Dinner Out…

…which actually is dinner in.

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Our special restaurant in Milton has daily luncheon specials which are actually more like dinners, and today we picked up a couple. As the song goes…”covid time, and the cooking is easy.”

We do think Natalie’s Restaurant will survive the pandemic.

Otherwise, I think I may have mentioned that I’ve been working on a project to establish an arboretum in the park across the street. As you might expect when the project involves a bureaucracy, things are moving slowly. So, to keep participants feeling connected and and engaged, I have been distributing a Sunday tree-related pep message every week. For months.

Now, I’m thinking that whenever I’m short on content for this bloody daily blog I might flip one of them up onto the screen. Trouble is, these weekly pep posts are PDFs which don’t quite embed in Squarespace. That means I have to create a button that when clicked on, will take you to where you want to go.
Let’s see if this works:

Learn more


Sunday Drive…

…around Lake Geneva. A low-adventure, COVID-style outing for the as-yet un-vaccinated.

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Lake mostly open water. Crowd in Lake Geneva town, many sensible folks but even more morons. We had takeout from Culver’s (who seem to be taking all precautions) and lunched in the car overlooking Geneva Bay. (Pax likes Culver’s possibly more than we do.)

On the way home listened to the tape of Trump and the Georgia secretary of state—blatant criminal sedition. Republicans should be forcing Tump to resign rather than trying to stage a self-promoting coup.

Side note: with all the snow on the ground, we now have solid proof that deer are visiting the backyard bird feeder regularly. We are also pretty sure that “As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,” they did not, when met with an obstacle, come from the sky. That’s the beauty of footprints.

Eight Pounds…

…approximately, of birdseed per day. In just this one feeder. Hungry birds, especially on days like this with freezing rain, sleet, and then 4 inches of snow.

Photo by Sue

Photo by Sue

Photo by Sue

Photo by Sue

Birds have high metabolism, and need a lot of food, especially in winter. If I ate like a bird—say the Golden Crowned Kinglet, which weighs about one quarter of an ounce—I would have to scarf down something like 27 large pizzas every day.

Today—cardinals, jays, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, downy woodpecker, red breasted woodpecker, finches, doves, and a variety of sparrows (which I still can’t differentiate). BUT, not a single squirrel. It is my hypothesis that the deep snow discourages the squirrels, who would be sitting ducks trying to wade through it. My guess is that they are holed up waiting for better weather.

Like me.

Some Snow

It tested the mettle of every snow-moving device in the stable.

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The big snowblower seemed incapable of punching through the sticky, easily compacted stuff, so our morning clearing effort was a long and arduous mix of machine and manual labor. (The new shovel performed admirably, btw.) Troubleshooting later, I discovered that the front rotor on the blower had thrown a bolt, and was thus barely functioning. (But that’s all fixed and we are ready for the next bit of weather.)

This evening, a two-hour Zoom chat with the Spaldings in Colorado. They are hunkered down on their mountain top, and are being even more careful than we are. They, like us, are hoping to make it through to vaccine time, but are somewhat chapfallen by the incompetent rollout.

Structures

Theme in blue and white.

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Bought a snow shovel today, bringing the total poised in the garage to five. No excuse for such extravagance really, but for years I have been admiring the device welded by my neighbor across the street—and now I have one just like it. “A shovel for every situation,” has long been my motto—and, by gum, snow is in the forecast.

Some Of Us…

…went ice boating. Some of us wimped out.

Photo by Brian

Photo by Brian

Bri joined a fleet of about 18 other Nites for racing on Puckaway. I walked along the shore of unfrozen Lake Geneva with Steve, the Chair of the Walworth County Democratic Party, recently resigned. Pax came with us as we tried to figure out what to do next.

Good walk and good talk, but not quite the same as rounding the windward mark on two runners.