We’re still in the ‘in and out part’ of spring – sometimes it feels like spring, and sometimes it’s still winter.  The day after our last spring-like day, we got 14 inches of snow.  This is the view out the window above my desk – good for bird watching and beautiful when the snow sticks to the branches.

Center Valley in the snow

One of the events we’ve been waiting for is getting rid of the power poles that took power to the trailer that used to be across the road.  We bought the land a few years ago, and the trailer left last fall.  Last week, the power poles finally left too.  Here’s the view of the hill – with no poles!

And the view the other direction – looking from Maple Ridge through the gap where the poles used to be, into Center Valley.

Wind and snow swept Buffalo Ridge and Western Prairies

The path up Indian Grass Point

Buffalo Ridge Prairie – back to having no snow.

This week we’ve been working on clearing off the slash from Hidden Oaks Point.  The trees were cut several weeks ago, and we’ve been working in between snowstorms to try to remove the slash before the ground thaws.

This is when we were just one day into the project.

We had to work around some more snow – but it melted quickly in the sun.

Here’s the tractor with a mouthful of brush and logs.  It takes a lot of piling and a lot of trips up and down the hill to remove it all.

I think we’re about half done here.

One morning it was too warm to drive the tractor on the hill, so we tried rolling the logs down .    We had a good time – fun to see how far we can get them to go.  They’ll eventually go onto the brush pile in the far right side of the photo.

Here’s the view of our rolled logs from above.  We succeeded in getting a few logs to roll from near the top of the hill, all the way to the pile.

Mike decided we needed to assign points depending on how far the logs rolled – so here’s his scheme.  The ones with lower point values need to be rolled a second, and sometimes a third time, to get them the rest of the way down.

We really need about a week more of cold mornings so we can drive the tractor up to finish the project.

The white deer has been back several times, in different places each time.  It’s been difficult to get a photo – it’s always just a little too far away, or we don’t have a camera handy.  This time it was close – in Pat’s Prairie – but behind some trees, and moving fast.

I’m starting to see a few more hints of spring.  This is a rosette of Wormwood leaves.  It grows on dry, sandy prairies, and sends up tufts of silvery green leaves when the snow is still on the ground.