Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Snowpocalypse 2019

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2019

In the last 48 hours we received a lot of snow. I took regular photos from the same angle to show the accumulation. Here they are:

The above three run from noon to about 5 pm on Sunday. The snow was falling lightly at first, but picked up after nightfall.

The above is a 10 pm shot. It looks brighter than the 5 pm one due to the remarkable low light camera mode of my new iPhone. You can clearly see the snow has been coming down since the last shot: the driveway is barely visible here.

Above shows 6 am Monday morning. According to the weather service we’d received about 16 inches (~38 cm) overnight, and it was heavy snow which proved difficult to remove. Down near the street it was as deep as our snowthrower can handle, and although we have a powerful machine it really struggled.

That’s immediately after we finished clearing the snow. It was still falling lightly at this point. Although it was Monday almost everything was cancelled and we were both staying home for the day.

By around lunchtime not much had changed. The footprints were from the postman, who isn’t stopped by ‘a bit’ of snow!

By evening though (this is around 8 pm Monday) you can see it had built up somewhat again: there had probably been another 3-4 inches by this point.

And then we woke today to this: another 6+ inches since yesterday. Once again it was tricky to remove due to heaviness and the cold (it was -4 C) but at least it had stopped falling.

And here’s the final shot, after we had finished this morning. All told the official tally is 22.6 inches of snow (57.4 cm) in Albany and slightly more where we live just to the south. It was the 8th biggest snowfall of all time in this city. I expect well remember it for a while πŸ™‚

Newcastle 2

Friday, January 4th, 2019

Went to the Newcastle fireworks with Sue and her family, but nature had other ideas and put on a spectacular show of her own:

It’s the only rain I’ve seen so far, and only lasted a couple of hours. I was home and slept through midnight as usual. Happy New Year!

I’ve been catching up with friends a lot: a swim in the ocean baths with K, lunch with M and a scenic drive with S:

And there’s been a bit of this:

And this:

And of course this:

Hrm… what am I painting with my Crayola watercolors?

Lazy days in Newcastle then, albeit with a lot of walking in hot, hot sun. I don’t want to push myself too hard with Tokyo on the horizon πŸ™‚

Watership Down

Thursday, May 10th, 2018

Can you see the family in this photo?

Look in the middle and you can easily see mum and dad:

They’re watching out for their child, a ‘tiny bunny’ who is about as big as a tennis ball and 100 times as cute! S/he’s hiding right at the edge of the lawn near a juniper…

And yes, these photos were taken through our binoculars πŸ™‚

First Snow

Sunday, December 10th, 2017

We had our first significant snowfall overnight; 4 inches according to the local weather.

It’s very light snow – almost intangible – and therefore sticking to everything prettily.

It’s very cold out as well, which gives me hope this may not melt quickly. Walking around taking these photos was an uncomfortable experience πŸ™‚

That’s one of our old squirrel feeders. It’s useless now – you can see where the squirrels chewed through the plastic – but I leave it up because it’s become part of the backyard.

It’s rare we get a snowfall like this before I leave for Oz. Even though it’s just a little snow, this was a pleasant surprise.

New Hampshire

Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

We went to New Hampshire for a few days! Specifically we stayed at Weirs Beach in the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. It’s a very popular tourist destination with lots to see and do.

On the first day we started by taking a lakeshore ride on our tourist train.

Jim had bought us tickets in the caboose, which meant we could sit in the seats up at roof level for a spectacular view!

The trip was great and the views better. They even served food and I had a delicious sandwich! We were dazzled by the crazy lakeside homes we saw, including one little shack on sale for a cool $900k!

Right after the train we comboed straight into another trip, this time on a boat:

BUT NOT JUST ANY BOAT! You’re looking at the only floating post office in the USA, and we rode on the second mail route of the day to several islands on the lake.

That’s the crowd at Jolly Island, waiting not just for their mail but also the ice-creams sold on the boat. The lake has dozens of islands, many of which have summer homes on them. It’d be a fab place to spend a few weeks in the summer…. if you were rich enough to afford it!

Two minutes walk from our cabin was a boardwalk that had restaurants and gift stores and two arcades. You can bet I visited it nightly πŸ™‚

On the second day we went to a place called Polar Caves. After being (not so) momentarily distracted by the feedable deer, we took the route through their nine glacial caves.

This place was incredible. Self-guided, the caves required a lot of agility and stamina to get through, and we were very often crouching down almost to our knees or contorting ourselves in ways we had forgotten to get past a tight obstacle.

The limited warnings in advance and near total lack of any meaningful safety notice meant we didn’t expect anything like this, and while (a lot of) fun, this was a very strenuous experience!

Easily the best cave system I’ve ever visited, this place is highly recommended to anyone that can still climb ladders, crawl along on your knees and doesn’t suffer from vertigo (since some caves were vertical) or claustrophobia. Beware if you’re a fat man though; you’ll be miserable πŸ˜‰

And then after the caves came Funspot, the mega arcade we visited last year and the reason for the return trip. It was mobbed with people since the remnants of hurricane Harvey had blown into town and it was very wet, but we endured the crowds for a few hours and had a lot of fun.

There’s probably more I’m forgetting but I’m sure you can tell we had a fun long weekend and a good ‘last hurrah’ to summer. Even though it’s a long drive, I’m sure we’ll return again one day.