Winter Training

Cold. Snowpack on the roads. Ice on my driveway. On the trainer in the garage. Cold. Training for the 2013 Tour de Cure for diabetes research.

Damn you Andy Hampsten.

Raccoons at the Spring

Mama...

For years, my mother-in-law fed the raccoons that live near Cable Creek at the bottom of our property, near the county road. Shortly after I moved here, I'd seen as many as six on the front porch of the old house.When we lived there, we often saw the mother and as many as three kits clamber over the woodpile in the back yard and divide up what we fed them; mama and the male got more than their share.

...and her kits

Since we've moved into our new house, we haven't seen the raccoon(s) that live near the creek, but we leave a bowl of food every evening, and in the morning it's empty.

Raccoons at Anna Spring

Last week, our trail camera captured two raccoons prowling down by the spring below our home site to the east. We don't know if they're the grown kits from mama's last brood or a different family entirely.

Dog Day

Snow-encrusted puppy

Five inches of snow yesterday, soft powder, making me wish I still had cross country skis (for the way down our half-mile driveway) and glad I didn't (for the way back up). Today, after our morning walk, I let Pepper run. I didn't see him for the better part of three hours. When he came bounding up to the sliding-glass door, he looked like an orange-and-white Christmas tree, festooned with white frosted balls hanging to his long chest hair and leg feathers.










I had him lie down on his goat-fleece rug and started working on the crusted snowballs, which clung tenaciously to him. Mostly, he liked having his head and back rubbed down, so I did that for a few minutes. Finally, he finished the job himself, and settled down for a long nap, first on the fleece, then on a Persian below our Christmas cactus.

Right now, it's raining, and a Chinook wind is blowing up the valley. Much of the snow will have melted by tomorrow evening - not into our crawlspace, I hope.