Journal for February 28, 2023

It’s been a cold and snowy month, but we’re starting to see a few hints that spring may be coming.

Sunrise on our morning walk.

Sunrise over the creek

We had about a week of warm temperatures and enough snow melted that I could visit a few of the upper prairies.

Indian Grass Point

Center Valley looking down from Indian Grass Point

Buffalo Ridge Prairie

The Knife Edge

Twisted Oak Savanna

I checked on a few of the trail cameras that I haven’t been able to get to for a while. Here’s one of the best videos. You can hear the grouse quietly clucking.

Unfortunately the warm weather woke up the beavers. Usually we don’t have much trouble with beavers in the winter – they stay asleep in their dens. But this year they woke up and decided to build a dam inside the culvert that goes under our driveway. They build the dam every night, and we take it out every day. The daily dams are getting smaller…we’re hoping they’ll get tired pretty soon.

We haul the sticks away so they can’t reuse them – usually to our compost pile near the house. The compost pile is starting to look like a beaver lodge.

Just as a lot of the snow had melted, and we were thinking spring had arrived, the weather turned very cold. All the remaining slushy snow turned to ice.

The icy driveway is especially a problem. We struggled along for a few days, wearing cleats on our shoes, and doing our walks on top of the ice.

Then we discovered that we could walk across the crusty hard snow in the fields. This is part of the wetland with completely frozen snow and much easier walking.

We walked up to Pine Point and got a beautiful view of the wetland.

On the coldest days, a skim of ice forms on the surface of the creek

Then, a few days ago, we got 15 inches of snow….making driveway plowing even more complicated. The first pass was with the snowblower – dramatic and fun to watch.

And then we had a day of freezing rain.

This morning it’s sunny with mist coming up from the creek.

In spite of odd weather, snow and cold temperatures, snow and ice are melting when the sun comes out, we’re hearing bluebirds and we’ve seen a few small flocks of robins. Spring will be here soon!

Here are a few more sunrises…

Sunrise with icy driveway