Wow! I've Got Some Bare Ground in my Yard

       Yes bare ground! I can hardly remember what it is! So here is a narrow strip of bare ground at the south end of my house. One meter away from the house is still covered with deep snow. Towards the fence the snow is about 60-70 cm.(24 in.) deep.

        April 4th is very late for us to still have snow. Usually all of our snow has disappeared by this date. Usually I have started with the first gardening tasks which around here is raking the grass to loosen the thatch. When raking is done it's time to dig the vegetable garden. Yes, I dig it by hand. I don't have a large area but it does take time.

       I'm hoping with this much bare ground the snow will thaw very quickly. Like everyone else I look forward to warmer temperatures and seeing perennials start. On one side of my house the bluebells have broken through  the ground and a lily of some sort has emerged.

     So I feel like I've really achieved something with a bare strip of ground. It was a very long winter!

April First is Awesome

          I've always liked a good practical joke.  A joke that's funny, but not mean or hurtful.

          I can remember riding to town with my Dad and we passed a farm where the farmer had all his equipment lined up on the side of a hill. With my devious little mind I could see that some of this equipment could be released and it would roll down the short hill. I thought it would be funny to see the farmer find that his equipment had rolled down the hill.

          In our country school there was a standard April Fool's joke. We would take the gong out of the bell so that the teacher would not be able to ring the bell and call us into the school. Most of the time the kids and teacher enjoyed this prank. We usually put the gong in the teacher's desk drawer.

          When I was a rookie teacher in a one room country school I was a spoil sport when it came to the standard bell trick. I took the gong out of the bell before the kids got to school.

          Today's April Fool's pranks are usually in the media. I must admit that some of them are very clever. Today we had a weather forecast for a winter storm warning.  Many people thought that this was an April Fools gag. Surprise , suprise! That was our valid weather forecast.

         Today I looked around for some good gags on the Internet. I only found one and it was in a blog that I follow. It was rather neat as it followed the theme of the blog and was backed up with excellent photos.

          So I hope that you enjoyed some humor today that was funny, but not hurtful or nasty. I hope that each day you find some humor to brighten your day.
        

Spring Has Sorta Come

        When I started Hiawatha House I did not intend to write very much about weather. This will be my eighth post this month about weather. I've joked about spring coming. I've whined about lots of snow. There's been lots to post about weather for the month of March. It's not been normal weather. It's just been awful!
   
        We have now had two days of temperatures above freezing. Yesterday it got to plus 2 C (35 F) Yippee!! Today it got to plus 7 C (43 F) so there was some snow melting. Alas, tomorrow it will be cooler and won't be above freezing and maybe some snow!!

         This March we have had about 30 cm (12 in ) of snow. It's been cloudy for days on end. That's how we got the 30 cm of snow. It's been quite cold with lows of around minus 15 C and highs of 7 C. We've had wind day after day and blowing snow. This is normal winter weather. We can get warm weather in March and many times our snow totally disappears by mid March. Last year and many other years I was riding my bicycle by mid March as the roads were dry. I bravely posted a few weeks ago that I had skied my last ski on winter snow. I was wrong. We still had winter skiing conditions on Sunday Mar. 27.

      Spring will be interesting and messy. There is lots of snow to melt. If it melts quickly, there will be lots of running water. I did see swans fly over this afternoon.
     I will be very ready for some above normal spring weather and I hope I don't have a reason to do a post on weather for quite a while.

The Pleasure of Meeting Dr. Barry

         The other day I had occasion to visit the emergency department at our local hospital. There are about twenty doctors who staff the department twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.

         So it was a real treat to have Dr. Barry drop in to see me. Why Dr. Barry a special treat? Well Barry was a former student of mine in junior high school.

         Now whenever I meet a former student I truly enjoy the contact. I knew that Barry was an emergency physician and that he worked in the local hospital. However, I had never bumped into him. I hadn't seen him since he left the junior highschool. Barry is now 40 so it's been awhile since I've seen him. I had kept bumping into his parents so I kept up with Barry's whereabouts.

         I remember Barry as a quiet, bright and  pleasant person. I had Barry for language arts which probably wasn't his favorite subject since if he was moving toward medicine I would think he would like science. I remember him being an extremely keen student. In those days we still taught spelling. I didn't mind using a few gimmicks. If you got 105%  five times in a row you could miss the next spelling assignment. Barry liked this idea and I think he got 100% all year. I would also bonus assignments that were done above and beyond what was called for at that level. So I didn't have any problem giving kids 11 out of 10 or even 12 out of 10. Barry could think ahead so he asked me if his average was over 100% would it show on his report card? So you see that he was not just bright but keen.

      So we had a little visit the other day which I enjoyed. I was also looked after very competently...probably 110%!

      Now you can see what happened to me. There was spontaneous bleeding in my eye. I had the same thing about 10 years ago and I thought that's what I had now but I didn't want to self diagnose so that's the reason for my emergency department visit. It's not a serious condition and the blood will absorb in ten days. There is no risk to my eyesight. It's a little hard to look at.

Owl Web Cam at Ellis Bird Farm

        I recently put a link to a web cam on a great horned owl nest. Now I admit that I'm not someone who will spend much time watching any web cam.

       I have seen many owl nests from the ground. There's not really much to see as the owl sits low on the nest. Many times you're not really sure that there's an owl on the nest. I've seen many excellent photographs of owl nests.

     However, this web cam gives something I have never seen before. We have had seven days of continuous snow. We have received about 30cm (12 in.) of snow. This makes for a nest view that I have never seen before. The edge of the nest has a good build up of snow and the owl seems to be sitting in a snow bank. The owl shakes her feathers from time to time to get the snow off her body.

     I have a better idea. Click on my link and go to the web cam and see the owl on the nest with all the snow piled up around her.

I'm Back!

         I'm back on the net after a frustrating day of being away. I missed reading blogs, checking Face book, email and Twitter. I also missed visiting sites that give me information.

        When I signed in to the internet yesterday morning I was given a message that my web browser wasn't working. I tried entering two or three times and then left. I came back a few hours later and the same conditions were found. Now this bothered me. I usually fix most stuff around my house. Although about a year ago I wrote a post called reluctant handyman. I even fix my cars. My first step is to wait and see if the problem clears up on it's own and then go on to other plans.

       So after supper when I found the same condition I phoned my friend Bill. Bill told me to unplug the modem for at least a minute and that the computer would find itself. I had done this about a year ago. It worked then. Sadly last night nothing happened. So I phoned Bill again for plan B. I was advised to phone my internet provider. After waiting on the phone for twenty minutes a tech answered. He said that a web browser that doesn't work isn't part of delivery service, but he thought he knew what to do and would walk me through the procedure. So within two minutes my web browser was back in business. He had me go into the control panel and reset my internet settings. Wow! Was it great to be back on the internet!

      Now I remember someone making the "I'm back!" comment about three years ago. About three months before my Dad died he went into a very quiet period where there was very little communication. One day my brother dropped in to visit Dad and Dad cheerfully told him, "I'm back!" My brother felt like asking where Dad had been but this would have gone over Dad's head. Dad told my brother that he had been really sick but now he was feeling better. Sadly Dad's recovery was brief and he lasted three more months all the while becoming quieter and quieter.

      I hope my computer coming back is more permanent than Dad coming back.

Another Good Dump of Snow

      Last night we had another 5 cm of snow and it snowed all day. This spring storm was forecast for Alberta so we were expecting it and it wasn't a big surprise. I looked out at 3 AM and the sky was full of snow as it was snowing heavily. So by the end of the day we had a good dump of snow.

      Now some of you may be saying, "Why is he telling me about all the snow?"  I know that some of you do not want to hear about snow at all. But I thought if I tell you about all the snow here it will make you feel so great that you don't have snow. Probably 95% of readers will be in the no snow category. 5 % will still be in winter mode so it doesn't matter.



March snow



     Heavy spring snow storms are common here. We get most of our snow in March. It doesn't worry me as I know that our snow will disappear quite quickly as the days are lengthening rapidly. The sun rose at 7:38 this morning and sets at 7:49 tonight so we get a little more than 12 hours of sun.

     I saw the first crow yesterday which is a good sign of spring. This morning at 7 AM about 20 crows were sitting in a big poplar tree about a block from my house. Crows are very hardy birds and they will have little difficulty putting up with a spring snow storm.