Winter doesn’t seem to be going away – we’ve had a few warm days, but then it gets cold again and snows some more. This morning the temperature was below zero.

The snow is still quite deep in most places. It’s not as deep close to the house or on the south facing hills, but on the lee side of the upper fields there are still drifts where the snow is above my knees.

The snow is melting – slowly – around the stems of the plants, making dimples in the snow.

The deer prefer places where there’s no snow so they can get to the grass. This morning we saw 18 deer grazing on the steepest part of Sumac Prairie – where there’s hardly any snow.

The raccoons have woken up and are nosing around under the birdfeeders looking for food.

One of them found a way up onto the deck – when I came out it was sitting on the railing. It jumped down when it saw me – about 15 feet down. It must have gotten pretty shaken up because it didn’t come back that night. The next day I reinforced the raccoon-proofing around the deck, and so far that seems to have worked.

I walked in the wetland one day, and followed a beaver track that went from one part of the creek, overland, to another. I had never seen a beaver track so far from water. The beaver’s tail makes a wide scrape on the snow.

The beaver went in the water again at the old pond – one that was abandoned a few years ago. There was lots of evidence of beaver activity around the edges, so maybe they’re going to take up residence there again.

This is a deep spring at the western end of our wetland.

I counted 17 circles on the bottom where the water is bubbling up.

There’s a Marsh Marigold plant on one of the sedge hummocks at the edge of the spring. It’s growing under the water and is still green, even during this cold winter weather.

Here’s a picture from 2004 of this same spring in mid-April.

In this cold weather the water at the edges of the streams freezes in beautiful, complicated patterns.
This is one of the streams that feeds into the creek.

And some of the ice around its edges.

Praag Valley at sunset.