. I know a lot of people in a lot of places say this, but truly, if you don’t like the weather around here, just wait a week. Or a few hours. It’ll change.

We’re halfway through February, and we’ve enjoyed some seasonal weather, chilly but not brutal, intermingled with days so warm you can smell the sap in the trees and the warming soil. There’s an extra something in the air. The promise of coming spring. But right now we’re watching for the winter storm that’s forecasted to start tomorrow.

A snow squall this morning was followed by blue sky this afternoon, teasing us with what’s forecasted, while we pray and hope for some of the moisture we so desperately need. While the meteorologists woefully and apologetically predict snow, ranchers are welcoming it for the moisture but prepping for what could turn into a challenging week. Once again we’re battening down, with forecasts of up to 18 inches of snow, heavy winds, and frigid temperatures. The three surprise calves that were born last month really were fortunate, and are healthy and strong going into this cold.

And what a teasing, taunting, beautiful winter it has been. It is as if winter and spring keep bumping into one another. One day I’m getting into my garden, stripped down to a tank top, the next I’m bundled up in heavy bibs stumbling around trying to keep animals watered and fed. One day Brad and I are splitting wood in a balmy 50-feels-like-60 degrees, the next we’re watching snow flurries and breaking ice on all the water. One day my laundry is hanging on the line to dry, the next I think I’m wearing everything in my closet. One day the chickens are happily free ranging in the springlike temps, the next day they glare at me as I let in a blast of cold air opening their door.

The one thing that is a constant is the pups – Snow or shine, they love it outside! I love looking out and seeing them romp, or finding a pile of kittens and puppies on the deck soaking up the sunshine. Josie got to experience her first few times riding the ATV, and she and Bess have come with us on some of our project afternoons.

The warm days we’ve filled with as much outdoor work as possible, reveling in the winter warmup – In Brad’s free time he has felled and chunked a number of dead trees, as well as pulling useable firewood out of the machine piles from when some logging was done several years ago. We hauled the splitter and a dump trailer up the hill to one of the piles and filled it full, and it turned into something of a late Christmas present for the folks. There’s nothing like wood heat on a cold day! And the girls were great help.

We’ve done some odds and ends of wintertime and spring-prep cow work, bringing the first calf heifers into the hayfield so they can be checked easier when they start calving. Brad is getting the calving shed set up and we’re just hoping the heifers wait until after this snow storm to start! We’ll be moving the rest of the cow herd tomorrow, bringing them from the north of the ranch into the center of the ranch for calving.

I’ve gotten into my garden, cleaning it up and adding compost, turning it under, wetting it down, and getting it ready for spring planting. So exciting! Every few weeks when there has been a warm up, I’ve watered the trees we planted, including the oak and ash sapling transplants, and have also doused my perennial garden a few times. Green is already starting to show! I bent a couple of twigs and even the transplants have survived. When I was churning up my vegetable garden, I uprooted this strange mess of roots, so fine I first thought it was fungus, only to realize it was my chives. Oops. Fortunately some plants are pretty forgiving.

The chickens are really picking up their egg laying, with a record breaking 17 eggs yesterday, and 16 the two previous days! I love being able to meet my customer demands, and sold three 18-packs and two 12-packs this weekend, and five 18-packs at the beginning of last week. I’ve been getting my plan in place for purchasing chicks soon, which is extremely fun to anticipate.

On the cold days I’ve baked bread and sourdough muffins, gotten some writing done, canned the rest of my cranberries, brainstormed chickens and chicks, planned my garden, and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, the result of puppies and mud and the blurry line between winter and spring.

I went through all my seeds today and am pretty well set for my garden, except for one or two more varieties of tomatoes and some pumpkins. I’ll be getting some greens started in the house soon, a little indoor “salad garden,” since I’m hankering to be growing something. Maybe it will become a permanent off-season thing. To my rancher husband’s chagrin, I eat a lot of lettuce and greens. He says I’ll eat him out of business.

What beautiful days these are, when winter and spring collide.

Feathers and Stars

Posted on by under Photography, Writing

I think we say this every spring, but the weather has been taunting us. We’ve had glorious tastes of springtime, followed by chilly, winterish days, followed by summer weather, then snowstorms. That cycle has repeated itself a few times and, as I type this, the most beautiful snow is falling outside my window, a snowstorm that began at midnight on Sunday.  I’m sure we’ve had 8-10″ by this point, in two different cycles of snow, much of which melted off in between, and it is still coming down relentlessly.IMG_8557e
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IMG_8503eIn spite of the untimeliness of a snowstorm at this time of year, I can’t help but be awestruck by the beauty of snow, particularly falling snow. Part of me would prefer balmy spring weather and wildflower hunting, but the enchantment of a snowstorm – of trees in the snow, of snow-covered hillsides, of snow falling with a soft sound from heavy-laden branches, of footprints in the snow, of the silence of a snowed-in world – is hard to resist.IMG_8554eEnya, in her song “Amid the Falling Snow,” writes, “A million feathers falling down, a million stars that touch the ground.” That song is one of my favorites, and those lines have always stuck with me.

Feathers and stars, and a world transformed. Winter can last a little longer.

Spring Again

Posted on by under Photography

Another spring is here – for real, this time. We may get some more snow (likely, actually), but when the pasques are out, spring is really, really here.
IMG_8177eI found these on a little trail in Rapid City just before a piano lesson last week. What a lovely find! There are a few other wildflowers I really get excited about, but pasques are particularly special. They mark the end of a long winter, and the beginning of beautiful weather and the promise of more living, blooming things, and of vivid, rambunctious color coming back to the landscape!

 

The Waking

Posted on by under Photography, Writing

Springtime stirs in the last of her sleep. Winter lingers awhile longer in the Black Hills, but the earth is warming, primed for life and growing and greenness. As much as I love the winter, I’m craving flowers and sunlight and bare feet and sun-warmed skin. I revel in lung-filling breaths that don’t hurt, and breezes that don’t sting, and light with more color. What a glorious time of year.IMG_7855
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IMG_7953Rivulets of melt glisten on the roads, trickling from rocks and roofs and hillsides with the sound of warmth. The memory of winter fades. There is mud everywhere and on everything, absolutely inescapable. The sky is ridiculously blue.

The silence of winter has been broken: by the calls of birds coming back after their winter vacation, that quality of the wind music that is somehow different than in the winter (though I can’t say how, exactly), the buzz of insects, the sound of moving water, the soft noise of wet earth underfoot. Fragrances that go dormant in the winter come alive in the first warming days of spring. The scent of the pine trees. The scent of the good earth.

Earth has slept the sleep of winter. At last it’s time to wake.

 

A Million Invisible Choristers

Posted on by under country life, Photography

I love the sweet sounds of springtime. Especially the sounds prompted by a good, wet rain. Over the past week, we’ve been blessed with more than 3 inches of rainfall, and a chorus has burst into song out in our stock dam. We hear them at at night, singing heartily with the insects, and even during the day their song is tireless. It is amazing how beautiful the ruckus is when a million frogs start singing.
IMG_7254eBut as beautiful and joyful as the song is from a short distance, up close it is stunningly deafening! I was amazed and delighted. I poked around along the banks of the giant mud puddle searching the tufts of grass and smooth brown water for any sign of the little creatures. Not a one was to be seen. Not the smallest plop or telltale rippling of the warm water. I tossed a pebble or two, trying to disturb one enough to make him hop, but they kept right on singing and paid absolutely no attention to me. I could hear them, mere feet away from me, but I couldn’t catch even a glimpse of them. It baffled me, that creatures so tiny and so invisible could be so utterly deafening.
IMG_7251eOne of my favorite springtime sounds.

Breathtaken by Aspens

Posted on by under Photography, Writing

Just behind our cabin and against an old gate grows a stand of slender aspen trees. No one knows why Grandpa planted them against the gate, but that’s where he planted them, and that’s where they’re flourishing. They’re placed just so, so that when seen from the cabin in the morning hours in the summer, the leaves glow and flicker and glint like little green flames. And in the spring when their catkins are blooming, when the morning sunlight catches in the little hairs in just the right way, the aspens and their grey and pink catkins become a pale cloud of silvery, shimmering lights. The effect is breathtaking, startling, and a slightest change in the light breaks the spell.
IMG_4908eHow often that is the case! Something of exquisite beauty cuts us to the soul, and fades as quickly as it appeared. I think that is part of God’s goodness, to show us glimpses of breathtaking beauty, but then, as if to remind us that we aren’t meant for this world, He leaves us with the only memory of it and a desire for more. Perhaps that is one reason I love photography – I can try to capture that memory and hold it dear a little longer, a little nearer, and remember it a little clearer. What delight!