WINTER HAS ARRIVED #2

A relatively warm day on the Saturday before the snow really fell. We had had about a quarter to a half inch on last Friday the remains of which you can see in the background. Uma travels down to open her two Subway shops before daylight and I frequently accompany her part way either to walk back a mile or so or else to don my roller skis and return by a longer route. It is convenient to look out onto the back porch to see how cold it is going to be and decide what to wear

A day or so later, the scene is a little different. I inspect the back yard on skis! I also took a little tour of the immediate neighborhood. At the rear, behind me, I skied down to visit my friends Lenwood and his daughter, Tiffany. Lenwood was clearing his drive of snow, a task I had just completed. With that done, I could not resist donning the skis and setting out.

YES; WINTER HAS ARRIVED

So, here I am in the front garden of Uma's house all ready to get out on the skis for a tour of the yard and then a look at the neighborhood. This was on Sunday last and we have had snow off and on since, with a little freezing rain to make it interesting. As I write, this Tuesday morning, we have light snow flurries that look to be increasing in strength. Back in Portland, there is really serious rain with floods and road closures, including the main Interstate running between Mexico and British Columbia.

Hard to imagine now that all those Fall tasks are behind me. All the leaves and lawn clippings now slumber in three compost heaps, covered with snow.

The wood from the fir tree, it turns out, does not burn all that well. Besides, having covered most of the windorws on the inside with clear plastic wrap and researched the problems of keeping heat in the house, I have found that a fire is more likely to cool the house than heat it. This does not mean that one cannot have a fire but the hot air that goes up the chimney has to be replaced by fresh cold air from the exterior. Not such a good idea.

FALL TASKS

Here is a little story to show you what other chores have come my way beside mowing, composting and bread baking. Unfortunately, the posts as in reverse order so I must leave you to make sense of them since I have not yet figured out if it is possible to reorder them.
The composting proceeds apace as does the weekly loaf of bread. More on them later.

ABOUT AS FIR AS I CAN GO

Now I have a good bit of firewood for the Winter. Some is a little green and will have to be split if it is to burn. With the compost bins and lots of small branches that will do for kindling, I find that I spend quite a bit of time at the bottom of the yard. This has has led to occasional evening meetings with with my neighbors. Chris and Jan have recently moved in next door while Lenwood and Angie have been living in the house at the rear for almost a year. They have two children (Troy and Tiffany) while the recent arrivals have two dogs and an electronic fence to keep them in. You can see that there is a terrific chopping block waiting to be used. Trouble is we do not have either an axe or a tomahawk as yet.

Fall Tasks #2

So, Here I am in the thick of it, with the work well advanced.
I expect that we will be able to burn this wood in the fireplace in the living room. Anyway, here I am working with the bow saw cutting up the branches removed.






Sawing away at it!






The tree is now much more free of unnecessary growth. I have used rope to pull several branches over to fill in the space made by heavy pruning.

So, here I am having a look at the task in hand; actually, I am well into it at this stage. I have not attempted to prune and shape such a large tree before. It took several days to think out the best way to approach it. Some branches were broken or had spit under the weight of foliage. It seemed that the bottom third of the tree was desperate for sunlight with branches stretching out and criscrossing in the interior of the tree. I figured that some branches could be retrained to fill gaps resulting from the removal of large broken branches. Removing these brances enabled me to enter the tree to clean out the old, dead wood.

Wednesday, November 7. Well, the weather is certainly shifting hereabouts. Very slight snow flurries are falling as I write and the temperature is in the low 40's. We have had a couple of mornings when it has fallen to the low 20's. Seems like the Fall is shaping up for the onset of Winter. Nonetheless we have had fine days and probably need some precipitation as things are quite dry. Here you see where I live...


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That fir tree on the right had been let go for years with little attention; mowing around it was a real bug bear. Uma and I decided that the time had come to thin it out a little at the base. You would not believe how convoluted the growth was. "Woodman, spare that tree."do I hear you cry?