march 2006
march 30 2006 23:37 pst it has rained here 28 days out of the 31 in the month of march. people are starting to get depressed. it's supposed to rain all week.
on the bright side, the tomato seeds that mom sent to me are beginning to sprout, even though it's in the low 50s at night. some of the peppers are coming up too, even though it's way too cold.
march 9 2006 22:51 pst rumor is that it might snow here tonight, all the way down to sea level. lord knows it feels cold enough outside- it's in the low 40s. the snow in tahoe is going to be great, but i'm dreading the drive already.
march 7 2006 22:24 pst i woke up this morning with a rainbow to the west, outside my window. the sun was so low in the sky that it was HUGE, spanning almost half the arc of a circle- i could only see a quarter of it before the rest was cut off by clouds and the windowframe. of course, that meant that it was raining over my house while we were trying to wake up today, but by the time i got to work the sun was out, and it stayed dry all day here even though the sky threatened a couple of times. it rained almost 3 inches here yesterday- the french drain next to my house is still leaking water slowly into the street, and it snowed 18 inches in tahoe yesterday, and another 6 or so today.
there are deer footprints in my front yard again- they stepped in the soft wet dirt and left deep tracks. the deer here don't get as big as they do in michigan, but i find it amusing (to say the least) that they come to within 6 blocks of the freeway, and within 2 blocks of light-rail mass transit. when there are deer in the backyard in kalamazoo, everybody stops what they're doing to go and look- here, everyone is asleep so we miss it but the deer are still out and about.
i saw an article today about coyotes in urban settings in phoenix and several other cities- opinions seem to be mixed. on the one hand, they eat domestic pets that are allowed to roam outside the house. on the other hand, they keep the deer population down, and eat raccoons, and clean up roadkill and stuff like that. made me think that when the H5N1 bird flu makes it to the americas, it's not the cats we will need to worry about as a virus repository, it's the coyotes.
march 5 2006 9:05 pst cold and rainy again. it seemed like it might be springtime at the beginning of february, but this week winter has been having another go at us. it's down in the low 50s at night, and although the sun was out for most of the day yesterday it's grey and threatening skies again today.
it's apropos today that the image at the top (for the time being, anyhow) is of snow on the car from last winter... or maybe even two winters ago. we've been able to enjoy the luxury of fresh snow a couple of times this year, but we've only been out while it was snowing once, and it wasn't really coming down as heavily as those days i remember from riding on the back side at alpine. but with the weather turning cold again, i have hopes that we might have a well-timed storm at the end of march now, and that our annual spring break ski trip might be the best one yet.
so if you have the time, send some cold vibes our way, and don't even think about the 'r' word.