Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
Solution below. Don’t peek.
The woods are full of the sound of spring peepers, but other than that and some daffodils almost ready to open, spring has not yet come around the corner.
Spring peepers are chorus frogs. Isn’t that a nice term? This time of year they do make quite a chorus. They drown out the birds. The insects aren’t really in business yet.
If we had to have one of the snowiest winters I can remember, even from my young’unhood, I’m glad it was the winter after I was safely moved into a cozy new house with a good heating system and a fireplace.
This photo was taken from the deck behind the house. It clearly shows the slope of the hillside I live on.
It has started snowing again, though this time not much accumulation is forecast.
Hint: She’s black.
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
— Robert Frost, New Hampshire, 1923
The photos were taken under the shelter of my front porch.
With the snow clouds gone, the snowscape was very bright last night from the nearly full moon. Here the moon sets during a very cold sunrise — 13 degrees. The photo was taken from the window of my radio room.
The same photo, converted to grayscale, with contrast increased.
It’s been snowing for about 20 hours. Here in Stokes County we have about 10 inches or more on the ground. On my deck, where the snow and rain pour down from the valley on my roof, the yardstick is showing a pile of snow 31 inches deep and growing.
Lily does not like the snow. She’ll go as far as the front porch, tiptoe around for a few minutes with a look of wonder and disgust on her face, and then demand to be let back in the house.
This has been a pretty good winter for replenishing the underground water aquifers. The nearest USGS measuring wells are in East Bend and Mocksville.
The moon will be full tonight. It will be the biggest full moon of the year. That’s because the moon’s orbit is elliptical, and the moon will be at the apogee of its orbit, about 30,000 miles closer to earth than at its perigee. According to Spaceweather.com, that’s makes the moon 14 percent wider and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons.
Unfortunately the moon probably won’t be visible here. The sky is cloudy, and up to 16 inches of snow is forecast between now and Saturday night.
Today’s two sunspots: spaceweather.com
Much has been written in the last couple of years about how quiet the sun has been. We are just starting to emerge from the low part of the 11-year sunspot cycle. For months, there were no sunspots at all. Today there are two active sunspots. In another five years, this cycle will peak, and it’s during that peak period when, because the sun’s surface is heavily riled, the earth is particularly subject to big geomagnetic storms of the type that disrupt communications and even affect the power grid.
Just how much solar variance affects the earth’s climate is hotly disputed, but we do know that the 11-year sunspot cycles dramatically affect the amount of ionizing radiation (that is, high frequency radiation such as X-rays) that hits the earth’s ionosphere. It’s this process that causes the Northern Lights. The process also causes radio waves of certain frequencies to travel much farther.
Since we had two good sunspots today, I thought it would be a good time to fire up a ham radio and see who can hear me. I made quick and easy contact with EA1ABT in Spain (at 14.19175 Mhz) and CU2CR in the Azores Islands (at 14.198 Mhz).
All it takes is a 100-watt transmitter and a modest wire antenna hidden in the attic.
A recent experiment, which involved putting cat cams on 50 cats, found that indoor cats spend 22 percent of their time looking out windows and only 6 percent of their time sleeping.
That’s consistent with what my cat, Lily, does during the day if the weather is rainy and she wants to stay in. However, though she has a favorite window (my bed upstairs, where she can either sleep or look out the window), she moves from window to window, all around the house. I call this “patrolling.”
During the summer when the foliage is high, I rarely see her when she’s outside, and it’s not at all clear what she does. But, during the winter, I can see into the woods, and there are fewer hiding places, so I can watch from the windows and often see where she is and what she’s doing. Guess what. She patrols. Roughly, she makes big loops around the house, moving from point of interest to point of interest. Favorite places include the woodpiles (where she finds mice), the rock pile (where she also finds mice), the stream below the house (where I am pretty sure she fishes), and the woods (where she often climbs trees, just for fun).
I believe she seldom goes more than 100 yards from the house in any direction. She sometimes digs (for voles?) because she sometimes smells like fresh soil and moss when she comes indoors. All these are hunting behaviors, I think. Lily is a lucky cat, because she has a safe place for what cats instinctively do: solitary hunting. I have seen her with mice many times, but fortunately I’ve never seen her with a bird, though she has climbed on top of the bluebird houses a few times.
