March Madness

 March has come in roaring like a Lion, as the saying goes... although it's more like the piercing howl of a Snow Leopard. For the first time this winter, we have had lots of snow ever since March arrived. 

At first, it was just enough to make the local maxim... that it always snows when the daffodils bloom... come true.

 

Then it managed to knock trees down across our driveway. Johnny (with very little help from me) spent all day Sunday, March 3rd, sawing down those trees and many others that were threatening to fall. He hauled them to the goat field although the goats are not much interested in foraging in the snow.

Today, March 4th, was truly impressive. It snowed all night and all morning. It is melting now, the afternoon of the 4th, and sheeting off the roof, but still several inches deep on the ground. I took some photos this morning from the barn, looking toward north and west and south. And I took photos from upstairs in the house of the snow sheeting off the roof after melting began. All day we have been having thundering snow slides from one roof down to the next. 

Here are the photos... I will let them tell the story.

 

The Red-winged Blackbird that owns our pond and its cattails arrived a couple weeks ago and sings daily from his tree in the pond. He sang through the snow this morning until it got so heavy, even he gave up and left. 

From the aisle of the barn, where I was out of the snowstorm, I took photos of the farm.

Johnny's shop with the overhang that serves now as a horse and dog shelter. In years past it housed sheep and later llamas. Now just Nightingale (horse) and Annie (dog) hang out there during inclement weather.

The "carriage house" sits west of Johnny's shop on the other side of the arena. The carriage house is a grandiose name for a building with a tack room and open bays for horse trailers and horse-drawn cart and surrey

This lone sequoia sits at the corner of three fields, planted soon after we moved here almost 50 years ago to provide shade for the animals. The goats have kept it pruned up off the ground.

The pond is to the left with a bench on the walkway across the dam. The walkway leads to the orchard and horse barn, which now only has one horse and her dog when the weather is good. At night I bring them back to the shop overhang by the arena.

The above photo was taken from the upstairs of the house, looking south across the side yard between house and barn. Those curled sheets of icy snow reached three feet in length before crashing to the roof of the greenhouse/jungle room below. The one sheet coming off the roof to the right, visible farther out, grew to five feet before collapsing to the ground below. All made tremendous booms when they fell. And are, at this writing, mid-day on Monday, March 4th, still falling and booming. 

Winter is not giving up without a snowy... and loud... March tantrum.