Thursday, March 13, 2008, 05:06
Happy Splashing
I wish I could have gotten the camera to take a picture Tuesday afternoon, but I'm sure as soon as I got close enough with the camera, the birds would have left.
To my complete and utter shock, the temperature rose to 45 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday . The temperature has not gotten into the 40s since November 18 when it got up to 48 degrees.
On Tuesday, the warm temperature combined with sunshine melted a little of the snow at the edge of the driveway. For the first time in months, there was a puddle!
And let me tell you, it did not take the juncoes and chickadees long to discover there was a puddle. One little junco happily jumped into the water and started splashing like crazy, dunking his head and shaking out his feathers. A bunch of his junco buddies were waiting up in the big white pine at the edge of the yard for their turn.
The sun also was warm enough Tuesday to melt the snow in the black fry pan that is sitting on a little wooden table by the lilacs. During the summer, I keep the fry pans (I have a stainless steel fry pan for that purpose, too) filled with water for the birds to drink and to take a bath. During the winter, the fry pans fill with snow, but on Tuesday, the sun was warm enough to melt the snow.
While the juncoes splashed in the puddle at the edge of the driveway, a chickadee splashed in the black fry pan. More of his chickadee friends and neighbors waited in the lilacs for their turn to take a bath.
The happily splashing birds made me smile. They have been waiting for enough water to splash in all winter. Finally they got a day that was warm enough for them to get wet from head to toe. And they were not going to miss one minute of it.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 05:17
The Winter That Never Ends
It was 0 degrees Fahrenheit Monday morning. That makes 45 times since November 30 that the thermometer has been at 0 or below 0 here at Rural Route 2, with most of the temperatures being below 0. It has been right at 0 about five times.
Saturday morning the temperature was 16 degrees below 0. At first, I thought the thermometer must be "off" somehow. But then I noticed there was frost on the strip underneath the back door. The strip gets frost on it when the temperature is 10 below 0 or colder outside. So there was no mistake. It was 16 degrees below Saturday morning.
In the "good old days" when I was a kid, we got a lot more snow than we have been getting in recent years. This year, so far we have gotten 34 inches of snow. The average around here is between 50 and 60 inches. But when I was a kid, even though we were getting more snow, farmers could count on being able to get out in the fields in early April, and often, oats was planted by the middle of April.
In recent years, the fields have not been thawed out and dried up enough to plant anything until the beginning or the middle of May. This year, at the rate we're going, it will probably be June before the ground is warmed up enough to plant anything.
We also usually get a couple of snowstorms in March. In these last years when we've been in drought conditions, snow in March has added at least a little moisture to the ground to help the world green up when it warms up.
I think we've got too much of an Arctic weather pattern yet for March snowstorms, and I think it is possible we will not get any March snowstorms this year. The weather pattern would have to change drastically for it to warm up enough to snow here and for the air to have enough moisture in it to produce snow. That's not to say it couldn't change drastically. But the weather pattern has been the same for the last three and a half months and has not shown much inclination to change.
I have to smile to myself when I listen to public radio. The public radio programs in Wisconsin are broadcast from Madison or Milwaukee in the southern part of the state. People on public radio are complaining about how much snow they've gotten down there. The southern part of the state has had 90 inches compared to our 34 inches. I keep thinking I should call up and tell them not to complain, that not every part of the state has been blessed with snow and that the northern half of the state is in a drought and has been for the past four years. I don't imagine it would make them feel any better, though.
Clinic
I went back to the clinic in town on Monday for a follow-up visit. The physician assistant seems to think I have a hairline crack in my rib from all the coughing I did when I came down with the flu. A hairline crack, she says, will take six weeks to heal. I'm thrilled.
I got a prescription for a different pain medication to try. This one isn't supposed to make a person as groggy during the day as the Vicodin. I hope it does something for the pain. Otherwise I am just going to plan on giving up trying to sleep at night for the next six weeks because there is no way to get comfortable with so much pain in my rib cage. Doesn't matter how I lay or what I do with my arms and legs or what position I get into, that dog-gone rib hurts!
Duke
My big kitty cat Duke is holding his own with the anemia and the kidney failure. The Procrit is helping him feel stronger and is working to get some of his red blood cells back. He is getting more color into his ears and his gumline. And his appetite is better. He is now coming to find either me or Randy when he wants something to eat. He is able to jump up on the kitty food table in my office, but he likes to have someone put food down on the bathroom floor for him. So of course, when Duke comes to find one of us, we are happy to put some food out for him and close the bathroom door so he can eat in peace. It's good to see him want to eat. He is enjoying being brushed now again, too.
Time Change
I don't know about anyone else, but I have a feeling I am going to be spending the next six weeks wondering what time it REALLY is. Talk about throwing me for a loop. Who's dumb idea was it to go to Daylight Saving Time in early March again? It was just to the point here at Rural Route 2 that it was starting to be light outside first thing in the morning. Now it's dark outside first thing in the morning. A person waits all winter long for it to be light in the morning, it finally gets to that point, and then all at once, it's dark again.
Last fall I did an interview with an economic professor about Daylight Saving Time for a newspaper story. Daylight Saving is not, he says, a way to save energy. In fact, very little energy gets saved at all. The real reason for DST is so that it is light out later in the evening, which makes people feel like driving someplace to go shopping or to otherwise spend money.
So -- this upheaval in people's lives is not at all about saving energy and helping the environment and reducing global warming and reducing carbon emissions. It is just about getting people to spend money on gasoline and other things.
Well, guess what. People don't HAVE any money to spend. Not when gasoline is over $3 a gallon and the price of everything else has been going up at a steady rate. I heard an estimate on television that gasoline is supposed to go up by 30 percent by the end of the summer, which will put it up to over $4 a gallon.
I talked to another person who said she had heard an "expert" estimate that gasoline will be up over $7 a gallon in a year or two. If it gets to that point, we may as well plan on just shutting down the country. If gas is $7 a gallon, Randy and I will be spending $600 a month just to drive to work. Five years ago, we were spending $150 a month on gasoline. If people think the mortgage foreclosure rate has been bad up to this point, just wait until gas is $7 a gallon. All of those young people who were duped into believing they should build a $300,000 house right away when they were in their mid-20s and put it on a 40-year or 50-year mortgage will no longer have to wonder if that was a wise move because they simply will not be able to afford it. Of course, the banks will be sitting with so much real estate on their hands that maybe they will let people live in the houses anyway, just to have someone living in the houses.
At any rate, as far as Daylight Saving is concerned, I don't know if anyone has calculated the lost productivity that results from such an early DST. But I would be willing to bet there is a lot of lost productivity. People are going to be spending at least a week, but probably much more time than that, wondering what time it is and trying to get back into a routine.
If people are spending the first several hours they are at work sitting around trying to get motivated, how much money is being wasted there? Is the amount of money people will spend on gasoline and going shopping and buying other things in the evening more than what is lost from people trying to get motivated in the morning?
How many millions of people are employed in this country? If every worker spends two hours trying to get something done first thing in the morning but is not very successful, how much money does that translate into? Are the legislators in this country incapable of thinking things like that? Maybe so. Especially when it is the oil companies and other industries who are doing the thinking for them.
LeAnn R. Ralph