Meanwhile on Pyramid. .. ..

Looking back I see that I have not been posting many snowscapes for the past week or so.  Mostly this is because the weather has been on the dismal side.  Despite the spring like conditions down low we still have winter on high.  Most of the rain in town has been snow on the mountain.  Only now instead of snowing all the way down to the road at 500 feet elevation, it only snows above 1000 feet elevation.

This time of the year is when winter starts to move up the mountain.  In a month during a rain event it will not snow on the mountain anymore.  Funnily enough this is also the moment of peak snowpack.  The snow right now is as deep as it will get this winter.  It might get a little deeper near the very top, but below 1500 feet it is beginning to thin rapidly.

It is also the best skiing of the year!

Patrick

View from the road - yesterday I was barely able to ski to the road

April Showers

'April Showers bring May flowers', or so the rhyme goes.  And on Kodiak at least it is true.  Lately it has been raining a lot, but in the woods you can see all the flower buds forming.  The blueberries are already blooming and pretty soon it'll be the salmonberries.  I am hopeful that we will have some pretty good may flowers and an excellent berry crop.

Today on the paper route Nora was already talking about picking blueberries this summer 'everyday' at Abercrombie.  She also realized that she still has some berries picked from two years ago that need to be made into a pie.  The plan is to make a blueberry pie Saturday night.

Patrick

Nora's Crocii

Saturday was the only sunny day in over a week, and Nora captured the sunlight in these pictures of crocuses.  I was playing board games with Stuey when Nora rushed in to show me the pictures she'd taken of the crocuses.  She wanted me to put them on Instagram and later I did.

Today it is rainy and foggy, and yesterday I was sick.  It is nice to have something bright to look at.

I've noticed that the crocuses have spread all over my yard.  They seem to flower and die away before I start mowing the lawn.  I wonder if I could encourage this somehow and have an April lawn awash in crocus flowers?  Patrick

Weekend begins with Friday the 13th

Top of Pillar before the sun came out

Friday was a weird day.  Nora was sick and stayed home from school and most of the day it was cloudy and gloomy.  But in the evening it cleared off and got beautiful.  I helped Nora with her paper route, and after being cooped up all day she wanted to go somewhere.  So we drove up Pillar Mountain and checked out the snow and windmills.  Not enough snow for skiing - sigh - but it looked like it might be great sledding.

Saturday was beautiful - sunny and the temperature got up into the upper 50's (yuck).  It was a sun-blasted day and by afternoon everybody was a little tired.  Stuey and I ended up in a Monopoly and Backgammon marathon.  First Monopoly and then later backgammon.  It killed me to play board games while it was sunny outside.  But we had gotten our outside time.

As regards Monopoly - once started at that game the whole world is at bay.  I felt bad for Stuey when during a tightly contested game he landed on Chance and it said to advance his token to to Boardwalk where I had just built hotels.  He had just used all his free capital building hotels on the New York, Tennessee, and St James.  Game over.  Dessert at dinner cheered him up and then it was backgammon. .. ..

Sunday was back to Friday - drizzling and cloudy.  We went sledding and skiing at the pass.  Sort of sad to see what the 50 degree temperatures and sunshine had done to the snowpack the day before.  Patrick

Another picture of the blueberry blossoms from Abercrombie

Statue of Liberty

New skis and boots! On Sunday the 15th

This picture is from Saturday the 14th - Stuey's BIG dessert

Scarpa Chic!

Both Nora and I are still a little sick so we did not go too far up the mountain

Puzzle Complete

This last puzzle took a LONG time to complete.  My mom sent it to us for Easter.  A Dr Suess jungle scene with very few areas of solid color.  You could not sort the pieces by color and go section at a time.  But perseverance pays - we got her done in the end!

For Christmas my mother also gave us a 'puzzle board'.  You can close the lid and put the puzzle away if you want.  It makes puzzles much more convenient.   Patrick

Puzzle close up

Blueberry Blossoms

A couple of days ago I noticed that the blueberries are blooming in the park.  And everything seems to be budding up.  Even the garlic in my garden has sent up shoots through the leaf mulch I had them covered with.  Spring is coming.  Pretty soon I'll be pulling dandelions and mowing the lawn - ughhhhh.

I checked the old blog and two years ago the blueberries were blooming in late February (click here for link to old blog post).  That year we had a bumper blueberry crop.  Then last year the blueberries did not bloom at all.  I think mid April is just about normal.  So here's to a normal blueberry year!  Patrick

Dismal

It has been a dismal week.  After what seems like weeks of frosty nights and sunny days this week it has been all rain.  And rain pretty high up the mountain too.  We are quickly losing snow at the pass.  But the good news is that above 1000 feet we are still gaining snow.  But it is pretty dismal up there.  Patrick