A sign of Spring

One of the sure signs of Spring in our area, at least in my opinion, is the dirty snowbank. 

       As the winter plods on, plows push snow into large, dense mounds lining the edges of streets, driveways and parking lots. In moving this snow, the plows also scrape up a lot of the sand which the Department of Public Works trucks spread on the pavement to give drivers a bit more traction on the slippery stuff.

What happens as the weather starts to get gradually warmer is this: The snow begins to melt, and the piles of snow to shrink, and as they do, those particles of sand within the piles begin to move closer together, becoming darker and more obvious against the snow, rendering what were previously almost pristine white mounds of snow into blotchy messes. 

       It's deliciously ugly, because even as these unsightly shrinking mounds become ever more unsightly, they tell us that the warmth is coming… just wait! -- PL

The Hidden Geometry of Snow

A thick accumulation of snow -- something we have seen far too much of in recent months -- can seem almost featureless in certain lighting conditions. The homogeneous nature of the bright white blanket makes it difficult to see the underlying shapes upon which that frosty mantle rests.

That's why I have always enjoyed the way that trees can help to reveal the hidden geometry of snow, especially during those times of days when the angle of the sun drapes the trees' cold shadows over the landscape. Graphic against the pale snow, these broad, stark lines show us much as they ripple over hillock and plunge into decline. -- PL

Cleaning up from "Nemo"

We got a lot of snow here during storm Nemo, more than I can remember getting in one storm within the last few years. Last winter in particular was extremely mild, and I think it spoiled us.

I knew I would have to do some snowblowing around the house, so after breakfast I went to the garage, and upon opening the garage door, saw this:

The photo I took is kind of dark, and you can't actually see where the bottom of the doorway is, so I put in the red arrow to show just how deep the snow was up against the garage doors.

My Honda snowblower is usually very efficient at moving snow, but this stuff -- though dry and light -- was both deep and somewhat packed down from the wind which had blown and pounded on it all night. I ended up going at a crawl, but did make it outside and started clearing away the drift in front of the garage bay on the left side, where Jeannine parks her car.

I think it took me about half an hour to clear a single snowblower's-width path around the house, partly so Jeaninne would be able to get to the birdfeeder,  and then I started down towards the barn, because I knew the snowblower would shortly be running out of gas, and I keep some fuel down there. It's roughly a couple hundred feet down to the barn, and as you might imagine, that also went slowly. I stopped to take a few photos of the cut I'd made through that expanse of snow.

With this much snow, it's sometimes surreal to look at the snow cut your snowblower makes, which is typically very straight-edged and sharp, unlike the rougher, more chaotic path a shoveler creates. It's almost like you've cut your way through a gigantic layer of Styrofoam which has, overnight, been laid down over your property. And even though I hate dealing with this stuff, I must admit there is still some beauty in it, as the colors in this photo of tree shadows falling over the snow and the snow cut demonstrates.

Getting to the barn, I had to snowblow a path to the doorways so I could get to the gas can. You can see in this photo that the snow there was almost as deep as the snowblower is tall,

Once inside the barn, I was confronted with a strange phenomena which I don't think I'd even seen before. There were snowdrifts INSIDE the closed doors!

Apparently, the consistent high winds and fine snow over the course of the previous night were sufficiently powerful  to blow enough flakes through the tiny cracks under the doors to allow for this much accumulation.

Although we do have a guy who plows our driveway, and who is reliable about it, yesterday it looked like he might have gotten -- pardon the pun -- snowed under with his other plowing work and might not get to us until late. Although neither Jeannine nor I really had anyplace we needed to get to yesterday, I started to have that slightly panicky feeling I occasionally get when there is something blocking our egress from the house. Sometimes it's been trees blown down across the driveway, but in this case, the snow was so deep that even my four wheel drive truck would not have made it more than a few feet out of the garage before getting hopelessly stuck. And Jeannine's sedan? Fuggeddaboutit!

So I decided I would fire up the old Dodge Ram truck, the powerful ten-cylinder model I bought years ago and on which I had a plow installed. It's gotten pretty ragged with age, but it still starts and runs and -- for now at least -- plows snow like a demon.

Which is a good thing, because even it had a bit of a hard time with this much snow. I did manage to clear the driveway, but got the truck stuck when I attempted to plow the space in front of the barn. But a little while later, with some judicious snowblowing of the area around the truck, I was able to get it free and carry on.

By this time I had been out doing this stuff for almost three hours, a fact Jeannine alerted me to when I saw her doing some shoveling up at the house. I figured that was enough of that for the day, and parked the truck, ran the snowblower into the garage, and took off my boots, gloves, jacket, balaclava and Tilley hat.

But before I changed out of my sodden, clammy, snow-encrusted pants for some warm, dry sweatpants, I decided to grab a yardstick and see if we did, in fact, get two feet of snow. As you can perhaps see in these photos, it varied in depth by a few inches, but in at least one spot there was almost exactly twenty-four inches.

That's a lot of snow.

Here's hoping this is the last big storm we get this winter. -- PL

Go, snow

This is a view near our house from one week ago, the day that an early March storm dropped about six inches of snow on us.

It was heavy, sticky snow, good for decorating the trees and bushes, but a real chore to shovel. Even the snowblower was reluctant to deal with it.

(Click on the image to enlarge it, then again to enlarge it some more.)

Today, one week later, it is almost all gone.

(Click on the image to enlarge it, then again to enlarge it some more.)

This afternoon I bicycled with a friend on a bike path with just a few tiny, diminished scraps of ice in the shadowed spots. Small patches of snow like errant bits of rabbit belly fur dotted the sides of the path under bushes. We rode without jackets, without balaclavas or heavy boots, without thick gloves.

Crazy weather, but I'll take it.

For all I know, we'll have several snow storms yet. -- PL

White glove forest

When we were starting to get our first serious snow of 2012 last week, I was out driving in it, practicing my snow driving skills. The snowfall wasn't quite as thick as I have seen it at various times in the past, but it was definitely coming down and decorating the landscape.

Coming home on a side road, I noticed the interesting pattern the falling snow had created on the branches of some large fir trees, and had to pull over to snap a few photos.

The thought that popped into my head was that the limbs of these trees now resembled hundreds of white-gloved hands.

Beautiful… but also slightly eerie. -- PL

More snow… and fruit salad

Well, it looks like I spoke too soon. Spring DID seem right around the corner, but last night it started snowing -- the beginning of what the weather people were calling a "nor'easter" -- and this morning, the lawn which yesterday had been not green, really -- more like a mottled melange of greens and browns and yellows -- but certainly not white -- is once again covered with the frozen fluff.

I'm not sure if the activity I am about to describe is some kind of mental survival mechanism that I have established for myself to help combat late winter feelings of depression, but I do know that it has been a lot of fun.

The activity I am referring to is the making of fruit salads.

I've always loved fruit salads -- good ones, anyway -- and the last few months I have been making a large one every week, on average. And they are pretty big -- filling most of Jeannine's largest stainless steel mixing bowl, which measures sixteen inches across at the top and five and a half inches deep.

It's really too much for the two of us to eat before it goes bad, and I know that… but I keep making these big fruit salads. I think part of it is the sheer pleasure I get from seeing this enormous mound of sliced and chopped fruits, all those lovely colors and glistening, tasty bits.

So rather than waste the extra fruit salad, I have been packing the excess into snap-lock top containers and bringing them around to various friends and family members. It's fun to do, and I get to see and talk to some people I ordinarily wouldn't see very much. And they all seem to enjoy eating the fruit salad.

What follows is a group of photographs showing the stages of one of these fruit salads I made last week. I didn't have any raspberries or blueberries for this one, and those are usually favorite ingredients of mine. But it turned out pretty well anyway, I think.

First up: kiwis. I love these things, though I hate peeling them. I did discover a few weeks ago a little trick -- I reversed the order in which I prepped them. Previously, I would peel the whole fruit, except for the inedible ends, which I would later cut off before slicing up the kiwis to put in the salad. Now I cut off those ends first, and it makes the peeling go much easier, for some reason.

Second ingredient: mangoes. Another of my favorites fruits, though I still don't know how to pick the really good ones -- the ones which have creamy, orange-yellow insides, with few if any fibers running through the flesh. At least on this occasion they were of good quality.

Third are Shingo pears, from Korea -- very juicy and crunchy, but without much in the way of real flavor.

Fourth came the apples -- this time, two varieties: Granny Smith and Fugi. It is at this stage that I use a trick I found out about some years ago to keep the exposed peeled and sliced apple pieces from browning. I slice a lemon in half, and squeeze it over the apples. I also do the same with a lime -- I like the zingy citrus flavor both fruits add.

Fifth step was cantaloupe.

Sixth in line was pineapple, made easier by the pineapple slicer/corer I first used about six years ago, I think. It's ridiculously fast and easy to use, and turns what was once a dreary chore into something you can do in a couple of minutes.

Seventh -- more cantaloupe!

Eighth, I added some red plums. These are not available all through the year here in Massachusetts, so when they do start showing up at the local grocery store, I make sure to get some.

Ninth was oranges. I discovered a few months ago that a good way to add these wonderful pieces is to cut the oranges in half, then slice out -- with two shallow cuts -- the pithy cores from each half, and then slice each half into about five wedges. The next step is to turn each wedge upside down, and use a smaller sharp knife to slice the fruit loose, just inside the rind. It takes some time, but the upside is that you get very juicy pieces of orange, and I think they go great in fruit salad.

Tenth -- and final, for this particular salad -- ingredient was strawberries.

Then comes one of my favorite parts -- mixing it up, so all the contrasting colors, textures and shapes come together.

(Of course, my real favorite part is EATING it!)


And here is the result, ready to be distributed.

Well, at least the two on the top -- the one on the bottom was for us. -- PL

The geometry of nature, part 2

We got yet another snowstorm yesterday, which left us with several more inches of snow. It was pretty to look at, as you can see from this photo I took from the small deck outside our bedroom.

It wasn't as pretty to deal with, as I found out while spending several hours afterwards shoveling and snowplowing -- this snow was heavier and wetter than it looked.

Then later in the day, the wind kicked up quite fiercely, and by nighttime it was howling. When we went to bed last night, we could feel the house vibrating as the occasional huge gust of wind hit. It took a while to get to sleep with that noise.

This morning, I looked out of the bedroom window and saw another example of nature's geometry.

I think that branch may have been blown off one of the trees behind our house, and fell with enough force to get stuck in the deep, crusty snow in the backyard… and then got pushed around in last night's fierce wind, carving that perfect arc into yesterday's layer of snow. -- PL

Sublimation

I would prefer to see the sun today, and it's possible that I will as the day goes on, but when I got up this morning and stepped out on our back deck, this is what I saw:

This kind of fog from sublimation of the snow (passing from a solid state to a vaporous state without first going through a liquid state) usually only happens in the spring, but today's temperature is a relatively (for Massachusetts on the second day of January) balmy forty degrees. I am not going to get my hopes up for a REALLY early spring, though... I know this is an anomaly. -- PL

The geometry of nature

Jeannine and I went out on cross-country skis yesterday, taking advantage of some sunny conditions and the recent snowfall. The snow wasn't that great for skiing, as there were only a few inches and in places the snow had barely covered the grass, but we had fun sliding and tromping around.

While out in a field by our house, I noticed something curious, something I don't recall having seen before. There were perfect arcs drawn in the snow, with no human footprints anywhere nearby.

It only took a moment to realize what had happened -- the snowstorm of several days previous had been accompanied by brisk and blustery winds. The winds had pressed some of the taller weeds down and then pushed them back and forth, pivoting them on their stems, allowing the tops of the plants to scrape away snow.

Not much of a mystery, really, but it was interesting to look at... one more example of geometry seen in nature. -- PL

It's finally here...

... the snow, that is.

It started yesterday around the time my brother Bruce had to head back home -- some light flurries which turned into heavier blowing snow. We heard the wind gusting all night, and woke up to...

... not too much snow. It looks like an accumulation of only a few inches so far, and although the wind is still blowing some of the snow around, I think it has stopped falling. I'm grateful we didn't get the twenty inches or so that fell on New York. I'm sure we'll get more before the winter is over... maybe even before this week is over... but this is enough for now.

The birds are out in full force, taking advantage of Jeannine's bird feeder, and she keeps me apprised of when any interesting birds arrive there (I sit at the breakfast table with my back to the window). A few minutes ago she pointed out this guy...

... and I managed to get a halfway decent photo of him. I wish that branch wasn't in the way, but what can you do? It's hard to get birds to pose where you want them to. -- PL

It's not over yet...

... winter, that is.

The weather forecast, when I looked at it yesterday, predicted snow for each of the next four days. Given how relatively mild our winter has been this time around, I hoped that meant maybe a few inches per day of light snow... an accumulation which would disappear fairly rapidly as the weather warmed back up.

Well, last night just before heading to bed I poked my head outside to see how things were going, and already about three or four inches of snow had fallen. I took a photo of the bush in the front yard -- the combination of the camera flash and the light cast on the bush by the pole lamp creates kind of an eerie effect, I think.



Today, when I woke up and looked out the back window, this is what I saw.



Snow! And lots of it. And it's very dense,wet, very heavy snow -- the kind you most hate to shovel. And it's still coming down. Hard to believe that I was out on a motorcycle a mere two days ago... and yesterday rode my bicycle to Florence! Aargh.

There is one tiny positive thing I can say about it -- in some places, there are interesting colors in the snow, like the blues seen here.



It reminds me of those photos you sometimes see of icebergs, with those wonderful bluish hues. I wonder if the extra moisture in the snow has something to do with the color? -- PL

Snowy night scene

This past Saturday I managed to get out on a bicycle ride, something I haven't been able to do for quite a while. I didn't go on the bike paths -- those aren't plowed, and are still covered in snow and ice -- but it was warm enough (mid-40s) and the roads were clear enough that I spent about half an hour enjoying this unexpected pleasure.

I hoped to do it again the following day, but that Saturday night, when I let the dogs out to pee, I was confronted by the evidence that winter has not yet let go its grip on us -- snow was falling. This was disheartening, but I was taken by the dramatic lighting in our front yard. It was a dark night, and the walkway light was starkly illuminating the bushes decorated by the recently fallen snow. I set up my camera on my TrekPod and got this shot.



The next morning, I took another shot of the same location in daylight.



Quite a difference! -- PL

AARRGGGH!!!

Just about a week after I took my first motorcycle ride of 2009, we had a snowstorm. And yesterday we had another one. WHEN WILL IT END???!!! Excuse me while I go wail and gnash my teeth in the outer darkness...

Okay, now I feel better.

A little.

Here's a photo I took on my way home from Mirage yesterday.



Even though the driving was bad, what with the snow, I wanted to get down to the studio to print out a "proofing" copy of the story guts of TMNT #30. I could probably have done it at home, but the duplexing capability of the color printer at Mirage make putting together a dummy copy a lot easier. Now I have to go through it and see how many mistakes I made.

Here's a little heads-up about what to expect in this issue -- there are only two scenes in it, only one involves a Turtle, and that Turtle is not Donatello, Leonardo, or Raphael.

I'm still looking for interesting letters to include in this issue. If you have any opinions about what was in the last issue, or other cogent TMNT-related comments, please send them along. -- PL