Spring is Springing, at least I can pretend it is today :)

Living next to a 1000 acre Nature Preserve is such a wonderful thing :) We are used to all sorts of critters wandering into our front yard...they stay out of the back as the 3 Sibes have claimed all that area for themselves!

Since the snowfall started on December 26th we have been seeing fewer and fewer critters here. No deer, no coyotes, no foxes, no possums, no chipmunks, no squirrels, no birds....nothing.....with such a HUGE snowcover the animals are finding it VERY difficult to find food. Early last week, I put out 3 pans of birdseed hoping to feed the birds and the squirrels until some ground is actually showing....still nothing......

Then this morning, lo and behold, I looked out the window and the front yard was COVERED with birds and squirrels all sharing the buffet of bird seed that I had thrown onto the snow!

This little fellow got a little nervous when he heard my camera click and we stood there and stared at each other for a little while before he trusted me enough to run to the buffet on the lawn :)

I threw out some more birdseed as there was a frozen solid block of birdseed that this little guy seemed to think was just for him :)

Never have I seen so many Blue Jays at one time as I did this morning! Usually you get one really bossy one and he drives the others away.

I think that the mutual desire for food, which has been scarce, provided all the reasons that they needed to share branch space :)




And the Cardinals.....I love the Cardinals with their bright red coats!

They were not scared off by the Blue Jays, but did take a little while to work up the courage to swoop down to the waiting buffet on the snow!

Once they discovered the yummy treats on the ground, they quickly hopped around gobbling up their favorites things in the birdseed :)


Before too long, we had Blue Jays and Cardinals side by side happily eating their treats :)

I have absolutely no idea if today meant that Spring is Springing or not, but it sure made me happy to see our critter friends return from where ever it is that they have been hunkered down for all the storms.....it might not be a sign of Spring, but I can sure pretend :)

The Beautiful Mt. Peyreigne

Yesterday was ice hill moving day at the house. A very hard working crew of eight men came armed with ice picks and snow shovels and the fun(?) began.

If you remember from an earlier posting, my Sibes were enjoying the view in the windows from out back for the first time ever! I did not decide to have the ice and snow hills moved just to make it so that they could not do this, I decided that all that snow and ice melting near the foundation, MIGHT give me the indoor swimming pool that I have always imagined in my dreams, but instead of dreaming it would have become a reality in my basement.

It was kind of exciting to see what was getting unearthed out there! We got to find things that we have not seen since Christmas Day!

Two wooden patio lounge chairs, a garden hose, 3 folding patio chairs, a small table, my pool net, a snorkeling mask, two of the three wading pools that the Sibes use in summer, a broom, and the last remnants of the Fall leaves that had blown onto the patio right before Christmas :) The nice men even blazed a trail to the BBQ which has been unused for over 5 weeks, a REAL rarity for us as we are known to BBQ year round whatever the weather :)

You might be wondering where do you put 5 foot tall hills of snow and ice from you patio? Just how much snow/ice is that?

Well we are now the proud owners of Mt. Peyreigne, the highest point on our property! The Sibes are LOVING having a mountain to run up and down! And they are LOVING having the last remnants of last Fall's leaves on the mountain to give them something new to sniff other than snow.....

plus the leaves give enough traction so the Siberians can run fast and take off and FLY!

In fact, it is quite a fun new place to play out back, one that I think we will be enjoying LONG after the Springtime arrives!!

Day #2 of the Melting Begins....

As I listened all night long to drip, drop, drip, drop, drip, drop outside (thankfully not inside) my bedroom window I began to make another mental list of things that I should probably have before this Spring begins....it might be TOO late for some of the things, but owning some will be more helpful than owning none......

Why did I "hear" this sound all night, whether awake or in my dreams, you ask? For the first time since December, we awoke to a morning that was above the freezing mark! It is a balmy 33 degrees upon awakening and it set to rise to, hold onto your hat, 36 degrees today with SUNSHINE! So the drip, drop, drip, drop, drip, drop was the sound of my ice dams starting their melting process one drop at a time.....at this rate it will take until probably August to have them completely gone, but at least it is a start!

So the list making mentally began......

UMBRELLAS: There will be no such thing as too many umbrellas...

I think that a few of the umbrellas should be made out of steel as some of the icicles that are completely out of reach are HUGE and I figure at some point they will come crashing down and try to impale us....using the 6 P's from my previous post, a few steel umbrellas seems like a good idea when entering or exiting the house.






TALL BOOTS! Really TALL boots. I am thinking of the hip waders that I see the fishermen at the river using in the Springtime.

I am not sure that this photo does justice to the size of the hill out back since it was taken from the 2nd floor of my home a few storms ago. But not only do I have all of OUR snow melt to contend with, I have all of the snow melt from the street WAY ABOVE me to contend with.....in a normal rainstorm, it is like having Niagara Falls out back......add all the snow melt and I am thinking that I am going to have A LOT of water in my back yard. Thus my quest for hip waders. Maybe I can ask one of the ice fishermen that I saw the other day where to get those. If worse comes to worse, we all own wetsuits for snorkeling/diving....hmmm those might come in handy too.


A ROWBOAT might be a necessary item this Spring. Referring to the above mentioned hill, for longer jaunts into the yard, a little rowboat might be in order.

That way if the Sibes get too far away from me out in the yard, I can row out to them to take pictures. They LOVE the water so I know that they will be out swimming around in the yard, and I want to be able to get pictures of them without getting my camera equipment wet.

And I suppose that what I REALLY will need this Spring is an Ark. A BIG ARK. One with all the amenities of a cruise ship. As all of this melts and gets deeper and deeper, I can steer my ark through town picking up people that I like and their pets. The more the merrier. Hell it is downhill from here to Long Island Sound, so I can just steer that baby all the way to the Sound...then the ocean.....then head South.....and keep going until I get to Aruba....and park that Ark at the cruise ship dock and climb off. This is the only view I want from now on out my window.....

So if anyone knows a reliable ark builder, give him my number and send him right over. No time like the present to get ready for the Spring! Plenty of room onboard for more with 5 humans, 3 Siberians, 3 Bearded Dragons, 2 Leopard Geckos and 2 White's Tree Frogs :) Come Onboard!

Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance, aka, The 6 P's

As the Winter progresses I am coming up with a list of things that I want to own BEFORE next Winter begins.......after all, I apparently forgot the 6 P's before THIS winter, a mistake that I will NOT repeat... Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance, after all :)

The first thing on my list is a snowblower. No, we do not have one. Yes, I wish we did this winter. After the 4 bazillionth storm (not quite that many but it felt like it) I went around to stores to try to order one or buy one. One man that owns a hardware store actually started laughing when I asked if he had any. I think he needs to take a vacation as I think he lost his mind :) That or he needs medication, or maybe both....I actually felt a little sorry for him as his laughter was "manic" not "happy" and so I know that he was not looking at any of this in a funny light.....

The second thing on my list is a grass seed spreader. A grass seed spreader you might be asking? Yes, a grass seed spreader....as my driveway is VERY long, I want to make putting down hundreds of pounds of ice melt a little more effective use of my time......my styrofoam coffee cup (not used for coffee anymore just in case you are wondering) dipped over and over and over again into the bag of ice melt and thrown from the garage door is just not cutting it this year.

Automatic delivery of ice melt on demand is my third wish. I want to have a place that I can call, they know who I am, I can say, "More, please" and they deliver it right to my garage and stack the 50# bags inside the door on a little raised pallet. The pallet is in case there is any flooding, the bags will remain dry and the ice melt inside the bag useable :) I am tired of loading up my truck and lugging them home.

The fourth wish is to own a roof rake. Now I must be 100% honest and tell you that I had NEVER HEARD of such a thing until this Winter. I was telling someone, "I have the most BEAUTIFUL icicles on my house!" Actually I was excited to see beautiful icicles, that is of course, until this person told me that icicles are bad things...it means you have ice dams in your gutters and ice dams are bad it turns out. Also I found out that having 3 feet of snow on your roof, though beautiful in a photo, is actually really a bad thing. A roof rake is another item that is impossible to purchase right now in this area. Everyone is sold out. There are waiting lists at hardware stores for them. Who would have ever thought?? LOL Since I had no way to get a roof rake, I did the next best thing.....I found a crew of young men that went onto my slippery snow filled roof and shoveled it off.

A dog sled. This would have been REALLY handy to have this winter. I have the Siberians, I just need the sled. We could have been racing out of the driveway many times this Winter when we were trapped here until the plow came. I had a friend trying to figure out how to airlift us one, but before he could figure it out, we had the massive ice storm and quite frankly the window of opportunity for escape by dogsled was closed :)

Thinking of the ice storm leads to my next wish.... a Bobsled. After the window of opportunity closed on the dogsled escape route, and everything was coated with an inch of solid ice, a bobsled out the hilly driveway would probably have worked. I even have the REALLY high embankments along the WHOLE driveway to keep the Bobsled on the drive when I am banking that baby on the curves! I know that yesterday I had a LITTLE taste of Bobsledding, but unfortunately I was in my Suburban, not a Bobsled as I do not currently own one....just wait til NEXT winter :)

A friend suggested snow shoes. They would have been particularly helpful in the storm that dropped 29" on us. Walking was impossible! The Siberians were "swimming"out there and tunneling and plowing paths....Snow shoes would have allowed me to walk more than 3 steps into my yard with my camera for better angles and views for pictures of the pups. I saw plenty of people trying to traverse our single lane road to go snow shoeing in the Nature Preserve by my property. They would park and block our road so that they could do this activity. Sometimes it caused me to get angry and to imagine pushing their cars off the embankment when I could not get down my road due to their stupidity. So, I imagine that snowshoeing must be fun as so many idiots were out in force on my road doing so. My only question was, isn't there enough snow at your own house to snowshoe? Why come here and block up my road trying to get to the Preserve? Use your heads people......if I can't get a Suburban PAST you on my road, then a firetruck can't get PAST you to get TO my house in the event of an emergency....so I want snowshoes, but I promise to just use them on my own property to follow the pups around :)

Snap my fingers, immediate access to a BobCat and someone that actually knows how to operate one. We had this baby at the house all day one Saturday moving snow piles. It came in QUITE handy this winter. Of course they are REALLY expensive to buy, so I just need access to one, right when I need it, with a qualified operator, so that NO snowbank on my property will pose a hazard to driving or limit ability to snowplow future storms. I REALLY want a Bulldozer and I want to learn how to operate it as I think that would have felt GREAT to be able to bulldoze through huge snowbanks at will this winter. (and I would want it to have headlights so I could go out in the middle of the night and attack if the urge were to hit me.) Come to think of it, it would have a twofold purpose as it would have come in QUITE handy to rid my road of the illegally parked cars blocking access to our homes by the people that obviously are unable to control their urge to take a snowshoe hike.

This one is REALLY stretching the wish to the maximum, but hell, if we are dreaming I might as well shoot for PARADISE!

I would like to have my 2.5 acres domed, with sections of retractable roof portions of course. The way I figure it is this....I have 3 Siberian Huskies to whom this winter is PARADISE and I have the humans that live here that love the snow, BUT have limits to the love. With a dome, I could have it retract over the back yard and snow and snow and snow as much as it wants back there and the Sibes will still have their paradise! We can bundle up and head out there and play Eskimo with them WHENEVER we CHOOSE to do so. Perfect.

The front yard will NOT have a retractable portion and will be artificially heated so as to create perpetual Springtime out front!

Lawn chairs, a picnic table, maybe even a heated pool with a deck and a wet bar. That way when we are cold and miserable after the Eskimo games with the Sibes, we can come into the house, change into shorts or a bathing suit, grab a towel and head out front to warm up by the pool! So if I win a BIG Lotto jackpot this year, THIS wish will go to the top of the list, since it negates the need for almost all of the above mentioned items :) Except the dogsled....I still want one of those to play out back in the snow with the Sibes pulling us all over the yard! And maybe I should still wish for a bulldozer to help "clear the road" of cars owned by dedicated snowshoe hikers :)




To be continued.........

A Beautiful Morning Indeed :)

Happy Thursday! Nothing falling from the sky at this point! Woohoo!!! Thus this is not really written to my family and friends who are monitoring my sanity levels closely this winter, but rather it is directed to Mother Nature, and is about my love/hate relationship with her since the storm on December 26th. I think that the world is beginning to right itself all due to the fact that the Groundhog did NOT see his shadow! LOL I was ready with blindfolds for the little critter to assure that he did not see it, but my dear friend, Mother Nature, took care of it in the TriState area and New England by slamming us with an ice storm that kept the sun out of view for the day! Thank you, Mother Nature. Please disregard anything that you heard that I said that was nasty about you :) The comment about you needing medication for your menopausal evil streak was well intentioned with your best interest at heart! I swear!! hehehehe

Athena loved standing on the back of the chair, looking out at the icy wonderland and dreaming of romping on the ice.....

Apollo loved eating the icicles that Alex was breaking off the house......

and Zeus, well Zeus was Zeus and was a lugnut for most of the day.... he did get up to have dinner :)

All in all I think the pups needed the "down day" as they have been frolicking in your ever growing accumulation of snow (now ice) and are even shedding out part of their massive undercoat to make room for NEW FUR to stay warm with the Winter that you have blessed (?) us with. I will be "thanking" you again this Spring when all the NEW fur decides to fall out when you try to make up for the Winter by giving us a quick hot Spring and a fast melt :)

We will continue to enjoy all that you are dishing out to us this winter. We will sit out back in the snow even though it is packed down and still over 2 feet off the ground level. We will laugh and joke and shovel and chip.....why you ask? It is a simple issue, Mother Nature....as long as we laugh, you may win some of the Winter battles, but we will win the Winter War! Have a nice day Mother Nature! Love, Betsy

PS: I am looking forward to the Spring when my dogs will all look like this.....I am gathering old towels in anticipation :)

Not Quite the Evening We Planned at our House Tonight :)

Ok.....day spent chipping and moving ice with Alex. Actually fun as I watched Alex "skating" and sliding on the driveway on purpose to amuse himself while we were chipping. I did tell him at one point that I would prefer that he wait until we were done the section that we had to do, as this was not a good day for broken bones as I needed his help to finish the chipping.....not to mention that there was ABSOLUTELY no way to get in or out of here to get to a hospital :) He chipped and THEN screwed around on the ice and no hospital visit was necessary! Whew!

Evening rolls around, fire in the fireplace, getting ready to make dinner, Bob on

his way home....this is just to set the stage for you:) All of a sudden Christine SCREAMS to me that Flame is dying and to come quick! For those of you that do not know Flame, she is one of Christine's 3 Bearded Dragons that share her room.....I RUN to her room expecting the worst as Flame has been "sick" of late and even had surgery a few weeks ago for a prolapse. The recovery has not been smooth, but we have been able to handle it all pretty well! We even learned how to give a bearded dragon a shot! Well I take one look at Flame and my brain tells me that Christine was right as Flame looked like she was dying a horrible painful death! All of a sudden, POP, out comes an EGG! An egg? Huh? What the hell? Yup, turns out that Flame was laying unfertilized eggs, something that I would LIKE to think that the Vet in Wilton would have KNOWN BEFORE the surgery a few weeks ago!!! LOL

Well she is having a difficult time of this, so tomorrow she is going to the Vet to get checked out and to make sure that she will lay her eggs in a safe fashion.....so no baby beardies, but a "virgin birth" here in Weston! Maybe I should accept the FaceBook invitation that I received to the 2012 End of the World Party :) Wish us luck with Flame as we play Midwife tonight!

IMPORTANT FLAME UPDATE! Flame has successfully laid 7 of her 11+ eggs. She is not a picky nester as she just drops those eggs wherever she chooses in her tank! I wonder if she knows that they are not fertile and figures...what the hell? Doesn't matter where I lay these!

Ice Storms are not as much fun as Snow Storms.......

This morning, I posted before taking a REALLY good look outside.....after my

coffee, I ventured down to the basement and into the garage and opened the door. I stood there with my mouth hanging open as I have NEVER seen anything like what was on my driveway!

All of the plants looked like they were painted with shimmery paint....even my bushes and trees had icicles.....
We will continue to laugh and look for the silly side of winter :)