Greetings From Blizzard Central

The Mid-Atlantic Blizzard of 2016.  It's been all over the national news for a week or more ... before, during, and (now) after the event.  We get measurable snow here regularly during an average winter, but this much snow, and a storm of this magnitude, is extremely rare for us.

Settle in and let me tell you all about it.

Friday ... We had a beautiful sunrise on Friday morning.  Made me think of the old rhyme:  "Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning."

In preparation, we stocked up on anything that we needed in case we were snowed in for a few days.  I made a quick stop at the grocery store on Friday morning, to grab the last couple of things that I had forgotten to buy earlier in the week.  The weather soothsayers were warning that we should EXPECT to lose power, so we were prepared for that, too.

The snow was predicted to begin at noontime, and it did ... gently, at first.  The first of my snow progress photos from the front porch was taken at 12:30 pm.  I took another photo every hour as long as we had daylight.  I also planted a yardstick in the front yard, to keep track of how much snow accumulated.

12:30 pm

1:30 pm

2:30 pm

3:30 pm

4:30 pm

5:15 pm

Friday evening and all through the night, the wind blew, the snow fell, and our power stayed ON.

Saturday morning.  The wind was howling and the snow was blowing ... total on the Snow Stick at 7:30 am was fourteen inches.  At 8:00 it was thirteen inches.  All the blowing and drifting meant that it was going to be impossible to get an accurate reading of total snowfall, no matter where I measured,  Oh, well.

7:30 am

11:30 am

3:30 pm ... blowing like crazy!

From time to time, on both Friday and Saturday, my husband or I would go out and shovel our porch and the front steps.

First, shovel ...

... then, sweep.

And the snow continued to fall.

Thank goodness for a very timely post that a friend shared last week on Facebook, with a genius idea to help with providing a place for Winnie to do her 'business' during the storm.  We secured a small tarp to the ground before it started snowing, in a spot convenient to the back door.  Whenever Winnie needed to go out, we shoveled and/or swept the snow off the tarp and peeled it back, exposing bare ground.

This tarp idea was a lifesaver!!

Sweep off any accumulated snow between turn outs,

fold back the tarp, and Winnie had bare ground so she could do her 'business'.

Ruby has never minded or had a problem with snow.  She found that the snow in the area near the fence is shallower, and she runs out, does her thing, and comes right back.  She's such a good girl.

At least twice during the day on Saturday, I saw our farmer neighbor from up the road ... out with his big John Deere, doing what he could to help keep our road passable.

Saturday afternoon, into Saturday evening, it kept snowing ... sometimes to the point where it was difficult to see to the road.

Despite the fury of the wind and snow outside, the humans and critters inside were warm and safe.  Late Saturday night, the snow and wind finally stopped.  It had snowed heavily and continuously for 35 hours (from 12:30 pm on Friday to 11:30 pm on Saturday.)  No power outage ... for that, I am thankful.

Sunday, we woke to bright blue sky and the promise of a beautiful Dig-Out Day.  The Snow Stick showed seventeen inches of snow, with drifts in places that looked to be twice that high.

View through the dining room window, with a sunbeam illuminating our barn.

The ridges and rolls in our flat front yard show just how much the snow blew and drifted during the storm.

We were a little bit ahead of the digging out, having kept our porch and steps shoveled and swept like we did during the storm itself.  My husband headed to the garage to get the snow-blower, and our daughter and I started with the front walk and our cars.

The dry, powdery snow sent up quite a plume with the snow blower!

Front walk and steps, all cleared!

Next, we shoveled a path to clear the cars.

The bright sunshine soon melted any remaining snow on surfaces that we cleared.

He's still blowing snow from the driveway.

All of this activity kept Dorothy and Alice quite entertained.

With the steps, front walk, and cars cleared, I turned my attention to freeing the dryer vent ... which was somewhere down a half-flight of steps to the moat in front of our house, and underneath a five-foot snow drift.  There's nothing like knowing that I can't do something (in this case, laundry) to make me obsess about wanting to do it.

The vent is down there somewhere, but the snow is so big and so deep and so tall!

Success!  (green arrow indicates the vent).

After a lot of blowing and shoveling, which took us until mid-afternoon, we were completely dug out ... just in time to spend the rest of the day watching football.

Look carefully and you'll see our daughter in the distance, touching up the last of the snow on that end of our circular driveway.

This morning (Monday) dawned much like it had on Friday ... with a beautiful, but more gentle, sunrise.  I put on my coat and walked to the street, taking in the unique atmosphere that comes with a clear morning and a thick coating of fresh snow.

Sunrise was mostly pink and purple this morning ...

... casting a rosy glow onto our house ...

... with beautiful, diffused light reflected by the fresh snow.

Hello, Moon.

We were very lucky during this storm, to have everything prepared ahead of time and no responsibilities outside besides the potty needs of our dogs.  Our neighbors with horses and other livestock have some hairy stories to tell about keeping their critters safe ... there were even a couple of horse rescues.  In the end, we all helped each other as best we could, and everyone (and every critter) were safe.

Thirty Days of Mr. Rogers ... Day Nineteen (and Twenty)

Mr. Rogers said, "Each generation, in its turn, is a link between all that has gone before and all that comes after.  That is true genetically, and it is equally true in the transmission of identity.  Our parents gave us what they were able to give, and we took what we could of it and made it part of ourselves.  If we knew our grandparents, and even great-grandparents, we will have taken from them what they could offer us, too.  All that helped to make us who we are.  We, in our turn, will offer what we can of ourselves to our children and their offspring."

Yesterday morning, this was the reading on my thermometer on the kitchen windowsill.  The outdoor sensor is in a protected spot in the back yard.  Twelve degrees is WAY colder than normal for any winter day in Hartwood, and off the charts for November, but I count my blessings that we didn't have it as bad as many other parts of the US.

Grandparents are both our past and our future.  In some ways they are what has gone before, in others they are what we will become.

Temperature at about the same time today ... twenty degrees warmer than yesterday.

Me:  I never really knew my grandparents in person.  They lived in southern California. As an Army Brat (a label that I wear with great pride), we only lived in California for two very short times when I was very young, while my father was deployed overseas.  Other than that, I only remember seeing my grandparents when they would come to visit us or we would visit them.  Most of what I know about them has been shaped by old photographs and stories told by my parents.

My daughters, on the other hand, have always lived close enough to their grandparents so they know each other very, very well.  Each daughter has real memories of spending time doing everyday things with grandparents ... things like cooking, or bike riding, or sleepovers.  Thanksgiving and Christmas were, and still are, filled with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  This is the way that my husband grew up, and it is perfectly normal for him that our children have such a close relationship with so much extended family.

Our grandchildren live a short 18 miles away in the next county ... close enough for my husband and me to be a true part of their lives ... and, for this, I am infinitely thankful!

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During the month of November, I plan to share wisdom from Mr. Rogers with you each day (from the book "The World According to Mr. Rogers") ... Mr. Rogers's words accompanied by everyday images from life here at Hartwood Manor ... this place that I am blessed to call HOME.

Did You Miss Me?

Oh, my, has it really been over a week since I checked in?  I have done so much in the past nine days, and done a whole lot of nothing, too ... if that makes sense. Let's dive right in and I will do my best to catch you up with all the fascinating things that have been happening in Hartwood.

Monday morning's view from our dining room window.

When we left off last week, I was head down, working furiously to prepare for the rose volunteer work day at Hollywood Cemetery.  This winter's cold and snow delayed my visits there to evaluate the roses till the very last minute (stressful).  In a matter of two days, I wrote up my notes, updated my rose map, divided the cemetery's roses into ten sections for the ten teams of volunteers, and made assignment sheets for each team ... and I crossed my fingers, hoping that I hadn't forgotten to do something important.

My sweet husband, clearing off my Jeep ... in case we needed to go anywhere (which we didn't)

I needn't have worried because the work day itself went off perfectly.  Twenty volunteers divided into the ten teams made quick work of the pruning and training that the roses required.  We started at 10am, and everyone was finished and on their way home by 3pm.  You will be surprised to hear that I didn't take a single photo that day.  Instead of supervising and photographing, I was a member of the crew with my own set of roses to work on.  I hope to get photos from other people that were there and share them with you soon.

Snow sure is pretty.

On Sunday, The Husband and I went to an event called "Treasures From the Attic", sponsored by our county's historical society.  The object of the event was for residents to bring items for the historians to see, so their stories and images could be recorded and preserved.  We brought the cannon ball that I found while planting roses in the garden back by our barn.  No one could say for sure what weapon it was made for, but they did agree that it probably dated from before than the Civil War.

That's The Husband's Jeep under all that snow.

For the rest of the time, I have been doing things around the house ... you know, important stuff like laundry.  I also am continuing to excavate the hoarder's paradise that I call my sewing room, and I'm making real progress up there.  One day I will show it to you.  Today is not that day.

Our front yard, looking toward the southwest.

I have been bringing pieces of furniture up from the basement and working on them in the dining room.  In the last few days, I have painted and am almost finished with two end tables, two round tables, and a small nightstand.  This clears out space in the basement, but my dining room is trashed from using it as work space, and the living room isn't much better with the finished pieces stored in there.  It feels great, though, to have so many things almost ready to take to the Lucketts Spring Market in May.

Front yard, northwest.

The calendar now says Spring, but the weather for us has been all over the place.  We had beautiful weather and temperatures in the 70s for the Saturday of our workday at Hollywood Cemetery (yay!!!!).  Two days later, on Monday, we had 8 inches of snow on the ground.  Today, the snow is all gone and it is a sunny spring-like day ... but the weather guessers are saying that we have a very good chance of another snow storm early next week.  Temperatures up -- temperatures down.  Snow, rain, sun, fog, wind ... we have had it all this month.

This is our across-the-street neighbor.

Now that the work day at Hollywood Cemetery is behind me, I can now set my sights on continuing the reclamation of my own neglected garden.  Our unusually cold winter has undoubtedly caused considerable damage to my roses, but I'm okay with that.  Any losses provide opportunities.  The cycle of the seasons is something that gardeners have to accept.  This spring, I am excited to get outside and get to work ... staying indoors for most of the winter has been making me nuts!

It's weird having been away from here for so long ... gotta get back into the habit of writing and sharing again.  I missed you guys!!