I’m trying to imagine blossoms on this tree since there are hints of white as a friend of mine has been telling me of her almond blossoms and how pretty they smell right now but it’s not working because all I smell is cold and I feel the cold too.
It might be a fun tree to climb in the summer but one would get a chilly butt climbing it now.
(I will be taking a mini vacation so I won’t be posting any pictures on February 29, 30 or the 31st.)
Chilly Tree
I haven’t enjoyed the cloudy days as I rather see some sun but clouds do create some colorful sunsets.
Winter Sunset
The snow is piling higher with each snowfall but I don’t think any one has to worry about the cows walking over this fence when the snow gets too high – not since the rest of the fence appears to be missing!
Missing Fence
Maybe Punxsutawney Phil was right about an early spring, even if my groundhog predicted a long winter, since flocks of geese have been seen as well as the return of some swans by a friend of mine.
My pond isn’t big enough for the Trumpeter Swans to land in or raise a family, but there are spots in the state where they do. The Trumpeter Swan was hunted for its feathers throughout the 1600s – 1800s, causing a tremendous decline in its numbers. Its largest flight feathers made what were considered to be the best quality quill pens.
Trumpeter Swans form pair bonds when they are three or four years old. The pair stays together throughout the year, moving together in migratory populations. Trumpeters are assumed to mate for life, but some individuals do ‘divorce’ and switch mates over their lifetimes. Occasionally, if his mates dies, a male Trumpeter Swan may not pair again for the rest of his life.
I’m still think it will be a long winter because there are hundreds of finches attacking my bird feeders right now and that makes it seem like they are stocking up for another snow storm!
Trumpeter Swans
I bet these Red and Black Angus cattle are happier in the summer than winter, at least I would prefer looking at green grass again.
The naturally polled Angus were developed from cattle native to the counties of Aberdeenshire and Angus in Scotland. Hugh Watson can be considered the founder of the breed as he was instrumental in selecting the best black, polled animals for his herd. His favorite bull was Old Jock, who was born in 1842. Another of Watson’s notable animals was a cow, Old Granny, which was born in 1824 and said to have lived to 35 years of age and to have produced 29 calves.
The pedigrees of the vast majority of Angus cattle alive today can be traced back to these two animals so I wonder how many of these Angus are from Old Jock and Old Granny. I can’t say that having Old Granny on a pedigree makes an exceptional sounding pedigree!
Old Granny’s Kids?
This Hereford cow looks as thrilled about the new snow as I am, especially since I just came in from shoveling snow again.
Hereford in the Snow
Scientists in Scotland announced the July 1996 birth of the world’s first successfully cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, on February 22, 1997. Even though Dolly was not the first animal to be cloned, she gained attention in the media because she was the first to be cloned from an adult cell.
I always figured if they were going to clone a sheep, they could have picked a nicer looking breed of sheep than a Finn Dorset or one of the rare Scottish breeds, like the Boreray as it is the most endangered breed of sheep in the United Kingdom.
Cloning is even less profitable than normal ranching since it took 277 attempts to get Dolly but researchers have tried cloning extinct animals and may open doors for saving endangered and newly extinct species by resurrecting them from frozen tissue.
I just hope that doesn’t mean any Tyrannosaurus rex will show up in my backyard since I have enough trouble with the bears destroying my bird feeders!
Grazing Sheep
With more snow headed this way, I’m thinking more and more about summertime and some other color besides white. The Wild Geranium is a common plant of woodlands and are a later spring or early summer flower and the chipmunks love to eat the seeds. Maybe that is why I have so many chipmunks, it’s the flowers bringing them to my place.
Wild Geranium
I’m a bit of a chicken this morning! I don’t want to go out in the below zero temperature to shovel the snow drift in the driveway. And I think this chicken looks a bit grumpy too about the weather.
Chilly Chicken
It appears that Paul Bunyan hasn’t straighten out this river like he had done with the crooked river that was causing log jams for the loggers. Besides straightening rivers, the mythic folk hero Paul was also responsible for creating the 10,000 Lakes of Minnesota when Paul and his blue Ox Babe left footprints when they wandered blindly in a deep blizzard. The Great Lakes were also formed by Paul to have a watering hole big enough for Babe to drink from.
When Paul Bunyan dragged his axe behind him one day, he created the Grand Canyon and when Babe and Paul were roughhousing and shoving each other around, they created the Grand Tetons. And when Paul needed to get clean afterwards, he made a shower but forgot to turn it off when he finished and it is still running as Yellowstone Falls.
From the five storks that took to deliver Paul to the Mississippi River running backwards when Babe took a big swallow, the mythic legend and stories live on. What is mythic or a mystery to me is how a river doesn’t freeze over in below zero temperatures like last night when the river doesn’t appear to be flowing very fast. But then maybe Paul is upstream washing his feet as they could be hot from his wool socks and lumberjack boots.
Crooked Creek
