Slight Detour: Blowin' in the Wind

The walking path which I plowed around the hay field yesterday has drifted shut on its east-west route.

While trudging through some foot-deep drifts, I thought, "It could have been worse."

We have endured much worse; in fact, we did so off and on for 30 years while living at our farm on Great Northern Road.

Although there was no official review to prove me wrong, I often said that we could claim the prize for worst drifts in Bonner County.

We had a long east-west driveway which had no protection from north winds. Open fields extending for at least a quarter mile allowed the winds to blow almost hurricane force and, in so doing fill our driveway to the brim and then some.

We could walk the snow berms alongside the driveway and look down at the fencepost tops.

As I rounded the corner this morning near the woods and walked with relative ease through a protected area, I thought about the day many years ago when schools were closed midday because of a winter storm.

That day, I drove home from school, parked the car on the road across from our driveway, grabbed my school book bag and began the trek from the road to our house.

When each initial step meant a leg going into the snow hip deep, I decided to leave my books in the car.

Then, I returned to the driveway, climbed up on a drift, lay down and literally rolled my way to the house.

This is the absolute truth. It would have made a great video.

Sometimes, in those days, our driveway remained plugged shut with drifts for at least a week. We did not have adequate equipment to clean it out.

Life is much better here in Selle because we don't have to go to work, and we have a tractor and plow along with time.

In other news on this Tuesday morning, Bill noted that our sets of wind chimes have been playing melodic tunes for outside for the past several hours.

Also, when I found the paper in its blue protective bag lying in the middle of the ditch about 30 feet south of the paper box, I went back to the house and brought out the rake.

Stepping down that incline from the road with no idea how deep I'd go to retrieve the paper seemed like an unwise strategy.

Happily, the lawn rake worked just fine.

I went from baseball cap to stocking cap on my second trip outside this morning.

Even with all the snow we've received from the sky or the wind, Yak Trax are still a necessity.

We have lots of patches of ice which have been polished of to an even slicker state when the wind sent the snow somewhere else.

In a nutshell, it's cold and windy outside this morning.

We are definitely getting a sense of winter, and the fact that we skipped two-three months of heavy duty winter makes it kind of nice for a weather change of pace.

So, we'll bundle up and make the best of it as the temperature stays in single digits for the next several days.

In the midst of the coldest days of this winter, new life has started on the table near our sliding-glass door.

The first lettuce seedlings of the year popped up yesterday. Twas an exciting scene to know that the garden for 2025 has begun.

Now, if I can figure out the next best step for the lettuce before all those little plants get long and lean and then collapse and die. I think planting them in individual pots should do the trick.

Any gardening experts out there can chime in with some advice.

Besides the lettuce and tomatoes, my window garden also includes some rosemary and a pretty orange annual flower which is supposed to be nice for cut flower arrangements.

There's more planting to be done, and that will be a good project while staying warm indoors.