We’re not wood snobs. If it will burn well, into the firewood pile it goes. So while cutting, moving, and stacking wood, some real ugly cusses get brought along in the process. They can screw up a good woodpile because they can be grotesquely misshapen, so I often put them on top. But where they really gum up the works is in the splitting.
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Author Archives: kwinker
The Rock Hard Bottom of November
Here we are staring at the ass end of November, cold and dark. But we were completely surprised yesterday morning to wake up to a very crisp -36 F. While we’d been having some below-zero weather, we hadn’t been expecting such a drop off a thermal cliff.
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Rowing Lessons
Some of the comments surrounding my post on Take to the Oars raised good questions (posted online and through email). One friend “had no idea you were such an activist.” I haven’t been, but it’s time. If you look at the long list I gave of important issues that are now in play with this recent election, I think we need to watch and work to influence things when they start to go in a negative direction. So activism becomes important. I’m not normally an activist, so I needed to do some homework. Activism. Thanks, Wikipedia.
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A Metaphor for Many Things
We cleaned out the fridge a few weeks ago and found a surprise buried in a bottom drawer—an old hunk of cabbage working hard on transforming and maybe even escaping certain doom.
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Our Subarctic Denizens around Thanksgiving
During the past week or so we haven’t gotten any new snow, so the tracks have been building up. Sunrise-to-sunset time is about 5 hours, so there is little daylight during which to see (in real time) who’s been passing. Our resident snowshoe hare has been dashing everywhere. We first saw it in the latter half of October—it stuck out so boldly, white against the snow-less landscape, that we could even see it after dark. This species has only recently colonized our neighborhood, probably drawn by the increasingly open woods as aging aspens have fallen. Until now, we have not had one actually spending time in our yard. It seems to love to run on the deck. Of course we call it Thumper.