The final walk of the year occurred this morning. Weather warm for early winter, but we likely won't lose all our snow. The cold comes back with a vengeance by Monday morning. The final work in the woods for 2021 was the dropping of a small ash to help an unpictured oak. A nifty blade Santa delivered did the job.
After the walk and work, a fave dish was made for the final lunch of the year: Manchurian Style Cauliflower.
A snowstorm of up to eight inches will start this afternoon. Prior to this, we've been warmer than average for late autumn. All 13 inches of our snow so far has melted. A major windstorm this week brought down two big pines about 500 feet north of the house. The root balls were torn out of the earth, something quite common for pines in the region. Here is a picture of the bigger of the two trees.
A small sugar maple was lucky to not be hit by the massive force of the falling huge pine. This little fellow will hopefully have hundreds of years to grow and thrive after the near miss.
Thanks to our neighbor, fresh venison went into the crockpot this a.m. Chili for supper! With some excellent cornbread, too.
When you have a good shot at living 300 years, you're never in a hurry. Red oaks always leaf out late, sometimes not until Memorial Day weekend. They are also slow to change color in the autumn. Most other trees have no leaves left, but red oaks hold out for a while. Here are some pictures from yesterday and today, two days of glorious sunshine and pleasingly cool fall temps. The last photo shows an oak behind some lovely paper birches still retaining some leaves.
All ready for a quite winter in two separate storage locations, recently processed wood looks great. Two years will pass before this lovely biomass goes into the stove.
