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Here at the end of the so-called Snowpocalypse, we have once again finished shoveling out our driveway. It looks like we got close to a foot of snow total, plus some rain, sleet, and ice pellets. Basically, it’s about a foot of snowy slush right now, and we’re glad to be done shoveling it. But the day before the fabled storm arrived, I got our bird houses cleaned out in preparation for Spring nesting. It was interesting to see the differences in the nests in the boxes. In our titmouse / nuthatch box, which is invariably used by starlings, the nest was made of grasses mixed with some chicken feathers, and completely lined with downy chicken feathers. In the bluebird box, which the bluebirds actually use, the nest was strictly pine needles. And in the chickadee box, which the chickadees used last year despite threats from house sparrows, the nest was entirely moss, lined with hair (mostly looks like hair from the neighbor’s goat). Our other box, a generalized nest box, didn’t get cleaned out yet, but it was used by house sparrows last year, so it’ll be interesting to see what we find in it. I’m fascinated that different birds seem to have such different preferences for nesting materials. Hopefully that fascination will carry me through until we get past this lousy weather and start seeing some warm, sunny days.
 a dark-eyed junco has been grateful for regular feed scatterings during the Snowbomination
In olden days this time of year was associated with spring lambing and longer days, and celebrations were held in early February. We don’t have sheep, but we are looking for signs of spring.
Yesterday thousands of people waited for the groundhog in Punxsutawney to come out and view (or not) his/her shadow. Unfortunately (maybe) for the good folks in Punxsutawney, including an old friend whose father is in the Inner Circle, the groundhog saw his shadow. Fortunately for us, we went outside and did not see our shadows. Therefore, according to tradition and OUR location, we should see early spring temperatures. And although it’s been a good winter, we’re ready for warmer weather.
For those of you who, like me, can’t remember how seeing a shadow relates to whether or not spring arrives early, I found this rhyme: “For as the sun shines on Candlemas day, so far will the snow swirl in May.” So if the day is nice and sunny, expect more winter weather. If the day is cloudy, expect an early warming. It was cloudy and snowy all day here, so there you go — no shadows.
There’s also a legend in which an old woman goes out to gather her last load of firewood for the winter on this day. She can, apparently, control the weather. If the day is beautiful and sunny, it means that she wants a nice day to collect firewood. If the day is cloudy and rainy or snowy, it means she is sleeping in and doesn’t need to collect more wood because it will be an early spring.
Of course, there may be no correlation between the weather on one day and the weather for the next few months, but it’s still fun to read old legends and think about changing weather. And whatever the weather, happy spring!
Today we’ll begin with our new $20 telescope — the Galileoscope, developed for the International Year of Astronomy 2009. We ordered it about a month ago (the price has since gone up to $30) and have had it for about a week. Almost all of which has been cloudy. But we did get a chance to look at the moon one night, and it was AWESOME! The telescope comes as parts, which you assemble — using available lesson plans if you’d like to learn more about lenses and so on. Takes about a half hour. And the result is a telescope, like what Galileo used (except his was probably a brass body instead of plastic) that mounts to your camera tripod (Galileo probably didn’t have a camera tripod) and can show you Saturn’s rings. To be more specific, if you’re a tech type, it’s a 50 mm, 25 – 50 power, achromatic refractor. Or, as I like to say, it makes far away stuff look really close. Here you can see some good, as well as some bad, pictures people have taken through Galileoscopes. I’ve also gotten a good look at the Pleiades and at Venus. I just want to repeat that it’s AWESOME, and it cost us less than a meal out. Now for a microscope…
In other news, we got another 8-10″ of snow over the last 36 hours. The sky cleared sometime before 1:00 a.m. and the combination of bright snow and full moon caused daylight conditions outdoors. It was just incredible, and I wished it wasn’t 15 degrees, so that I could sit out on the back deck with our aforementioned Galileoscope, a mug of hot chocolate, and an iPod loaded with something rich and pretty like The Low Anthem. Ah, Spring, tarry not on thy appointed rounds!
Yesterday I heard an interview with a cardiologist, Dr. Mimi Guarneri, who is the co-founder and the medical director of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine. She had some great advice for people who want to live long, healthy lives. As I write, “for people who want to live long, healthy lives,” I feel a little silly and wonder if it might be an unnecessary phrase. But it isn’t. It’s pretty clear how much priority the average American puts on health, and it’s nowhere near the priority the average American puts on making money and being entertained. So the phrase remains. Anyway, the focus of her work is on preventative medicine, keeping people from getting to the point where they need cardiac interventions and pharmaceuticals. She recommends looking to societies where people commonly live long lives and seeing what their lives are like. Here are some of her recommended characteristics for a healthy life: healthy diet, active lifestyle, involvement in nature, meditation, positive outlook, strong sense of community, volunteering. She also noted that your chance of having a heart attack goes up nearly 250% when you are angry. There you go. We need to simplify, form strong communities, strengthen our bonds to the natural world, empower ourselves so that we feel engaged and positive about the future, care for our bodies and our minds, and help one another. I recommend checking out Dr. Guarneri’s website, and I’m going to add it to our links bar.
I’ll close with a photo of last week’s ice storm.
 things always look so beautiful after an ice storm!
At last, we’re getting a break from the cold weather! At this point even average January temperatures seem really, really nice, and we’re thankful for them. We’ve had snow on the ground for a solid month now, but I think today’s rain, and the warm temperatures over the next week ought to finally send it packing. It puts us in the mind of Spring, so we’re doing garden planning today. Going through wish lists and seed stocks, consulting our seed catalogs, doing germination tests. It’s all very exciting!
Our goal for this year’s gardens is to do better than last year, which was better than the year before. We have certainly found that our chosen lifestyle needs to be viewed as an evolution. Each year we do a little better and add a little more, so that we’re always at the limit of our knowledge and capabilities, and we’re always ready to catch our breath when Winter arrives. And it’s still fun enough that before Winter’s half over we’re excited to start planning for the coming Spring and Summer. Here are some of the things we’re excited about this coming Spring:
Our bees (throughout the region, actually) did very poorly last year. We lost one hive completely, and would have lost the other if we hadn’t re-queened in the Fall. That hive seems to be doing well though at last check (a few days ago), so I expect it to make it through the Winter. We intend to get two more hives this Spring, one of them being, in name at least, Tretan’s. And at least one of the hives we intend to be a Kenyan top-bar hive (and picture here), rather than the typical Langstroth-style hive.
We’re expanding the gardens a little this year, doing more beans and peas, more lettuce, more herbs. We’re adding an asparagus bed, and starting the front yard flower and herb gardens (the intent is to turn that entire half of our front/side lawn into gardens). Our new Juneberry shrubs will be starting to grow, so no crop this year, but it’ll be exciting to see growth. We’re hoping to have a better grape crop this year, and will remember to cover the vine if we get a late frost again — we had a bumper crop started last year, and lost it. And we’re hoping to start more fruit trees and shrubs up the hill. We’re also planning to start raising some mushrooms this year.
We want to get the rabbits moved out of the current rabbitry in one side of the outbuilding, adjacent to the chicken coop, into a freestanding gazebo-type rabbitry, and we want to keep working at improving the litter size and survival. So far, the rabbits have not been anywhere approaching cost effective for us, but we’re hoping that once we get it all dialed in they will be. And on the chicken front, we’re excited that, with the arrival of Monkeyshines, the rooster, we’ll be able to raise our own chicks this Spring, rather than ordering them. We’re very interested to see what sort of babies we’ll end up with, and what color eggs the eventual new hens will lay. Currently we have white leghorns (white eggs), buff Orpingtons (light brown eggs), speckled Sussex (creamy brown eggs), and Ameraucanas (blue-green eggs). The rooster is a Delaware (hens lay brown eggs). So we got us a little genetics experiment coming up!
So that’s our Spring sneak-peek. Spring is a vibrant and exciting time around here, and there will be plenty of natural excitement in addition to our cultivated excitement. In fact another goal for the coming year is to do more wild food harvesting. Gabriel’s old enough now that it’ll be much easier to get both boys out regularly for hiking and collecting trips.
Finally, we’re hoping to have lots of visitors again this coming year. It was so much fun to have friends and relatives staying with us several times this last year, and we are officially inviting all of our friends and relatives to visit.
 Mokeyshines working it
Wow, a new year. We were just talking on New Year’s Eve about how completely arbitrary January 1 is. When you wake up, it is unarguably a new day. This year, New Year’s Eve was a full moon, so we were also starting a new cycle of waning and waxing moon phases. And it’s also clearly true that the Earth rotates about the sun once every 365 (and a quarter) days. But our calendar is pretty arbitrary. Nevertheless, it gives us a good opportunity for reflection and resolution.
So here’s my reflection on the last year: It was a good year. The boys are older, healthy and happy. We are older, healthy and happy. Mom and Dad are older, healthy and happy. We love where we live and what we do here. We’re doing a decent job of living up to our ideals. I’m a better, and more content, person than I was one year ago today. I wouldn’t trade this life.
And here’s my resolution for the year to come: to meet each day and each situation with the phrase: “there is no place I’d rather be right now than right here where I am.” That’s it. This moment is the culmination of my life, the end result of millions upon millions of choices and chance events. The odds of my being right here, right now are vanishingly small, yet here I am. This is fact, and the terms “good” or “ill” don’t apply. It simply is, and my choices are to embrace it or fight it. While there’s something a little bit sweet, and perhaps even a little bit noble, about fighting the truth sometimes, in the end you always lose. So I will embrace it. I will stand facing it, with my eyes open and my arms outstretched. I’ll do my best to be ready for it, but if I’m not I’ll at least be decisive and I will act. I will breathe, I will move, I will try. I will smile when I can and cry when I must, but I will not mope, whine, or wish for what is not. This is the life I have chosen and everything counts. And besides, it’s REALLY, REALLY GOOD!
I’ll end here with a somewhat lengthy, but beautiful, quote from Gottfried von Strassburg (German middle-ages poet, famous — in certain circles – for his work Tristan): “I have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world and to comfort noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world do I mean, of those who (as I have heard) cannot bear grief and desire but to bathe in bliss. (May God then let them dwell in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: its life and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together in one heart its bitter sweetness and its dear grief, its heart’s delight and its pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved.”
 Life is good.
Actual ad in our local classifieds. (Another three-legged chihuahua here.) Also for sale, “a large box of miscellaneous items” for $30 with the line “call if interested.”
In a previous Trade Times was a man who was selling, for $60, a large hornet’s nest. The nest was still in his tree, and full of hornets, but he said he’d clear them out once he had a buyer.
 white Christmas This may be a post that’s interesting only to family, but here it is.
In the spirit of Christmas, we wanted to post about our most memorable Christmases (not including this year). Here goes, in chronological order:
Cathy (oddly enough, I don’t have that many that stand out more than other fond memories):
1) Only one involves a present as the big memory. Tusky the walrus. And I don’t remember actually getting her, but I remember seeing her high up on a shelf and falling in love with her the week before Christmas. I was three (almost four). I still have Tusky, and now the boys play with her. In fact, Tretan’s the one who decided Tusky was female.
2) When my Dad worked for a year in Utah I had my first white Christmas (I may have had one in DC when I was three, but I don’t really remember). We woke up and Dad took us for a drive. We did donuts in a parking lot (and by accident in an intersection). I was fourteen or fifteen, and it was awesome.
3) My parents came to visit me my first year of grad school in Florida. We all love to cook, and we spent the morning making a seafood feast.
4) 2005. We celebrated a week early, and Tretan was born two days later.
Ernie:
1) When I was probably about six, Mom and Dad got me a (completely out-of-character) toy gun that shot suction cup darts. I promptly (completely in-character) started shooting my dear sister in the face.
2) Two involving my sister Catherine and awesome presents that made me feel older — in Junior High she once gave me a prism that she had made in a college physics class, and she explained to me how it worked. It was just a box with a mirror (or two?) and a glass rod, but it was SO COOL! Then in high school she gave me a scientific calculator, and I spent days sitting with the calculator and its instruction manual learning about things like factorials (for some reason my favorite feature). I can’t think now of any real practical application for factorials, but I guess I’ve always been a romantic — I love the idea that factorials exist, and I imagine them patrolling the universe looking for something useful to do. Someday, factorials, your day will come!
3) 1993. On board the submarine USS Bergall, on port call in Portsmouth, England. I had the day off and couldn’t bear to sit on that stupid, reeking boat after having spent at least a month at sea already, so several of us spent a truly sad day wandering around the city trying to find something to do. It was cold and rainy, and the only things open were some pubs. Pitiful, but memorable.
4) 2008. Tretan was three, Gabriel was one, and it was just a fun, fun day. We played games on Christmas Eve. In biology, when a new species is described, a specific individual — the type specimen — is the basis for the species description. Well last Christmas just felt like our type specimen for a family Christmas. Low key, relaxed, smiles and laughs, games, local food. I really felt like a Dad.
The weather’s getting colder, but the days are getting longer. Happy Solstice!
 Do you know this rooster? Found: 1 rooster, friendly, likes my hens, friendly with people. My son wants to know what a good name for him would be.
I love living in an area where stray roosters come into our yard and want to sleep on our front porch. (He finally ended up in our coop. He had managed to “break into” our chicken yard and get acquainted with the hens. After some of the hens put him in his place, he seemed to fit in.)
We did find out who his owner is (I should say was), and he was happy to let the rooster stay with us. And our hens.
We had been planning on getting a rooster in the spring. But maybe the universe is conspiring to let one to fall into our lives now. Or maybe it’s just a funny accident. And if anyone knows a good rooster name, let us know.
I’m not a cat person. I never had a cat growing up. I like some cats. I’m allergic to some cats, some of whom I like. I sometimes have to “take care of ” feral cats when they stalk our chickens (we just lost a chicken to a predator, but it probably wasn’t a cat).
A neighbor’s barn cats came out to play with the boys when we were collecting winter pears and chestnuts at her house. The boys played back. Our friend mentioned that she needed to give away one of the kittens. So we are now the proud companions of a three-month old kitten. Andy. I like him.
 Here's to Andy!  meeting
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