Winter at our house, early winter this year

[Edwin]

Our winter started very early. Then temperatures were hovering around the freezing mark before I went to the Philippines October 16th. When we landed in the Philippines it was like we returned to summer, but when we returned to our home it was cold again the 1st of November. We had a very cold November and December as well as an accumulation of snow.

[Edwin]

We have 4 heat sources in our house. We have a pellet stove, and the pellets cost enough money so that I try to balance that against our need to stay warm. We have a wood cookstove that helps us keep the whole house warm. We have an oil filled radiator heater that our granddaughter uses minimally in her room. She also has an electric blanket on her bed. I try to burn the pellets slowly enough so that I am not buying a ton of pellets every month.

[Edwin]

We thought all the cows were gone from our neighbor's across the way. They are relatives, grandchildren of my grandmother's identical twin sister. Anyway the dogs saw 2 cow while we were walking and they wanted badly to go visit them. They spent a lot of their time down in the corner of the pasture where they could eat on some tall rye grass bunches. These people came to get their 2 cows before the winter gets any more severe. They would have died if they had been left there much longer, as eventually the snow will get so deep that they won't have anything to eat, and I'm not sure where they were getting water. Maybe they were eating snow.

[Edwin]

When we lived at Stehekin we had cats, many of them. We lived at the bottom of a hill where all the mice came to our house, so our landlord suggested we get a cat, well we got several of them. The school was close to our house, and after we got our cats they had no more mice problems, that is until the big cats got them, cougars and bob cats, and I had a very close encounter with one of them, about 3 feet away, and the Lord was with me because I did not get attacked. We move home near our kids and grandkids, and now we have inherited 3 dogs, and one yellow crown Amazon bird. He whistles a tune, he talks like he is on the phone or maybe a radio, and his sings among other less pleasant things that he does, but we love him as well as the dogs. I may have to get another job to support them!

[Edwin]

Carol knows how I love church hymn/song books, so she found me 2 of them from the early 1900s. Very few of the songs in the book I am playing out of now are familiar, but they are beautiful church songs, and I am having fun playing them.

[Chas]

Wow - thanks for sharing these pictures Edwin. It does look bleak there with nothing to give protection when the cold wind blows.

[Edwin]

Wow - thanks for sharing these pictures Edwin. It does look bleak there with nothing to give protection when the cold wind blows.

You are exactly correct, Chas! The winds have nothing to stop them, and they blow hard, and boy when the temperatures are low the cold is bitter. My parents spent the first year of their marriage in the early 1930s about 800 feet from where we live now, and they about froze to death. They divided their time between standing on chairs above the cook stove to keep warm, and they also spent a lot of time in bed during the coldest times. They had the stove red hot, and had a bank of snow behind the stove that never melted, and that seems unreal, but I know it is the truth. We have it much better than they did. The first winter in this place we had broken windows, a front door that didn't really close correctly, and we kept a blanket over that door, and the wind still blew right through the house. Now we have all new windows, new doors, and a new slider, and our house is comfortable unless the wind is blowing, then it is difficult to keep warm, but even then we can keep it between 60 and 70 degrees F., and that's not bad. We do have some terrible snow drifting during the winter, normally in January, but it can be in December, not likely to be in February, although possible. Since we are retired we just do not pull the car out of the drive if the wind is blowing because we never know where we might get standed with deep drifted snow across the road. We have already had our plans disabled a quite a few times this winter, but we are safe and alive and that is what counts. We do fine here, and we get out and get going when it is absolutely necessary. This is beautiful country with the rhye grass clumps in the summer, the hay stack rocks, and in the winter it is also beautiful, even to see the drifting or drifted snow.

I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures. I had fun taking them and then posting them!