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Such a mild day, not even that windy. Just a bit breezy, you know. I took grains to the equines at 8 pm and lingered outside because the air was so soft and sweet. At that time, although it was 39°, it just felt wonderful outside.

And now, at 10 pm, we have 2 inches of snow! Where’d that come from?!

A week of warm sunny days.

Breezes!

Dry roads!!

A pair of doves in the yard.

Chipmunks and squirrels out in full force.

Green shoots at the base of the Centranthus.

Gentle morning rains. (Happily, not enough to ruin the dry roads — yet!)

Fresh sweet air.

Sitting outside in shirtsleeves.

And, as I am on the porch for morning tea, a sound I associate with the Sierra in summer: wind in the trees, but not actually blowing on me.

Cool, cloudy, wet weather today. Currently 36°, and the snow while it is still lightly snowing, what came down overnight has melted.

But last week! A string of warm sunny days allowed nearly all of the previous snows to melt. Although the roads began in a very muddy state, the sun and breezes got them mostly dried out. Our heroic DCP crews have graded most of our roads, so that getting around on the Preserve is much less stressful. And last Wednesday afternoon, the county graded B16 (aka Beginning Road in the county road name list), which had some north-facing stretches that were so deeply rutted as to be nearly impassable. Thursday afternoon we went into Mountainair, and it was just like a normal drive into town. As Alan said, we’re livin’ large!

Just a touch of snow yesterday (I think I mentioned that already) and another dusting this morning. Although it is currently overcast, it’s also 41°, so the ground is soft and becoming muddier by the moment.

I identified the ground squirrels who have been hanging out with all our ground birds and eating at our birdseed buffet. They are white-tailed antelope squirrels. Here is a good photo of one, and here is the Wikipedia article. More info here, here, and here!

At least in our neighborhood! The mountains are still hidden behind a wall of cloud, though. I’m looking forward to seeing how snwy they have become. Oh, there’s a bit of a mountain peeking out right now.

So much snow outside. Here’s my sure-thing forecast for the not–too–distant future: mud.

One thing I have been noticing this winter is how the agastache is still fragrant, even though we’re well into the dormant season. Even when it was snowing last week, coming up from the corral to the house I caught a whiff of its perfume: instant summer. I strongly recommend agastaches to anyone who wants hummingbirds and all year fragrance. Yum!

UPDATE: Mountains are appearing, birds are out all around; and while refilling the seed feeder, I got to feed a juniper titmouse from my hand — twice!

I’m a tad late with this, but on Thursday we had actual weather! As in: snow. I know that comes as a tremendous surprise! It snowed nearly all day, like a constant drizzle of snow, and I think we may have had about 6 inches of accumulation. That’s a more uncertain estimate than usual, because in addition to being snowy, Thursday was windy, and the snow piled up in some places and cleared off others. Our usual estimating locations on the back deck were blown almost clean! But it seems like it left about an average of 6 inches, so that’s what I’m going with.

Yesterday it stayed cold (yes! no mud!) and today it is quite sunny and beautiful and still cold so far.

I just looked back at my weather reports since the fall, and it looks like we’ve received something like 32 inches of snow. No all at once, of course. Still, that exceeds any of the previous winters we’ve been here by a huge amount. ’06-’07 had a couple of 8-inch snows. The other winters had almost none (’05-’06) or a few small (1-3 inch) snows. This is our first winter with regular and significant precipitation. I’m curious to see if this turns into spring grasses; that would be a first for me here.

On the bird front, a couple of towhees have learned that if they hang out on the porch, eventually one of us (usually Alan) notices them and brings out a peanut. If we happen to see them through the hall window, they notice us and move from the bench or chair over to the front door. This is extremely reminiscent of Tibs’ behavior last summer. Although, their hanging out near the door may be driven by the fact that all the ground is covered in several inches of snow, so hunting for seed out there is of limited success. Anyway, now we have demanding towhees, and the scrub jays have learned to pay attention to the towhees to find out when we are in peanut-donation mode. “The house as oasis!” Also, the longhorns have taken some huge bites out of the four–wing saltbush out front, which is very pleasing since that’s what it’s there for.

Snow! I can hardly keep up with how many times it is snowing this winter. Let’s see: I posted Tuesday morning. There was another hour or so that morning when we had snow coming down, but it melted off quite quickly as the temperatures were going up into the high 30s even as the snow was coming down. So my mud prediction came true that afternoon, and we have all been skidding around (or off!) the roads ever since. (More on that in a moment...)

Then Wednesday morning it snowed again, just an inch or so, very pretty — and that melted off later in the day. Fortunately, overnight Wednesday to Thursday was cold, so the mud all froze, which allowed us here at Happy Camp to go into town without any difficulties yesterday morning. Getting back in the the late afternoon was another matter, however.

Yesterday evening a light rain started up, and sometime overnight that turned into snow. Right now it is steadily snowing, alternating between big fat pretty flakes and smaller flakes that come down faster. But the temperature is exactly 32°, and Alan discovered that the mud under the snow is not frozen at all. It makes an interesting combination of squeaky and slippery. The forecast is for warming and rain today, so more mud coming right up.

About our roads: most of the roads had dried out before this latest snowfall. But there are some spots that are either on the north side of slopes or protected by trees and terrain that have never dried out. And this week those spots have just been chewed up into deep muddy ruts. So we can drive along quite merrily nearly everywhere, and then we have to proceed with extreme caution for 50 or 100 feet — and even then we are sliding nearly off the road. One neighbor did slide off the road here on Jumano Trail near our driveway. It makes a simple trip into town an exciting proposition, and trips that can be delayed for a day or two are skipped altogether. Happily, we are well stocked in hot cocoa essentials, the better for enjoying the wintry scenes outside.

But not windy! and not precipitating either, unless you count the teensy bit of snow that pretends to swirl around occasionally.

On the other hand, all the trees were covered with a thick frost this morning; we were guessing from fog that had turned to ice. And although we haven’t had any snow since last week, what came down last week is still here. It just hasn’t been warm enough for long enough to melt it all away. Until today, each afternoon some snow would melt and then in the evening it froze again, so slippery spots, including on the roads, have been an issue, along with mud in the afternoons. But today it’s colder: 16° this morning and only 28° now. So no melting/freezing to contend with.

One of our regular towhee visitors has no tail! I have not been able to figure out whether the tail just never really grew in, or if the towhee had a close escape somehow and lost its tail feathers as a result. There are the beginnings of tail feathers, but they hardly reach beyond the bird’s rump. That doesn’t seem to slow the towhee down, however, and the towhee has no difficulties at all in arriving on the porch and demanding its peanut. The jays are so jealous of the towhees! And no matter how many times I point out to the jays that there are far more of them than towhees; and they get 3 peanuts to every one that a towhee gets (since I toss unshelled nuts to the jays); and they don’t come visit me on the porch, either — they still bear a grudge. Oh well!

Mother Nature, that is. Guess what?! It started snowing this afternoon, lightly at first, then by 5 pm really coming down strongly. It kept snowing until sometime after 8 pm, and now we have 6–8 inches of beautiful gorgeous snow outside. Fresh new beautiful wet snow. Whee! Snowshoeing tomorrow!

This morning, sunning herself in a piñon out front, a female Northern Harrier:

She stayed for a bit more than an hour, and it was impressive how quickly after her departure our yard was covered in juncos!

Smile for the camera! (The pictures were taken from inside the house, and really don’t capture the creamy-golden colors underneath, oh well.)

Update: About my last report, when I wrote that it was gently snowing: soon after posting that, the snow picked up and we received about two inches of the fluffy stuff. It became white and slick outside. Temperatures have stayed cold too, so we still have a fair amount of the snow on the ground outside, and we don't have any mud, although some spots on the road are icy. Happily, the top of the S-curve coming down from town, while slick in the middle, is completely dry toward the outer edge of the curve; so if you start to slide, you’ll hit dry bare dirt before careening off over the edge, which will prevent the careening off over the edge. Isn’t that reassuring? Still a good idea to approach that curve cautiously; the road to the north is quite slippery with hard-packed snow.