Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Crystal palaces

We've got more frost / ice coating the inside of the storm windows this year than I ever remember seeing before. I shows more air (and warmth) leakage from the house than I'd like. It also offers some great photo opportunities as the sun rises. The goose is a stained glass piece I got a number of years ago.

icy sunrise
icy sunrise   © harrington

Refilling the bird feeder these days has required real commitment. The cold is such that I should bundle up just to take it down and refill it, but who wants to bundle up for a quick chore? So, I end up freezing myself because I'm lazy. On the other hand, the suet is holding up well and pretty popular. Here's a nuthatch in its usual head down position.

nuthatch on suet
nuthatch on suet                  © harrington

Another visitor today enjoying the suet was a hairy woodpecker. At least I'm pretty sure it's a hairy and not a downy. What do you think?

downy woodpecker on suet
downy woodpecker on suet        © harrington

This morning I got some presents wrapped. This afternoon I got to play foreman as the daughter person's fiancee did yeoman work replacing the kitchen faucet. Another chore out of the way and a real improvement in the appearance and function of the kitchen sink. Since I had already made up a batch of light wheat bread dough, I'll have to wait awhile to see if the new faucet helps clean up after dough making. We're trying something different. I added craisens to the dough. Look for a report on how it turned out.

Robert Haight could have been in my back yard when he wrote this poem.

How Is It That the Snow

By Robert Haight 

How is it that the snow   
amplifies the silence,   
slathers the black bark on limbs,   
heaps along the brush rows?   

Some deer have stood on their hind legs   
to pull the berries down.   
Now they are ghosts along the path,   
snow flecked with red wine stains.   

This silence in the timbers.   
A woodpecker on one of the trees   
taps out its story,   
stopping now and then in the lapse   
of one white moment into another.

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