Monday, April 28, 2008, 05:44
Snowing Again
It started snowing again Sunday evening. When I went out to check on the horses, the trees were white with snow and so was the ground. The snow was coming down in thick, heavy flakes. Charlie waited under the cedar tree for me so that he could stay out of the snow.
The wind on Saturday finally died down some overnight. Sunday the wind was still blowing, but only at around 15 mph and out of the north. The high temperature Sunday afternoon with watery sunshine was 45 degrees. It definitely did not feel very much like spring.
The good news, though, is that Sunday afternoon Randy and I managed to finish cleaning up the piles of horse manure. Randy hauled it out with the tractor to the hayfield. So now if it ever dries up sufficiently, we will be able to begin working the field so it can be planted to oats and timothy. There's still some left in Isabelle's pasture, but I can haul that to the garden with the wheelbarrow.
Once again Sunday afternoon, Pixie was delighted to have a job to do. (Randy said I only needed to copy and paste my blog from the other day.) Pixie would retreat to lie under the cedar tree while we were loading the tractor bucket, then when Randy started the tractor, she would come racing across the lawn, barking and bouncing. When he got out to the field, she would go back to lying under the cedar tree to wait for him to come back.
While we were cleaning up around Kajun's pasture, we let him out into the other "L" pasture and shut the gate across the lane. This was the first time Kajun has been out in the other pasture this year. I let Isabelle out in the "L" pasture one day last week. If we can get some decent weather, I will alternate letting them out in the other pasture. If it is raining or snowing, it doesn't make any sense for me to open the gate for either one of them because when the weather is bad, they would rather stand inside to get out of the wind and the precipitation.
At least now that there's some grass for them to eat, we won't have to feed as much hay. Good thing, too, because out of the 300 bales we baled last summer, we've got about 12 bales left.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, April 26, 2008, 23:48
Snow and Much Colder
Earlier this week, the temperature was in the low 70s during the day, and it was warm and sunny. I became really spoiled over those couple of days. It was so lovely to go outside in a tee-shirt or a sweatshirt and not have to wear a coat and a stocking cap and gloves. I was able to get some of the horse manure picked up and a little yard work done, too.
I really thought spring had arrived, and that it was here to stay.
Silly me.
Thursday morning it began to rain. For the first time in years, we ended up with an all-day rain. Not a hard rain. Not thunderstorms. Just an all-day gentle rain. The rain stopped long enough Thursday evening so we could take Charlie for a walk. Then it started raining again.
Friday morning, it was still raining. It rained most of the morning, but in the afternoon, it stopped raining. All together, I think we got about an inch or and inch-and-a-half. Hard to tell because our rain gauge has a crack in the bottom of it. But it was a substantial amount of rain. Enough rain so that every low spot around had water collected in it.
Friday evening, the wind kicked up. When Randy and I went outside with Pixie, it was raining a little bit again.
"This feels sleetish," Randy said.
I checked the thermometer on the bird feeder post in the east side yard. The temperature was 30 degrees.
Saturday morning when we got up, it was snowing! And there was a layer of white on the ground already!
The snow wasn't the worst part of it though. It was the wind. Practically a gale-force wind out of the south and southwest, although sometimes it changed to the east for a while. There was a definite windchill in the air, and right away in the morning, it was 26 degrees Fahrenheit.
The temperature never got above 30 degrees for the rest of the day.
We took Charlie for a walk Saturday morning after I had fed the horses. We went into the woods across the road to try to stay out of the worst of the wind. It wasn't too bad when we were below the hill and in the trees. But out in the open, it was almost difficult to stand up because the wind was blowing so hard. And it was cold. The snow would sting when it hit you in the face.
Off and on during the day Saturday, it kept snowing with sudden squalls now and then and a howling wind out of the south/southwest. A very strange direction for the wind, considering that it was bringing a spring snowstorm with it. All day the wind boomed and howled and moaned and crashed and banged. When we got back from our walk with Charlie, we put him in his kennel. It was not a pleasant day for him to lie around outside, that's for sure.
When we went outside with Pixie later in the afternoon, we discovered that an oak tree on the east side of the yard had blown down in the howling wind. I would imagine there are more than a few trees (and probably quite a few branches) that have gone down around the area, considering how strong the wind has been blowing.
Randy went out with the Kodak to get pictures of the tree. From the yard, it doesn't look like much. But the stump shows it was a good-sized tree.
So much for getting any yard work or gardening done on Saturday.
LeAnn R. Ralph
