It's Snow Time!

Winter has only just begun, yet we've had two snowstorms already. Like most dogs, my three love the snow. I don't know what it is about the cold flaky stuff that makes Lilah, Jasper and Tucker, well, flaky.

Dogs who normally can't stand getting wet (that's you, Jasper and Tucker) romp around in the snow like it's the Best Thing Ever. A Gift From the Sky. And you can Eat It, too! Just an inch of white on the ground and my dogs turn into goofy puppies.

And I love it. I turn in to a kid as well, watching my four-legged friends romp and jump and pounce and bound. Sometimes I just run around in the snow with them. And then we all come piling back in the warm house, happy and tired--and wet.

Eventually, it all melts. And we're back to plain hard frozen ground--or worse yet, nasty thick mud that sticks to dog paws like Velcro. Until the next snow storm blankets our yard and we get to go out and do it again.

The first storm of the season came in the fall--November 7. This year, The Weather Channel started naming winter storms, and this one was christened Athena.  I'm sure our Athena felt she finally got her due.

"Wait! What? A snowstorm named after me? Of course. As it should be."

Tucker, Lilah and Jasper run through the snow as the storm just gets started.

Too much snow on your back and you have to Floppity it off.

By nighttime, we had more than six inches. The heavy wet snow covered everything with a soft white blanket, including our patio.

And the snow kept falling...

The next morning, a walk through the woods revealed nature's beauty at every turn. The heavy snow bent branches and trees already stressed from Hurricane Sandy's wrath a little over a week before, creating a new landscape--and in some cases breaking limbs that couldn't bear the weight.

Morning sun shines through the trees after Snowstorm Athena.

The wind blew snow against one side of the trees, streaking them with white.

The jagged jumble of fallen limbs was softened by the covering of snow.

I wasn't the only one walking in the woods after the storm. A deer had come through earlier.

Heading back toward the gate and my home. Leaves were still on some of the trees.

The front yard offered up its own beauty.

And in the back yard, the dogs explored their territory..

The second storm, Snowstorm Freyr, came just a few days ago. It was colder, and the snow was dryer. Only three inches fell, but that was enough for doggy fun and games.

With snow still falling, the dogs are ready to romp.

Ooh! A sniff under the snow.  All Noses report to duty.

Once the dogs get started, they play in all combinations.

Three dogs chasing each other. (That's Jasper's head in the corner.)

Jasper and Lilah

Tucker and Lilah

Jasper and Tucker

Tucker and his Ball. Doesn't matter how frozen or snow covered it is, we eventually have to Play Ball.

There are a few quiet moments, usually with one dog sitting it out while two others run around. It's at those moments that I like to try and capture a few Snow Portraits.

Lilah, with a snowy snout. I love how the snow decorates her fur like fine sugar.

Jasper, always looking regal, even as his fur is coated with snow.

Tucker, showing off his Snow Beard, acquired from digging in drifts.

And every once in a while, I capture something that just makes me smile. In the picture below, it wasn't until after I enlarged it on my laptop that I saw Tucker reflected in Jasper's eye. Cool.

Through a dog's eye's: Tucker reflected in Jasper's eye.

All of our cats are indoor kitties, though it doesn't stop them from watching us and wishing they could join in the fun. Though I would hazard a guess that one step into cold wet snow would have them turning around in a whisker's instant and heading back into a warm dry house.

Calvin, Elsa Clair and a partly obscured Athena peer out the window at us.

Once we head inside, we all play the Treats for the Feets game, where each dog gets a treat for getting his or her feet wiped. This also involves toweling off and removing snow clumps from furry paws. Of course all this activity requires Supervision by at least one of the cats.
 

Tucker and Lilah waiting for their Feets to be dried. Elsa Clair Supervises.

What IS this stuff? Calvin ponders snow brought inside and shaken off the dogs' fur.

The Winter Games have just begun, and we're looking forward to the season.

Stormy Weather: Sandy Pays an Unwelcome Visit (Part I)

I think you would probably have to be living under a rock these days to not have heard about Hurricane Sandy or Superstorm Sandy or whatever you call the monster storm that hit the east coast of the U.S. in the last week of October. It was, the weather forecasters told us ahead of time, a recipe for disaster. Take one nasty hurricane, add a nor'easter, sprinkle in a cold front and stir with a backwards jet stream. Cook slowly with a full moon to create an ultra high tide. And hunker down.

(The last time we got hit by a hurricane was Irene in 2011; feel free to read my post on the battening and hunkering we had to do back then and the post about how we weathered the storm, which was only a little over a year ago.)

We knew it was going to be bad when Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel showed up in Battery Park in the lower tip of Manhattan. He only goes where they expect the worst weather to happen. Jim Cantore and Mike Seidel. Mike showed up on the Jersey coast. When you see them in your neighborhood, you know you're in for it.

So it wasn't too surprising that Sandy hit New York and New Jersey very hard.

During the storm, which began in earnest on Monday, October 29 and lasted through the next day, we spent most of the daytime in the basement. It was the first time the kittens were down there, so for them it was mostly fun and games and exploration.

How do kittens while away the time while in the basement? By playing Foosball. Of course.

The wind kicked up as the day went on, and by evening the wind really was howling. I would take the dogs outside to do their business and I kept looking up at the sky and wondering why jets were still flying--and so low that I could really heard their engines. And then it dawned on me. The sound wasn't from airplanes; it was the wind. That loud. Really.

The dogs weren't happy. It was loud and wet. And blowy. Not fun to play in. They kept looking at me as if to say, "Turn it off already!"

Jasper and Tucker: It's raining! We're getting wet! Let us in already!

Even when the rain let up a bit, Tucker and Jasper weren't that happy with the nasty winds.

 

A wet Lilah didn't mind wind or rain.

I always thought hurricanes meant lots of rain. But this was really a wind event. We would get bands of rain with serious downpours now and again, but it was the blowing, thrashing wind that showed Mother Nature's power to us.

Pine siskins attempted to shelter from the winds by clinging to the side of our large maple tree.

Strong winds shredded leaves from the trees and plastered them against the house. Jasper didn't care; he just wanted to get inside where it's warm and dry.

In the midst of it all, Athena slept right next to the windows as the wind rattles the panes. She barely twitched a whisker.

By nighttime, the winds were getting stronger. You could hear it even within the safety of our home.  The dogs and cats and kittens, for the most part, ignored the storm. You could tell Lilah wasn't very happy as she stuck a little closer to me when the winds were bad. And every once in a while, a gust came through that made everyone perk up their ears and brace for something. But nobody was panicking or hiding...except for maybe Dawn, but she Hides all the time; it's her hobby.

At 7:30, the power went out. I would say we are lucky enough to have a generator, but we have a generator because two years ago we were very unlucky; an ill-timed storm caused us to lose power, and our battery back-up sump pumps couldn't keep up with the rain. We lost a lot of what we had stored in our basement from the resulting flood. It took us months to pick up the pieces; the silver lining was we were able to put the insurance money toward finishing the basement, and most important, installing a generator that is hooked up to our natural gas line.

That last part is real important: the generator is hooked up to our natural gas line. Which means when the power goes out, the generator automatically starts up. And keeps going. We don't have to fill it with gas. All we have to is check the oil if it runs for more than five days. Which one always hopes never happens.

We invited our neighbor over to spend the evening with us, and we spent the evening with our generator providing light and warmth--and power to the pumps. At one point, a particularly vehement gust shook the house. We halted our conversation and looked at each other, wide-eyed. When we started breathing again--not realizing at first that we had been holding our breaths--I could feel the adrenaline pounding through me. We all did. It felt like we had been brushed by something unbelievably powerful.

Later that night, we put the cats and kittens in the basement, as it was one of the safest rooms in the house--and the one most likely to stay closed and untouched if a tree landed on our roof. And my husband and I slept (make that "attempted to sleep") in my son's vacant room, along with the dogs, figuring it was furthest from the giant tree in our backyard, and hopefully less likely to be damaged.

It was a Very Long Night.

In my next post, I'll write about the aftermath of Sandy.