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We also are privileged of the daily visits from two spotted grouse beneath the shelter of out large spruce trees. Being retired and winter days sometimes seem endless,they are truly a welcomed delight beneath our living room window

I started some indoor projects this winter season only to be lured outside with the unusually warm weather flowing down the west coast.  Yikes - time to prune fruit trees & harvest the earliest greens.Thanks all for expressing the nostalgia for winter so poetically.

I have noticed a baby possum a few years back on my property. Recently I saw a possum in the front yard and I went near it and it just stood there looking up at me so I started talking in a cutesy voice to it and it walked right up to me tipping its head from side to side and when I walked off it then walked back to the woods beside my home. I have a havahart trap set under my bird feeders for squirrels and 3 times in the last week my little possum was in there eating the peanut butter sandwich that was in there for the squirrels. As I type now it is in the trap with the door propped open having its lunch…lol I now call him/her Peaches! I took a furniture blanket and covered the trap except for the door as its snowing and cold and Peaches seems content to wait out the storm. I love seeing Peaches come back day to day.

Your takes on the winter season is spot on. After a busy fall of wood cutting, deer hunting and putting the garden to bed I also look forward to “dormancy” of early winter. Soon after New Years it is time to get back at it, however the weather doesn’t always cooperate. I would love another few weeks at least of frozen ground, with a few inches of snow on the ground and temps in the low to mid twenties.

Lichen is everywhere and is common to the point of being boring.  And mushrooms are only interesting if you like to eat them.

That’s how I really saw them until I started trying to identify pictures of them I’ve been taking. Now I’m so obsessive when I start talking talking about lichen my kids are like “geez, again!”

But wow, they really are fascinating and useful.  And it became like a puzzle quest..how many different species can you find.  And some of them are like math equations or a rubrix, you have to go through a long list of if this than that.

And if you find a lot if the bushy kind of lichen, lucky you..you know you live in an area without that much air pollution.

Thanks for your comment John!

It is very interesting to consider.  I looked briefly to see what data exist on the great lakes.  NOAA has some fascinating information.  The data sets vary in duration and it’s difficult to choose a single long-term data set.  There’s ice thickness, % ice cover and at what date that particular % occurred and where.  It’s worth a look: https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/

The beauty of the Lake Champlain data set is it’s easy to explain, even with the potential inconsistencies.  And the pond data sets have simplicity and consistency.

Good piece. Thanks. It might be interesting to also look at ice data for the Great Lakes where there may be better and more consistent data. I enjoyed flying over Erie and Ontario last week and seeing the giant ice jigsaw puzzles (see link above) but many years in the past there has been no ice.

Keep writing.  Sweet passage on time travel in this season.  Never thought of needing another month between Jan/Feb—already the longest month of my year.

We have 3 opposums coming to our back deck.  We call them Billy1 (big boy) Billy2 (medium size) and Little Billy.  Little Billy has frostbite on his tail and licks his feet a lot.  I feed them Ocean Smelts, apples and peanuts mostly.  They seem to live under the Gazebo and deck. It has been extremely cold this winter, down to -25C, and I’m concerned about Little Billy.  Wonder if I should trap him and take him to a wildlife vet.

1971, built our first home burned wood in Franklin stove,1976 older hot air furnace wood heat and a lovely fireplace wood heat.1981, built our 3rd home and heated with wood boiler add on. 2001, built our retirement home and have heated with wood boiler add on, this year our insurance company charged an extra $100 dollar/year surcharge for wood stove heating. I cut all my wood from my neighbor’s farm at a small cost, so I suppose we may continue our long romance with great wood heat for a few more years. Our home is never cold and we have saved thousands. Our oil tank was last filled in 2005 and still has a half oil in it. Last 16 years, 100+ cords cut have been salvaged, dead trees from 400 acres.

There’s something about wood stoves that warms the body, the mind, and the soul. It connects you to the earth, and to the past.

It’s probably a mental thing, but nothing like it warms, REALLY warms. With the baseboard heat going strong It can be plenty warm in the house, temperature-wise, and I shiver. But fire up the stove, and almost immediately comfort floods the mind and the senses, even before the cat hops up on my lap.

Pitch perfect as I “linger over coffee… with my back to the wood stove.”

Enjoyed it immensely.

Yes, to more real winter with fresh snow, not rain. Real winter is beautiful.

My dog met a porcupine one snowy winter, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence from me and I could only plead with her to come back fearful of what was about to transpire.  But no, the dog and porcupine sniffed noses, turned and walked away from each other.  Astounding!

Dave,

I’ve been working off and on the last month at a sugaring operation of 27,000 taps in Underhill. Been tapping for weeks now to get done in time. I was coming out of the woods last night, watching the sunset over the Adirondacks and I realized it was well past five o’clock and it was still light. It was not only a wonderful view, but also a cheering feeling of satisfaction to spend a day in the winter woods and know that spring would be here soon enough. The changes of the seasons is one of the holds that Vermont has on me. And as I age, I find it easier and comforting to revel in each one as it comes and goes. I wouldn’t say I want winter to last longer. Sometime I think God made March in case eternity proves too brief. But I know that each winter here is one that adds to my list of challenges met, and memories to cherish.

Hoping the Sap is Sweet,

Bill

I am gratefull for my partial retirement that allows me to persue my favorite winter recreations of backcountry skiing and nordic ice skate touring and exploring, both of which have had fairly spectacular windows this season so far…we’ll have to see what’s in store for Feb., Mar., and beyond….I am not near ready to give up on winter!

Around here, everything is frozen solid so that it’s almost impossible to get out and do anything.  My spiked shoes , snowshoes and Yak Trax don’t even do the job so it seems like a time for hibernation.  Think I’ll go take a nap!

Collect mantis cocoons during the winter fr my garden. Not for pest control but because they are so cool to watch. One day my girlfriend came in from doing some weeding and asked. “How often do butterfly’s shed their wings” I laughed and said every time the mantis eats one. I looked and there were about thirty yellow and white wings around one bush.

Ditto to all your comments including sleeping cats, Laurie. I’m 71; started with wood stove and fireplace as a baby (not literally) at a summer place in the Great Lakes, and now 46 years with a kitchen range and living room glass-front Osborne.
There is nothing like wood heat, and this old house from around 1870 really requires wood heat to be comfortable.  As a kid one of my favourite activities in summer was walking the woods collecting birch kindling; still one of my favourite things to do, and it gets me out and rambling.

Hi Jeremy,
You are correct, it’s quite a way from the Winooski River to the nearest salt marsh.  Greenheads are in the same family as deerflies, but a different species.  They are mentioned because the coastline is a good marker against which to measure flight distance.  It would be much harder to do this with deerflies unless you could identify a single pond with no others in an area.  Thanks for your comment.