More snow photos

Here is the rest of the story

I"m saying, "Hurry up Tom." I'm holding the yardstick out our front door.

Notice the apple tree. This is the first year the snow has covered the bottom branches. We have a photo of Luella picking apples from the bottom limb which was head high.

The bird feeder is ground level.

The picture on the right is taken where the bridge in the garden is. It's completely covered.

Two feet of snow

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. These were not taken with my Nikon as the battery was recharging and I didn't want to miss some of these. One is taken from the sunroom showing the height of the snow outside.

Frozen flag

We went to visit our local bakery and there I saw where the American flag had blown to the eaves of the house where the bakery resides and frozen in place. Icicles had formed and made a most unusual sight. I had to go home and get my camera. It will let you know how cold it really is in Maine.

Our mountains look pretty white right now. There is probably 4 or 5 feet of snow on them.

Aside from the cold, here is a photo of my Jewel orchid in bloom. It is the only orchid that can be entered in a show without a bloom because of it's foliage. I love the tiny little orchids.

Dallas

Here I am on line again, hopefully to give you a view of our Dallas trip.

One of our special treats was to visit the King Tut exhibit. Brother Charles has arranged tickets for a tour at the Dallas museum of which they are members. It was a wonderful exhibit and we saw several things that we had not seen in the Cairo museum. It was also a great way to remember that amazing trip down the Nile.

Of course I was anxious to see the Bush house though we weren't sure how tight security was. He and Laura were actually at

BUSH HOUSE

the house before we drove by, so we had no problem other than knowing Tom's brother's liscense plate was being checked. There were a couple of cars at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, but they gave us no grief.

The house is at the end of a cul-de-sac and is very unpretensious. Large old oak trees give the house a secure feeling and will certainly keep prying eyes from getting a good view.

There were Welcome Home signs for George and Laura everywhere.

We had a celebration for Luella's granddaughter Susan's engagement which included her finance Kelly, his two children and his grandad and mother.

There was a trip to the ICR Institute which is now headquartered in Dallas. That is the Institute for Creation Research. Here is a photo of Tom about to be eaten by one of their dinosaurs.

Another highlight of our visit was visiting with nephew Steve.

Tom and brother Charles spent hours working on filing and cateloging family photos. No one has attacked geneology like Charles, nor is anyone as organized as evidenced by this photo of his study.

Charles and Luella are excellent hosts. We had a great time.

Back again

It's been a while since I last blogged. We took a two week trip to Dallas to get warm and succeeded too well. I caught a cold on returning and am just now recovering.

However, when I was well enough to read, I read a wonderful book that I had picked up at my Swap Shop called "Come Spring" by Ben Ames Williams. It is an 860 page history of the early settlement of a small town in Maine. Similar to "Gone With the Wind", it follows a family through several seasons of hardship and successes.

The war is not the Civil War, but Washington and England's war over possession of the land. Mixed in with the progress of the war are the trials of survival by the settlers through crop killing frosts, burned barns and all the problems that faced the determined people.

The descriptions of the virgin forests, yards of moose, streams filled with fish and skies swarming with birds are so vivid that you actually put yourself on the scene. I needed no movie to reveal to me how the fauna looked in various settings, how the bubbling waters looked and felt or what it was like to lie under a majestic tree and breathe in the sights and smells of the forest.

I had never heard of flocks of pigeons so thick the light of the sun was extinguished or moose by the hundreds, but I could see them through the words of this book.

Tom had actually seen the felling of a line of trees which was a new image to me. As I was telling him about how the settlers would line up 15 or more trees, cutting the proper angles on the trunks and watch them fall domino style, he told me about watching this done in Connecticut once.

Again the descriptions were so vivid, you could almost hear the mighty trees falling one by one.

I'm not sure I would have been strong enough to manage the daily chores the women tended for it was not an easy life.

My Swap Shop has also yielded two more treasures. I had not read Rick Warren's "A Purpose Driven Life" and I feel that you can't know about something it you don't read it. I'm going through it a chapter a day as he suggests, using it for my daily devotion. He has some excellent insight to think about.

Another good author I got at the Shop is "In the Eye of the Storm" by Max Lacado. Pastor has been using another of his books for Bible study on Wednesday nights and I have enjoyed his writings as well.

The last time I tried to add a photo, I lost my entire blog, so this one will have no photo. I'll try to send a photo of Bush's house in Dallas in a later blog that isn't so lenghtly.

Brrrrrr

Mysterious creature at Big Tree

While the ranger was taking the measurements of our Eastern White pine, I was looking around at some interesting footprints in the snow. Unfortunately my camera battery died so I was not able to get a photo of the prints.

However, they were a mystery to me and the ranger, though he did speculate. He said they weren't big enough for a bear. That's good I thought, so I suggested it might be a bobcat. He didn't think so. He said, "Maybe a coyote."

After he finished with the tree statistics, we looked at the prints more closely. They were about 4 inches across and the steps were close together. I'm thinking a coyote would have longer strides. He concluded it wasn't making deep tracks, so it wouldn't weigh much.

The word wolverine did come up, but not knowing what a wolverine was, I didn't exactly get excited. The ranger only mentioned that it might be.

We didn't dwell on the tracks long and I was anxious to get home so he could add up his numbers for our tree. Later, I wished I had taken actual measurements of the prints, stride and looked at front and back foot differences. My hind sight has always been 100 percent.

I looked up wolverine on the internet and chose not to believe that's what we have living around our tree. He did have steps leading from the right and left sides of the tree. And, wolverines do like to wander about in the snow.

Tom assures me they don't attack people, but they are vicious and have many names such as devil of the woods, skunk bear and others.

While I was waiting on the ranger, I heard a strange knocking sound coming from the area of the tree. It was a bit spooky and I moved around to see if the wind was making some of the limbs knock together. I didn't see anything.

There is a pile of brush in the gully at the base of the tree. Is this where my creature lives? Was he warning me away from his home? I don't think I will be taking a moonlight walk anytime soon down to my tree alone or otherwise.