More pictures from the spring: Snowday!

Even teachers like a good snowday!

View from the front

View from the back

Tea and scones-the perfect way to celebrate the day!

Hooray for snowmen in the front yard (and friendly neigborhood kids who take pictures)

Snow in Virginia

We finally got snow last week - although we missed the storm this week, and now it's mostly all melted. It was our first real snowfall south of the Mason-Dixon line, and it was an experience.... we were slightly unprepared by how poorly the roads would be treated and managed. We took the afternoon (which was a snow day) to shovel the snow off the driveway. It was a loong, looooong driveway. Just saying.

After we shoveled the driveway, we took the opportunity to shovel the road. Apparently we really like shoveling. The plow came by to help, but did more damage than not...

Apparently it does snow in Virginia!

See? That driveway is at least five miles long. Really.

The driveway in progress... yes, I'm proud of it.

Our friendly neighbor who helped us shovel the top of the hill on the road. Apparently he likes shoveling, too.

Oh the happy shovelers. Can't say I'm too unhappy it's all melting though!

No snow for us...

The Northeast has had two major snowstorms since Christmas, and another is supposed to hit tomorrow/Wednesday. We've managed to avoid both of them with our sheer bad luck. Jim and I have developed our anti-snow forcefield till it's approximately 40 miles in radius on any side.


See that little white spot in the middle of northern Virginia? Yeah. We're right in the center.

A Spring Break Gift

Thursday was an early spring gift in central PA-50 degrees and sunny when we were forecasted to have pouring rain. Since the motivation fairies saw fit to steal the wheels off my motivation wagon anyway that day, I pounded through my science work, strapped on the Camelback, my orange windbreaker, and headed out on a hike with Shasta!

All good hikes should start with a snack. Mine was cheese. Shasta's was...well...I'm not really sure, but it was probably something I didn't want to know about anyway...

The streams in the Gap were flowing great that day and the sun and snow was beautiful!

We hiked along the Mid-state Trail, along the ridge top. Shasta was particularly intrigued by the smells coming up from the south...I was more concerned with the four foot snow drifts we had to slog through...nothing quite like dropping thigh deep when you hit a pocket under the crust.

We reached the end of our hike at the highway outside of the next town over. Which was between 5 and 6 miles away...To paraphrase Calvin's dad "Ahhh, the crazy hedonism of a Thursday afternoon!"



Our walk out was fun and exciting...the walk back was muddy and cold :) We walked home through a power line cutout, which the day before had been snow, but now was ankle deep mud. After playing some "Posted sign Hide-and-Go-Avoid" that involved popping up and down the ridge a couple times, we eventually made it back to the trail from home. And my shoes lived behind the woodstove for the next two days to dry out. All in all a good day (not the least because the dog slept for the next 18 hours :)

Pretty snow!

We had a gorgeous snowfall the other morning; I love living in the woods!

Snow!

We got socked with snow last night- the official count is 14 inches, but we have at least 20 in our backyard. It goes higher than my knees and past Shasta's chest.
We had a movie night last night and our friends ended up staying the night to avoid driving in the blizzard.


It was beautiful, though!And Shasta LOVES swimming in snow! Click on the video below to watch.

More snow pics

We've had 8 inches of snow so far, and since the leaves are still on the trees, the trees are falling down like crazy - one went through the storm window of our bedroom last night at 3 am and another fell and smashed our picnic table into smithereens and knocked our gutter off the house morning. The road is blocked, and we haven't had power since about 4 am, and likely won't until at least tonight and possibly tomorrow (bummer, I wanted to watch the Yankee game!)

All night, we could hear trees falling in the woods (answering that age-old question) and see the transformers explode and light the night sky. Most of the town doesn't have power.

Nuts, right? And we're supposed to continue with this weather until tomorrow a.m....

Record snowfall in PA

We have 5 inches of snow in the backyard. Trees are leaning over our house and we hear a new one fall in the woods about every 20 minutes (not counting enormous branches). It's still snowing and it's getting colder. We're lucky that our house doesn't depend on electricity for heat, because the power lines have branches on them and will likely not stay upright till the morning - our neighbor's lines are sparking. Crazy! It's the earliest snowfall in State College since they started keeping records, and since our leaves had not yet reached peak, the trees are falling down. It's supposed to snow until Saturday morning.

Some pics, for proof:

First, the ridge, with snow...
I wonder how long we'll have electricity...

That's a branch that fell, upright, with the base about 2 inches deep in the ground

The trees looming ominously over our house (from our backyard)

Bonfire pit doesn't exactly resemble fall anymore...

More downed trees in the backyard

Fall colors with snow is oddly pretty

Downed tree in our driveway

Escapee critters and the Big Tractor!

Busy day today. When we woke up this morning, we realized that the horses had decided that the world outside their paddock was much more interesting, and were grazing in the front yard. We went out to put them back in the barn, and found one of the kittens (Miss Adventure) following us to the barn- a kitten that had most definitely been locked into the woodshop the night before. Apparently last night the critters staged a mass escape. The horses got out because of the high winds we've been experiencing recently- the electric fence was working fine, but had blown down. Not so useful, really. We fixed it, and then took the kitten back to the woodshop, where she was more than happy to be put back inside.

Then we tried to figure out out how she'd gotten out in the first place. It was confusing, because Racu was still inside, but she's definitely the more agile cat. We checked for footprints in the snow, and found some tracks near one of the windows. We looked up, and realized that the gutter's hanging low on that part of the house. It looks as though she jumped from the gutter. We went back inside, and sure enough, there's a gap in the wall that'll let her get between the inside and outside walls. We're still not exactly sure how she managed it, but we think she climbed between the walls and got out that way. It's got to be something somewhat complicated, or she would have been able to get back in, right? Plus, the other kitten didn't (couldn't?) follow her.

In other news...

Today it finally snowed! We got at least 8 inches and more is still falling, although now it's more in the way of freezing rain/sleet. Jim's been hoping that he'd have a chance to use the big tractor to plow the driveway since we got here, and he finally got the chance today. Plus, I got to try driving the bigger tractor! The little tractor's been great to help us clean out the horses' stalls, but the big one was a lot more intimidating.

Here's a short video of me plowing a very short section of the driveway! I didn't really realize how fun tractors can be.




Another pic that shows that I actually did plow...A video of Jim on the tractor. He looks so happy.