Category Archives: Weather

Three Cheers for the Weather – “Raw! Raw! Raw!”

26 Replies

I thought it was pretty at first, the way the fog rolled in over the bay and completely hid the water from view.

Foolish girl!

It rolled onto the lower beach areas and the land close to the water.

Smugly, I thought, “How pretty it looks, and how lucky am I to be living on higher ground in the clear blue sky.”

But pride comes before the fall. You might be able to see the mist lifting ever so slightly, rising up, looking for me.

Here it comes…

and here it stays, full of tiny droplets of ice water that almost freeze the air.

Carl Sandburg’s Chicago poem, “Fog,” made an impression on me the first time I heard it. He says it so simply, so “on the mark,” and with beautiful imagery.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

But …

I’m sorry, Carl. I find that very often, the last line of your poem doesn’t work for me, so I’ve had to change it.

 

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and stays and stays and stays and stays and stays… .

Anneli Purchase

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

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After the skiff of snow we had in the last post, it kept snowing … and snowing … and snowing. The predicted 2 inches of snow looked more like 6 inches on our deck railing.

Partway through the snowfall I took a picture of my veggie garden and thought about the strawberry plants shivering under the blanket of snow. Hah! There’s an oxymoron – a blanket of snow. Blankets are supposed to be warm, aren’t they?

Then that night, it rained and blew

Just as it was supposed to do.

Soon the snow had disappeared,

But the damage was as feared.

See the fir branch dangling down?

It’s so long it reached the ground.

See it hanging by a thread

There beside the garden shed?

Now I’m worried it might drop

On my doggies with a plop.

More like dropping with a crash

Turning puppies into mash.

So the Captain has to tie

Rope onto the branch up high,

Tie it on the pickup truck

Yank it down into the muck.

We don’t grumble, we don’t cuss.

Oh what fun for all of us.

 

 

Cool, Flaky Rain

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Too late for Christmas, but here it is. Our wind and rain has turned into flaky rain blowing sideways.

The video clip I’ve attached doesn’t really show anything, but just the fact that I’ve posted it must show how incredulous I am about the white stuff coming down after weeks and weeks of wind and rain.

 

The wet stuff has changed

The drops rearranged,

Snowflakes come down,

They’re blowing around,

Gray sky and breeze,

I’m down on my knees,

I pray it won’t last

And it melts away fast.

 

 

The Dreaded Post-Christmas Pounds

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People are not the only ones who put on a pound or two over the holidays. It happens to our pets, too.
This morning the Captain took Emma, our field cocker spaniel, to a nearby farm to hunt for ducks. This photo is from yesterday, when we were just out for a walk. Ducks were everywhere.
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Ruby, the springer spaniel, was upset that she didn’t get to go. Nearly 12 years old, she’s almost completely deaf now, but she still knew she was being left behind. She felt better after I gave her a little treat and pulled  her doggie bed right beside me by the laptop.
DSCN5443a
Last night when the Captain was getting things ready for this morning’s outing, he hauled out the little neoprene vest I made for Emma a couple of years ago.
“You’d better try it on her,” I said. “She’s put on a couple of pounds.” (After all, it’s just after Christmas).
Sure enough, it was VERY snug.
“You can’t have her wear that. She won’t be able to breathe.”
I looked high and low and luckily found a piece of left over neoprene  (from the old wet suit that I had used to make the vest).
I cut a 1 1/2 inch strip the length of Emma’s suit. It didn’t take long to cut the suit and sew in the strip. With a zigzag stitch and the piece butted up to the edges it was easy to insert a strip. No need to overlap neoprene to make a seam. Just laying the edges snugly side by side and zigzagging them together works fine.
You can see the post I did about the original vest a couple of years
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Here she is in the original vest.
I was going to take a picture of Emma in her expanded vest to put at the end of this post, but I was shocked to learn that she came home without it.
It’s lost! Somewhere out there in the brambles it got hooked up, the velcro parted, and there the vest stayed.
In the next day or so we’ll have to launch a search party for it.

Wind and Rain

47 Replies

Yesterday, on a rare sunny day I was coming home from town when I had to make a quick photo stop. The mist and cloud formations across the bay were ominous, warning of the next weather system coming in.

*Warning* Wet camera lens was an ongoing problem.

I turned the camera back towards town. The spread of the clouds stretched along the far hills. In the water is a long row of posts that has been there ever since I can remember. Not sure what purpose they once served, unless it was a  navigation guide. The posts still stick out at high tide and warn boaters of the bar.

As you can see below, some posts still show in places where the bar is farther below the surface, and the trunk of a long-dead tree is hung up on the gravel. This is not where you want your boat to end up. Seagulls and a heron sit on the log like sentinels warning of hazards to navigation.

After a slightly deeper stretch of water, the bar comes up again and continues into the bay. A river flows along the side of the bar that is closest to us (at the bottom of the photo), while the water beyond is a shallow bay that is a mudflat at very low tide. If you want to bring a boat up the river, you need to know where the channel is or end up with seagulls sitting on your hull.

The sandbar is a popular place for birds to dabble and sun themselves. Sometimes you’ll find ducks and geese there; sometimes, like this day, seagulls.

The sun came blasting through the clouds for one last look at me. I clicked the camera as I looked back into its blinding light, knowing I might not see this light for days ahead.

This morning I see that I was right. Looking out my living room window, I saw what was behind those first clouds I saw yesterday – a blast of southeast duck weather.

It’s a good day to stay home while the Captain goes duck hunting.

*****

Winter on the coast is wet,

Wind and rain is all you get,

Sometimes there’s a glimpse of sun,

Just five minutes, then it’s done,

Back we go to wind and rain,

Hope by spring I’m not insane.

 

One Misty, Moisty Morning

41 Replies

One misty, moisty morning,

When cloudy was the weather,

There I met an old man,

Clothed all in leather.

Clothed all in leather,

With a cap under his chin.

How do you do?

And how do you do?

And how do you do again?

 

Montucky posted such beautiful photos of the mist in the mountains in this post: https://montucky.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/in-between/

that I felt inspired to run out onto the deck to take some misty photos of my own. They are nowhere as beautiful as Montucky’s, and nowhere near as remote, but it’s what we have here close to town.

Looking at the mist hanging in the trees took me back to a childhood nursery rhyme. Do any of you remember it? I think nursery rhymes are becoming a forgotten treasure of our childhood. I’d hate for them to disappear like these mists will do in an hour or so.

A Flicker of Light

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Sitting in the dark in my living room at about 6:30 this morning, I was surprised by the contrasting colour of the two levels of clouds — one layer of light gray and one of very dark gray. It gave me the shivers to think of the wind and rain that were coming our way.

I was not disappointed. It blew and dumped rain on us. Once the moisture had been thrown into our faces, the clouds lifted (that’s not the same as going away) and the sky brightened up.

The flicker looked up from his perch in the black walnut tree and called to his buddy who had just flown away, “What do you think, Dear? Is this it for today, or is there more coming? Should we find a more sheltered tree to peck on?”

 

Flicker eyes the roiling sky

Shakes himself and gives a cry,

Shudders at the force of storm,

Sodden feathers, not the norm.

Hoping sun comes shining through,

Flicker asks, “What will I do?

If the next storm is as wild

While I’m wishing it were mild.

Friends will fly away from here, 

I’ll be left alone, I fear.

Wait! I see a glimpse of sun.

Surely I’m the happy one.”