Wild sex and throwing snow! Look out January ! ! Or How I Spent My Winter Vacation.

It's 2 pm. . .
Do you know
where the sun is?

Ohmigosh ! Has it really been that long since I've been gone? Call it blogburnoutitis or something.
I've been up to my nose in sawdust
building birdhouses for last winter's shows, making jewelry . . .

Anchorage Museum of Fine Arts Show

and adjusting the thermostat in the greenhouse until I'm blue in the face, and . . . feeding the local magpies - Pica pica- and raven - Corvus corax . Just one raven, for now, at least.

Pica pancakes with sunflower hearts and bacon fat!


Wow. What a bizarre winter we've had. No snow in October and November, but, lots of sub-zero weather and wind! There's nothing like a little wind and -40f chill factors to say 'Goodbye' to what was left of last year's sempervivums and sedums. Of course, along came December and the snow load like we haven't seen in 15 years or more!

My fellow anthropologists would refer to this as a form of sympathetic magic. See, we have this D6-sized 1954 Allis Chalmers Crawler Dozer. I know. It's a mouthful. We just call her Alice around here. She's our snowplow and our lifeline if we're stuck, need to haul logs, or push gravel. Unfortunately, she tends to not like getting stuck up to her navel. . .levers. . .in freezing muck. It just pisses her off something fierce and she throws a fit. I mean. . .a track.




You do not want to know what a pain it is to clean her up and get that track back on when it's about 10f and the wind's blowing and you're writing a check for #$#$#$ !!%&*$$$ to the guy you had to call to pull her out of the muck!




So, she's parked for the winter. Her batteries are in the shop. And, here's the magic part, we're at the mercy of the snow and the guy we hired to plow us out for the winter. The drive's 1/10 of a mile long, so, a lot of snow makes it pretty tight. When Alice is happy and running we just get enough snow to keep her occupied. If she's in a pinchy mood and on strike we get inundated with heavy snow! I'm now the proud owner of a 30" Poulan 11hsp. snow thrower. Oh, well. I just think of it as a bigger rototiller. Beats doing 30 minutes on the treadmill at the gym. Rationalize, rationalize. Somebody please donate some tickets to Hawaii or Bermuda will ya!?

Later. . .I've got to gas up and throw more snow. And I was just kidding about the wild sex part. Actually, we were just standing around in our skivvies after a sauna. But, that's another blog, eh? Brooke