Wednesday, March 08, 2006, 19:42
The Word For The Day Is. . .Quagmire!
I have always thought that the phrase "March Madness" should be altered to "March Mudness."
Most of the snow that fell on Sunday is now almost melted, plus it rained last night. The driveway, the area by the barn and Isabelle's pasture have turned into a quagmire.
For the next month, until the frost goes out and the ground dries up, Kajun will be squelching around in mud -- and so will Isabelle. Actually, I will be wading through mud, too. And so will Pixie and Charlie. (I hope Pixie doesn't wade through *too* much mud, though. She is, after all, a house dog, and there are limits as to the number of times I can give the dog a bath in a week or the number of times I am willing to wash the floor).
I should have been prepared for the mud to develop overnight. But I wasn't. It always takes me by surprise that one day the ground can be firm and the next day, the whole world has turned into a quagmire.
Isn't that a wonderful word, though -- quagmire? It seems so appropriate sounding -- quaaaaaag-- miiiiiire.
The dictionary says a quagmire is "soft miry land that yields under the foot."
Synonyms in the Random House Thesaurus include "soft muddy ground" -- "marsh" -- "bog" -- "slough" -- "swamp" -- "sludge" -- "ooze."
"Sludge" and "ooze" seem fitting. Personally, I would also add "goop" and "goo" and "slop" to the list. Except that nobody at Random House asked me.
I should probably get some new rubber boots to wear outside. The ones I've got now have cracks along the side of the foot. I would have wet socks in no time if I wore those outside. And not only wet socks -- but white socks turned black!
Yipee! It's a quagmire! Spring is on the way!
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, March 07, 2006, 20:13
Stormy Weather. . .
I am happy to report that Randy made it home on Sunday from the ice fishing weekend at his mom and dad's house. All together, we ended up with four inches of snow on Sunday. Not such a great amount, but it was heavy, wet, slippery snow, and the during the last hour of my husband's trip home, he drove 35 or 40 mph in four-wheel drive. The visibility was pretty poor, as well.
According to the weather forecast, the snow on the Sunday was only the start of stormy weather this week. Monday it was mostly cloudy with a few breaks in the clouds and patches of blue sky and tiny bit of sunshine. And that, as I understand it, was going to be the nicest day of the week!
Today it is cloudy with a strong wind out of the south. The weather forecast this morning said it would start raining tonight and that we might even get some thundershowers or thunderstorms before the rain turned to snow.
The stormy, unsettled weather, of course, is all part of Mother Nature's plan to change over from winter to spring. March generally ends up being a wet and snowy month around here -- just at the time when I am getting extremely tired of snow. Even though we haven't had much snow this year.
And speaking of spring, my daylilies are hopeful that spring is not too far away. They have started growing on the east side of the house where they are a little more protected. Every spring the daylilies on the east side of the house start growing early. Depending on how much sunshine we have in one particular year and whether the air temperature is warmer during the day and not so cold at night, sometimes the daylilies are four inches tall in March.
But when the daylilies get to be four inches tall in March, that's generally when we have a cold snap with below zero windchills and they end up frozen and withered. I have not noticed that being frozen off early in the year has ever hurt them, though. As soon as the weather warms up again, they work on coming back from the roots, and then late in June and early in July, they bloom and bloom and bloom.
I wonder what Grandma Inga would think to know that the daylilies she watered with her dishwater during the dry years of the Great Depression 70 years ago are still going strong?
Pheasant -- We finally got a picture of the rooster pheasant who has been hanging around the yard, visiting the horses and eating oats and bird seed. I saw him out by the birdfeeder this morning. Randy tried to get a picture of him first, but when the pheasant saw movement in the house, he scurried up the driveway and away from the house. A few minutes later he came back while I was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. I slowly reached for the camera and tried to get pictures of him while I was still sitting down so I wouldn't scare him off. Didn't work very well. A while later, the pheasant returned, and this time, Randy was able to get a picture of him, although as you can tell from the picture, Mr. Pheasant is once again hurrying to get away from the house as fast as he can because he saw Randy moving by the window.
LeAnn R. Ralph
