The winter has been shockingly warm compared to the past winters we have had here in our part of Idaho. I took a photo last week while warming the truck up to take the girls to school that I thought demonstrated just that. It was of the rain on the windshield. It was just after seven in the morning on February 15th. We were only a week or so past the dead middle of winter and it was raining early in the morning! I could not believe it! Any normal winter and we would have had snow instead! But not this year. It snowed this morning though, as a storm blew through! I fed the animals and shot two photos of what it looked like as I did. Those looked far more typical of what Idaho should look like this time of year.
To be honest, the snowfall seems minimal, but it is usually spring when it falls the most, as the weather warms, and the seasons ready for a change. It has fallen a fair amount for the year, but with the warmth and the rain, it has melted more quickly than usual. That is probably a fair assessment and explains the water forming what looks like a lake in the field behind our house. The moisture is there, but it is just not there in its normal fashion.
Rainfall at a little past even in the morning reminds me more of English or even Californian winter weather!
Perhaps we will pick up a lot more snow in the spring this year. and perhaps it will also come in unusual form instead of snow. So long as it is snow when it hits the mountain tops! And that brings up the next concern. It needs to be snow on the mountains so it can last till early July or so. Then it can melt in the summer heat and come down to the river to be pumped into the irrigation canals and eventually onto crops.
This winter has been unsettlingly warm, and I do wonder what the summer temperatures and weather will be like. Will it be much warmer than we are used to in summer too? Warm weather encourages thunderstorms, and thunderstorms encourage wind. What are we in for?
The horse is looking forward to the feed in the tractor bucket as I drive it along and shoot her photo. Hard to believe the field was clear of snow just yesterday. I expect it will be again soon!
All we can do is ride it out. But if it is exceptionally hot, I will still need to create firewood for the following winter, despite that. I will also need to work in the workshop despite it. That may mean nightshifts. So be it. I am not sure how to deal with the mill, but I will work something out. Maybe it requires building a shed with a roof over it for shade? Maybe it requires moving it? That is probably in the cards anyhow.
No matter the case, I need to work through it. My arthritis does not hurt like it has been the past I don’t know how many years. It is feeling much better thanks to some tablets I have been taking to reduce it. But even with them, I am limited. Before the tablets I would wake up sore and hurt all day. I would limp while walking. I would not be able to move much for long. Now I wake up feeling much better. I can work a while. What I cannot do it keep at it for long without it feeling a dull awful feeling that requires me to stop and rest off the pain, to the point of even having a short nap to recover. This year promised to be better, though with these limitations. But I will do what I can. I know for a fact I have passed this on to one child. It may have gone to even more. Time will tell. I just hope not, but if so, there is not much I can do apart from advise them of it and help them to work and will through it.
Looking down the road beyond where I turn to feed the llamas on the back pasture over the road from ours. Visibility was just shy of a mile. It’s not bad, but it landed as a surprise to me, full stop.
It’s not the summer I look forward to. It is the intermediary season of spring. Those in-betweens here are wonderful. I was told many years ago that the summers were nice here. They were not too warm. Even in 2010 the high temperatures for July and August were an occasional 93F with more falling in the 80’s than 90’s. By 2019 we saw the high reach 97F with several more days falling into the mid 90’s. Tree rings I have seen around here suggested to me that the 1980’s and before saw more rainfall, taking into account early wood growing years of a tree, as it does.
In other news, we are living with three cats in the house now. All of them are “fixed” and their attitudes towards each other and everything shows it. They wrestle together. The older one tolerates the younger ones better. He was fixed a while back, but he seems to have improved on the two young ones for them not producing so many hormones. I’d like to see them all shitting outside rather than in the litterbox in the house, and especially just in the house. I found three parcels under my desk upstairs, and they were just starting to go to town under Missus’s big loom in the library. We have a spray that is meant to stop them doing it where we spray, which is where they have gone. I am waiting with bated breath. We’ll see how they do! I have sprayed the entire upstairs carpet for good measure!
Wood is loaded into the fire for the evening. I am tempted to go up to bed early and watch some YouTube videos. There is no school tomorrow, so I can cancel the alarm and just enjoy the evening and the morning. Such rare opportunities should be taken. My wife is good at knowing that. I have been so ingrained with “you should be busy” that it is hard for me to remember it is okay to do such things, even when I am limited by my health. It is likely to snow again tomorrow, and a little bit likely the two days that follow it. High temperatures will hover around 40F throughout the next ten days, according to the forecast. Before long it will be real spring and the temps will begin to rise. It will be time to work hard and get done all the things that need to be around here. I have a long list.
There is much more I could talk about. Everything from politics to why I am not photographing as I should be. But a relaxing evening is calling to me, and I do wish to go and enjoy it thoroughly.