The wind and snow are sculpting the landscape here in the Midwest. I do like snow drifts, as long as I don’t need to move them. And even when I do have to move them, I am impressed by their size and contour. (I am also annoyed by their mass when shoveling or tractoring). This pile in front of the East side of the workshop has yet to be cleared away. That’s why we wanted two doors to the workshop.

And then there was this mini-mountain peak next to the car. It’s so cute. I was hoping to see mice with little skis enjoying the slopes.

We’ve been having a few days of freezing fog lately. Makes for some neat photos. Make sure you click the 4 corner button near the bottom right to view full screen — looks better that way.

If the above slideshow doesn’t work for you (mom), these same pictures can be found on our flickr site.

It took some effort, but we are officially unstuck from the blizzard of 2009!

The Buddha doesn’t feel cold the way we mortals do. But somehow I feel he would not like to be completely buried in the drifts. Yep, I attribute feelings to a cement garden statue. I can’t help it. He looks so pensive, and no drift should compromise that.

Anne and I had a snowday today. It was a bit too cold for sledding, but I managed to hike up to the mailbox and found more garden catalogs! Yay!! I think it is about time to order some seeds. I also want to build a little seed starting shelf – the light shelves in the catalogs sell for about $400… seems a bit unreasonable for a shelf with lights on chains. I will build one and if it works, I will post plans to share. Buddha will help.

I find myself recomposing this entry. I had it set to publish on the 31st of November. I think that confused the system and now the post is nowhere to be found. No matter. Winter has still come. In the first version of this post, I reflected on my poor winter photography. I’ll let you be the judge. See if your eye enjoys what can be seen in the cozy frozen country. 

A few of the shots might appear randomly below. More shots of the snowy landscape can be seen in the 2008 Flowers and Farm gallery link on the right. Winter begins on page 7 of gallery.

I alluded to the snow in my last post. It has come. It is the wet, heavy, stick-to-everything variety helping to create a winter wonderland in the country. I ventured out into the cloudy-yet-cozy landscape and took a few pictures. I’m not very good at winter photographs. I would like to blame it on the camera, but a poor photographer blames his lenses. Then again, I am a poor photographer, so it’s totally my camera’s fault! My camera, in auto-mode, seems to be fooled by all the reflected light of the snow, it overcompensated for the brightness and the shots were under exposed. Good to know. I tried to fix some of the shots in Photoshop, but ultimately moved toward complete desaturation to eliminate the bluish haze on the snow. Still, I manage to capture some of the wintery scenes on the farm.

There are more shots than this one. A few might appear below (those are random based on tag information). To see them all, visit the 2008 Flowers and Farm gallery (link on the right) and head to page 7 or so.

The holiday weekend is nearly over. The leftovers are nearly finished. Time to get back to work!

A bunch of snow welcomed us home to Iowa yesterday. A different bunch of snow ushered us out of Colorado. Snow seems to have hastened the collapse of poorly structured hoop house in the garden. The wind helped peel off the plastic even before we left for the weekend, but now the demise is complete. Bummer.

All is certainly not lost. We can rebuild him. But we have likely missed our opportunity to bury the edges of the plastic. My backup plan is to sandwich the plastic edges with 2×4′s and stack rocks and bricks on top of the 2×4′s. And I need to build a door on the one edge. But not today. Today is an inside day.