Middle of the Week........

The bucket boy is not liking all the snow.  His bucket is buried and his snow on the head probably is irritating. I was out in the afternoon shoveling walks and taking photos.  By the time that I had completed the shoveling the temps dropped on me and I was frozen clear through.  I hate it when it is so cold that blue jean denim freezes while you are wearing it.

I shoveled out a path to get to the back yard and also in front of the gate.  If the snow gets to be too heavy the back gate can't swing open. The yew bush collected a lot of the snow and only parts of it was weighted down from it.

This is the part of the sidewalk that seemed to make people concerned.  My wife was upset that I did it all in one fell swoop.  The neighbor drove by and scolded me and said he would catch it with his snow blower.  I was just innocently shoveling my walks. I went ahead and did a part of the other neighbors walk as I though it to be rude to just stop at the property line.

My new camera has a loop that keeps getting into the photo as you can see.  I like to have it as the camera is thin and light weight and it is better to loop my hand through it to pick it up.  I should eventually get use to putting the loop around my hand as I take a shot.

The tree outside with the plastic ornaments now looks better.  I guess it needed snow to make it tie all those dots together.  It would look good with white lights but it is too big of a tree for me to do that.

I had a crew of high school guys and a couple of adults down to the farm helping clean out the barn.  I didn't know how it was going to get done but I had my old wheel barrow already on site.  My gut feeling was to go get another one.  So in December right before Christmas I went to Ace Hardware and yes they have them for sale.  It had to be assembled and I and a young boy helped me do it,  but it was needed.  My old one broke apart because of its old age and heavy use. Someone who had borrowed it in the past and put concrete in it. They caused a lot of damage.  When the old one collapsed the new one did a great job for the task at hand. Right now it is holding a lot of snow for me.  It actually is a heavy resin, plastic, which makes it lighter weighted. I really like it better than than the metal one that I had.  I will toss the big old wooden one this spring.

 The female cardinal likes eating from a paper plate.  It was a quick and easy way to get the seed out there and not have to clear any snow. It was very busy out at the feeders yesterday and today it seems slow.  It may be too cold for them today. Tthe sun is shining so maybe they will come in by noon.

So much seed and so little time to eat it.  The cardinal is looking for sunflower seeds and the sparrows don't really care fot them. This was yesterday's shot.

Staying warm inside and shut off to the outside world.  I doubt I will even try to get uptown to get the mail.  The high temperature today is to be a -2 and up to 0 degrees F. We are a -7.9 right now. The light breeze cuts the cold through all the layers of coats.  A warm up to 16 F. tomorrow will be like a heat way.  Thanks for stopping by today.

A Cold Greeting from Iowa.......

Yesterday's shot of one of my cardinals enjoying the black sunflower seeds.  We had about 7 inches of snow since I last blogged and the feeders are all covered with snow.  It was very cold early morning and it is about -9.5 degrees F.  right now.  It seemed too cold to deal with the feeder situation so I took out on inverted plastic lids mounds of seed.  I just set them on top of the snow for now and will go out and clear the snow later.  It isn't going to warm up much bu maybe a few less negative degrees and I can go out and clear them.

The plastic lids of seed are a real hit right now as I have seen two cardinals male and one female cardinal.  A bluejay came by but he didn't like the looks of me in the window. I have a nuthatch and a lot of woodpeckers this morning showing up for breakfast. I have one suet cake that is almost gone after all the feeding the past two days.

The resulting tree tipping over allowed me to go ahead and hold it up with one hand and remove the ornaments with the other. My wife thought I had planned it this way but no I wanted to get the weight off of the tree and I wanted to get the tree away from the area.  My wife helped me box them up so I could put them in storage.  The tree has been put away but will have to be repaired at its base before I put it up again next  year. I started counting and thought I didn't really want to know exact count.  There were 50 plus on the one side so I figure there were over a 100 on the tree. It may be time for a bigger tree.

I get the birds confused when they hang independently away from each other but I now know which ones are which.  A swan a swimming is at the bottom and the French hen is above it. The top one is actually a dove, not a partridge and the partridge is the one to the right of it.  Then the next one is a part of the geese a laying.

The two trains are packed up in the box and are upstairs.  I don't display all of the small train.  So I need to put the stray extras now into this box.

Someday I would like to display them on shelves but that doesn't seem to be a part of my life's plan right now Getting them all into one box in a good storage box is the best I can do.  I do have a windup tin train that I need to get place in a container of its own.

It is very cold and the snow from yesterday had the sparrows in a nervous frenzy to find food.  This is yesterday's photo and once I get the feeders cleared it will look like this again today.   Right now I am watching squirrels chasing each other as if they are having territorial fights to get to this feeder.  We see squirrels run down a tree trunk and drop to the ground normally but I have never seen them jump into the snow.  The snow just flies out like an explosion.

It will be a good day to do nothing.  I have small things to do but nothing too difficult.  Eating  Amish bread that was given to us and drinking tea and coffee seems to be high on my list today.  I can shoot photos of the birds off and on all day and staying warm will be the goal.

I hope all of you who are not use to the Siberian express will be able to stay in today.  Minnesota bloggers know the cold well and those from Ohio, Indiana and Iowa get their fair share of blistering cold winds.  But those of you in the warmer states will probably have to wear coats today.  Be careful out there and thanks for stopping by today.

Things That Interrupt Blogging......

I started  to take a couple of ornaments off my tree with glass blown ornaments on it. I was going to take a couple of shots for the blog.  All seemed well when the last ornament I took off was stubborn.  The base of my tree proceeds to make a cracking sound, it's plastic, and the tree tries to lay down on the table.  I did catch it.  So instead of blogging I took over 100 ornaments off the tree and laid them down on the table.  I didn't have time to go to get the box so half the table is now covered up with these things.  The tree is leaning now on the floor ready to be taken upstairs.  I guess I can get back to blogging. 

I took time to take away the geranium blooms that were spent on the plants yesterday.  As you can see it looks like a small nosegay of spent flowers. If I added a fancy ribbon around the stems and tied it into a bow it would look authentic.  The plants are budding now with small flower heads as which they do in the winter time being inside.

Six out of nine of my violets have some blooms on them.  Some are petty small groups of blooms and three of them have large numbers of blooms.

While out trying out the new camera I took a close shot of the birch.  I don't think the blue cast on the photo is the camera's fault.  I was still learning about settings and I didn't have it on the right mark.

It is a slow Monday so far as we are awaiting a snow storm.  I did go get the mail uptown but that will be it for my traveling today. 

It will be a good day to stay inside and stay warm.  The house seems to stay warm unless there is a 45 mile an hour wind coming out of the north. That was Saturday night but it calm out there this morning.  It does look like it will snow as it is an overcast day with lots of clouds.  I wish you all well today.  I read of many who are having cold weather in the south today.  It seems we are to have a long cold winter with our lows staying in the negative numbers all this week.  Everyone take care and thanks for checking in on me.

Sunday.........

We had been very cold a month ago but the iris must have had snow covering it.  I noticed last week that a lot of my iris new starts are doing very well.  I can see the sprouts from the rhizomes looking very good.

A piece of clay tile can still be seen around on the farms but it is not being used anymore.  Plastic is the new drainage pipe and the laying of these end to end underground is in the past.  Farm fields were drained with these as well as sewer drains. This one is going to get a plant put into it this spring.

The only real antique on this tree is the green acorn one.  I get jealous when I see bowls full of these in magazine articles featuring antique ornaments.  This one was from my wife's family.  Other ornaments you see on this tree are all replicas of the original German designs.  You can see a white replica of the acorn at the bottom of the photo.  The shape has become very popular again as you can buy them in various colors and sizes now brand new of course.

The two small trees will probably be the first to go.  The one on the dining room table is a problem sitting there now as we have to look around it to watch and photograph the birds.

I hope all of you are well today.  We have very cold winds today with a little snow.  We will probably still head out for church as we have a Sunday school job to do.  Everyone have a good day and thanks for stopping by.

Saturday's Sharing..........

It is getting to be time to take these down.  My new fenced area next to the blue gate had some lights on them this Christmas.  I would like to leave them up though so that they can be seen with snow on them.  The lights being removed from the fence are not top on my list of things to do.

Milk can, mower and antique gas can all in a jumble.  The old can has liquid in it which I am assuming that it is gasoline.  I haven't opened it up yet after bringing it from the farm to see what its contents really could be.

Big and small are in competition.  I never would have dreamed to be able to get a shot like this.  The hairy woodpecker is on the left and the downy wood pecker is on the right.  I have seen three downy woodpeckers on the feeder at one time so  I  don't actually know how many really are out there. More females show up than males at this time.  There is a pair of hairy woodpeckers as the male has a large red top notch and the female seems to have less red.   I bought some black oil sunflower seeds yesterday and I will put out small portions each day to draw in the cardinals, nuthatches and chickadees.

The trees will start to come down soon.  The in the photo is a singing dog as he woofs out "jingle bells" when you press his paw.

Winter is here but the snow is missing us.  We have extreme cold and winds headed our way very soon.  They get the wind predictions right but the snow predictions seem wrong most of the time.

We were out for a short while yesterday to stock up on a few things.  We didn't have to go but it was a need to just get out of the house.  I think we are in for today though and will wait to see what happens to our weather.  Our furnace hums a long like it is suppose to and has not had a pilot light go out for a couple of weeks now.  I think that is the last of the trouble shooting on that for a while.  I did find an old bearing and bracket in the basement that looks like the piece that started all my furnace problems.  I will share it some time in the future. 

I wish all of you a good day today and hope the weather is not a threat to you.  Thanks for stopping by today.

First Friday of 2015........

I have found that it is best for me not to try to identify my birds for you.  I seem to get it all wrong.  I know that this is a hairy woodpecker because of its size.  I know that this guy is new to the feeder as I have never seen the large red topnotch before today.  I am thinking that it was the female hairy that I took photos of yesterday. There is a big difference between the hairy and the downy.

 I did explain that the book says the hairy is the size of a robin.  I need to clarify that as over across the seas the robin is a small round bird.  Our American robins are big and they really are from the thrush family. The were misnamed by the early settlers of this country.  I actually took this photo with my new camera with a lot of trial and error.

I was trying to get a shot of this feral cat that was watching the birds when the woodpecker flew in for seeds stuck in the suet.  We leave food out for cat but she leaves quickly if she sees either of us in plain sight.  She had two kittens this year and one of them did come to the cat feeder at the door during the evenings this summer.

The angel lights that we incorporate in our garland are oldies but goodies.  The were bought at the Younker's store at downtown Des Moines.  We would always go to the store and eat after Christmas in their Tea Room and then look around in the store.  It is a high end store so we usually just looked at all the sales.  These angels were in their close out sale of Christmas items.  They have held up well except for the little plastic wings keep falling off.

The downtown Younker's burned this fall and is now just an empty hole in the ground.  The section where the grand tea room  was did not burn and hopefully the investors will try to bring that back.  One of my students at school has grandparents and parents who own the lease contract to replace the building.

No snow on my weather rock today.  The rock is getting a lot of action by having the squirrel's knock it off to the ground as they rob seed from the bird feeder on the railing.  We keep getting warnings but they just can't predict snow this year accurately this winter.  Maybe Saturday evening we will have snow.  The do predict the cold correctly and it will be back very soon.

My snowman on the birdhouse decoration only looks good during the winter.  It too gets knocked off a lot onto the ground by the not so much starving squirrels. 

The first sign of spring is the arrival of seed catalogs.  I have my very first one and it arrived the day after Christmas.  I rarely buy from them but I do follow one company on the net.  I am sure all the other companies explore that following and send me the catalogs.

No plans today so far.  It is good to get some rest from this busy world.  I hope everyone is well and thanks for stopping by today. 

New Year's Day........

I am wishing for all of you to have time to fly your kite during this year.  Maybe too I hope the strings don't get to be too tangled and there is more time to fly than there is time to untangle. Have a good year.