Busting Out

Restlessness settled on me like a hawk; I'd been completely housebound since Tuesday night, and it was Saturday.

A sharp-shinned hawk hopes for a cardinal on ice.

After three full days of it, I was ready to get out. Being bundled up had lost its allure.


Mether, are you going somewhere without me?

Yes, Chet Baker. Cutelips or no, I have to get out of here, and it is too cold for you to come along and wait in the car.

It had been fun overall, an experience we will never forget, and one I'm glad we've documented in photos.

This is an actual photo of me, having ridden the toboggan at breakneck speed down the huge hayfield hill, and having wound up going partway under a barbed wire fence at the very bottom. I was going too fast to bail out, so I grabbed the wire as I shot under it, bringing myself to a halt just as it touched my chin. It was like something from a Schwarzeneggar movie.


I lay there for a few minutes, considering my fate, and trying to figure out how I was going to get up from this position on slippery ice. I was also laughing, which didn't help. I was happy that my brain had worked well enough to tell me to grab the wire in between barbs. Eventually the sled slipped out from under me and went careening on down the hill, and I rolled over and wriggled out of my predicament.

Yes, it was time for me to fly, icy roads or no...I just had to head for town.


I took my camera with its new little 18-55 mm wide-angle lens, and was glad I did.

Have you ever seen a hayroll look more delicious? Like a Frosted Maxi-Wheat?

Sheep move suspiciously away from the lady with the camera, backed by a tinkling ice wonderland.


I did my shop, replaced some things we'd lost in the big meltdown, and was happy to come back home, a few images richer. I hope you've enjoyed these ice storm pictures as much as I enjoyed capturing them.
Zick-Thompson Manor viewed from the west, Chet Baker striking a Vanna White pose in the foreground. Yes, he knows exactly what he's doing, and he doesn't even need to be asked to pose any more. Basically, he inserts himself in almost every photo I take.

The odd looking plastic shiny thing is my Garden Pod, full of flowers!

Life is good.

More Sexy Snow

The feeders were HOPPIN' all through the storm. I kept them topped off, with fresh offerings scattered under the bower, the spruces and pines.


When Bill and I planted the blue spruces in 1992, I didn't even think about the fact that they'd grow up to be marvelous bird feeders. The snow never gets all the way under them. I throw a big scoopful of seed right into the tree, and the birds clamber all through the needles to get it, and cluster beneath its sheltering boughs to hide and feed. The leaning evergreen to the left is our Fraser fir from Christmas, bungeed to a post. We'll burn it come spring.


When the sun finally broke out, I went into a frenzy of photography. Dawn colors snow with the most delicate peaches and blues.


This is one of my favorite photos from the storm's aftermath. Bill and I thought it looked like our penguin had skiied into the yard. Actually, the tracks were made by ice, falling off our telephone line just overhead.

We had so much trouble with our telephone line that about five years ago the phone company came and buried it. I saw the phone guy about to take down the homely cable that runs into the house and stopped him. Where would the bluebirds, tree and barn swallows sit? Where would the Carolina wren stop to sing? Where would the yellow-breasted chat land after his flight display? The phone guy liked that idea, probably mostly because he didn't have to take it down.

Our shitepoke weathervane had never looked so true-to-life. Go ahead, click the link if you don't know what a shitepoke is, or why this photo makes those who know chuckle. I'll tell you.

Sun on the meadow was surreal. Chet and I lit out for the farthest reaches, sure we'd find a wonderland.Our ordinary path was filled with mystery.

The little bluestem bent in supplication, making a mounded fantasy landscape, a maze of wonder.

Spiky lines of young sumac pushed up, refusing a snow coat. We're not cold.


Colorado or Ohio? I couldn't tell. The transformation was complete.

The older sumac, its fruit long dehisced, was a flock of dancing cranes.

Smooth sumac still offered sustenance to the hermit thrushes, woodpeckers and bluebirds, if they could get around the snowcap.

When we finally came in, spent from thrashing through the powder and underlying crust, Chet Baker thawed himself and dried his damp brisket by the gas fire that had kept us warm the whole time. Little CatDog. He baked until he was hot to the touch. That's why he's The Baker.

I look out the window today and it is snowing again, temperatures in the twenties, ferocious windchill. A lone redwing at the feeder, too cold to konkaree. Tomorrow I begin another journey--to Honduras. While on planes and in airports, I'll try to finish up with writing about Guyana so the Honduras images and memories sure to crowd in don't wind up replacing those precious things in my addled brain. There's only so much room in there, after all.

Don't worry. I've been cooking and cooking; the pantry is full and you will have plenty of Bacon while I'm gone. But man, I won't miss this wind and these loaded gray clouds; the parka and hat.
Tonight I'll offer a sacrifice to the airline gods, cruel and capricious though they be, to get me there in a reasonable way. Cross your fingers for me? JZ

Crazy Sexy Snow

I've got two camera bodies now, my old Canon Digital Rebel XTi and my new Canon Digital Rebel XSi. When I'm on a serious photo safari, I carry both bodies, one with a long lens and one with the new 18-55 mm. landscape lens. It gives a little extra weight and cumbersomeness, but it beats switching lenses in mid-stride by a long shot.

Dawn broke, and I knew I was in for a serious snow photo safari. Ohboyohboyohboy I was jumping around like a cartoon hound.Finally, light. Finally, sun on this glittering palace of diamonds that would not last long. My chance of chances.

There were no tracks on the new-fallen snow. Time to track it up, but I snapped a record of its pristine state first.

My little spready Japanese maple was once a potted bonsai. It wasn't very happy in training, so I set it free, and now it's big enough to sit under, big enough to shade the Pig of Good Fortune, and it's where Baker goes on a hot summer day. And this day, it was encased in glass.

Th' Bacon went first, tracking up the path in his doggeh way.

He was verra happeh to be out at last, snow or no snow. He had his football letter jacket on; he was cookin'.



There were things under the snow that only he knew about, and he dug several deep holes down to the lairs of voles and shrews.

I don't know many people who would stick their whole face in the snow and enjoy it, but Th' Bacon does.

I turned around and looked back at our home, our refuge from this long storm.

The birding tower peeks up above the roof, my little writer's chamber beckoning. With the sun, it would be reasonably warm up there, even without heat, but I had pictures to take.

Farther out the meadow, a bluebird house bore evidence of the storm. We humans take a somewhat more elaborate form of shelter, but both work for our respective species.

Egad, I've been waiting for this wide-angle lens for three years. I don't know what I did without it. Now I want to go back to Guyana and shoot landscapes. Ah well. Other times, other trips.


The welljack that gives us our heat and cooking gas; that makes my Garden Pod warm and keeps us cozy all year round. I love that old thing, pumping away out there with no one to talk to.
Like many in our oil-rich area, we have free gas from this well on our land. So, uh, we don't pay heating bills.

I know. I hear you New Englanders sputtering. It's not for everybody, but there are distinct percs to living in Appalachian Ohio. You couldn't get me out of here with a crowbar and a bomb. Even when the power goes off for days at a time. Maybe especially then.

Tomorrow: More wonderland, mo' Bacon.

The Sun Came Out

The pines and birches, bent almost double here by the weight of ice, are standing straight and unscathed as I write this. Nature springs back.


Chet, on his way out the oil road to check our well.

Waiting, waiting for the sun to come out, knowing that it was going to be spectacular. I hung up on someone who had kindly called to see how we were faring once when the sun peeked through and the weeping willow, caked in ice, burst into diamond flame. I hope she understood. I had to go see that.

There was no power as yet, but the gas well was sending us some love, about 23 psi of love. You want to see upwards of 40 psi at the wellhead, but we'll take it. Hey, nice hat.


The orchard was just ridiculous with the sun coming through the ice and snow in the afternoon.


I made about a yard of progress every five minutes, with the sun and the snow and the intricate beauty hollering and whooping all around me.

Bill skiied cross country while I tried to save the snow and ice, lock it up in electrons and digital folders before it melted.


A twin arch for rabbits to pass beneath.


Multiflora rose, its hips locked up where even the birds couldn't get them. It was a beautiful but hungry sight.


Liriodendron flowers, each a goblet of snow.


In concert, they were a ballet corps, little hands offering divinity. Here, here, here, take this.

Chet Baker, Snow Bunneh

Sitting inside looking at birds crowding the feeders was fine for awhile, because the footing outside was so treacherous and exhausting--crunch, flomp, crunch, flomp, whoops! that going out wasn't a wise option. I suited up and went out twice a day to re-provision the feeders, making sure to throw seed and cracked corn under the brushpile/bower Bill made. Here, a few goldfinches enjoy the largesse. Last count of goldfinches at the feeders Feb. 16: 79! And people, they are getting some yellow feathers on their heads...and I heard a flock of robins singing yesterday...and a friend reports from  northern Virginia that a flock of konk-a-reeing red-winged blackbirds stopped by to brighten his yard. It's coming. It is.

But here on this blog, we're still snowbound. And  a guy has to get out and mark his territory, eventually. I wish I knew how many pictures I have taken of Chet peeing on things. Let's just say: Many. I am so besotted with this dog that I think his micturation rituals are worth photographing. I don't even mind when he goes and pees on my giant culinary sage plant every morning and night. I just use leaves from the top. Here, he shows some downtrodden Virginia pines who the #1 Boss is.

Since Chet has the furry protection of a naked mole rat on his underbelly, it really isn't fair to bring him out in snow without a little protection. He winds up shivering on the stoop within two minutes.


So we got out The Coat, a Woolrich creation sold by Target, far and away the best coat he's ever had. And things began looking up for Snowpuppeh.
I could do without the football helmet applique, but hey. It's got good velcro closures on the ventral surface, it doesn't restrict his movement, and it keeps his bare brisket from getting all wet and freezy. The fact that he's really cute in it (a matter of opinion, I know, KatDoc!) doesn't hurt, either. Come on. Cuteness like that is an unarguable absolute.


Chet's wondering what that bright golden orb in the sky might be. We hadn't seen it for so long we forgot it was there.

Like I was saying, cute is an absolute when you're talking Chet Baker and letter jackets. All he needs is a helmet; a little stuffed football velcroed under his arm...Anybody seen any good dog costume web sites?

I am joking, of course. Function. It's all about function, style a distant second. And cuteness trumps only by coinkydink.

Starlings and Bluebirds

Bluebirds wait for the tenth welfare handout of the day.

I'm not done with Guyana, not by a long shot, but this has been such a ravishingly beautiful winter--the most beautiful I can remember, with a fresh new layer of snow nearly every day to cover the old, not to mention four days of solid ice, and all the brittle beauty that goes along with that. I've decided to post my ice pictures before the woodcocks arrive on February 19 and hurry us all toward spring.

The mundane, transformed by a gleaming coat.
A sassafras bud, waiting for spring, coated in a protective glass layer.


Of course, the transformation of their habitat and food sources into a wilderness of brittle ice was less than delightful for the birds. Ice storms are one of the single greatest population drains on the eastern bluebird. A bad winter can kill them by the millions.

And so the ice transformed our bluebirds into beggars--eight of them at once.

Here, a field sparrow crouches, heel-deep in suet dough, while bluebirds feed all around him.

I had to sit by the patio window whenever I put suet dough out, or a huge and ravenous flock of starlings would come in and clean it all up within seconds. Starlings are only a problem for us when the ground is covered with snow and/or frozen. They clear out as soon as it thaws, bless their dark little hearts. I gradually moved my rocking chair up until my toe touched the window, so bold were the starlings. Any bird that wanted the good stuff had to look me right in the eye.


We're not sure we want to do that. You don't seem to like us much.



You have to admit they're beautiful birds, if a bit on the gluttonous, pot-bellied, poopy side. Never fear, I put out tons of old fridge and freezer food for them; they were cleaning chicken carcasses and eating sausage and buns and dog chow and fancy ravioli like there was no tomorrow. I just was not into giving them the Zick dough, the costly, hard labor of mine own biceps.

One of my favorite ice storm revelations: When I'd rise, arms waving, and holler BOOGA BOOGA at the starlings, which would rise up and fly off in a panic, the bluebirds would just sit there in the willow, watching, never ruffling a feather. They knew what I was doing and why, and they knew that as soon as I got rid of the starlings, they could come in, say a polite hello, and eat in peace.
You got that right, Captain Cobalt. Zick loves you.