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.
Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

We’ve had an extraordinarily wet summer. Earlier this month I strapped on a pair of knee pads and crawled through the woods shooting mushrooms. I’ve just now had the time to go through and choose some of the best images. We sure have a wide variety of fungi here…
Continue reading →

For pollen. From the article:

“Allergy doctor Jeff Demain said Monday’s count shattered the old world record that was set in Sweden several years ago.

“A level of 175 is considered high,” Demain said. “Fairbanks had a birch pollen level of over 4000.””

It’s not just birch, either. Over the course of two days I saw clouds of pollen coming off the white spruce with every puff of a breeze. The deck was yellow with it. We finally got some rain overnight, so things are looking more normal today.

Record levels of tree pollen dust the truck.