What Happened to Spring?

This is definitely the year of the winter that wasn’t and the spring that isn’t!  Today is May 3, and it snowed all day.  Now the fog in the backyard looks like a scene out of “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”  The snow is starting to come down again.  Last night the weatherman said we could get 5 to 10 inches overnight and even more today.  Now wait a minute; what happened to spring?  We’re probably due for a couple more good snows this month.  I think for my next career I’ll be a weatherman, or weatherwoman as the case may be.  Of course, if I want to be totally PC, I would have to be a weather person.  What other job can you have where you can be wrong half the time and still keep your job?

Last week, I returned from a business trip on Wednesday night and told my husband that it was time to make some hummingbird nectar.  He told me that it was too early, but I said no, I have a feeling they’ll be here soon.  Sure enough, I made the hummingbird solution and put it in the refrigerator to cool.  The very next morning, I heard the distinctive whirring sound of hummingbird wings.  Hurriedly, I filled the feeder and hung it out on the deck.  There she was, happily sipping on her morning meal!

By the way, do you know how to make up the yummy solution for them?  Use a three to one ratio of water to sugar; in other words, one cup of sugar to three cups of water.  Heat to a simmer, just enough to totally dissolve the sugar.  There is no need for a full boil.  Once they figure out where the feeders are, you can actually move to a four to one ratio, but I confess that I indulge them and stick with the 3:1 all season!  Please, no red food coloring!  It is bad for them (and for us as well).  They’ll find the feeders!

On one memorable occasion, my sweet hubby mixed up some hummingbird solution while I was out of town.  I said to use a 3:1 ratio.  Unfortunately I did not specify that the 3 was water, and the 1 was the sugar.  He told me on the phone that it looked a little “thick.”  After a little further discussion, we determined what the problem was.  A little more hot water for a little more dilution soon corrected the problem!

People generally refer to the hummingbirds that we see in the summer months here in Colorado as ruby-throated hummingbirds, but in reality, the ruby-throats are rarely found in Colorado.  The ones we have are broad-tailed hummingbirds.  Like the ruby-throats, they have a red patch on the throat.  Now, I’m not quite enough of an ornithologist to details all the differences; I’ll  leave that to the experts!

A few years ago, on a trip to Curaçao in the Caribbean, we saw numerous brilliant royal blue and green hummingbirds whirling around everywhere.  I enjoy birdwatching in an amateur sort of way.  As best I can tell, what we saw were blue-tail emerald hummingbirds, but I certainly would not swear to that!

OK, back to the Rockies!  It snowed all day today, resulting in our biggest snow of the year, almost 20 inches.  This is that heavy wet, sticky spring snow, the kind that grabs your skis if you’re on the slopes and that your car doesn’t like to turn in.  The refrain you hear repeatedly around here, both from the newscasters and your friends and neighbors is that we need the moisture.  I can certainly accept that, but at the same time, I am ready to see my aspen trees show a few leaves and to see those first green shoots of the columbine and various other wild flowers.  At the same time, I really don’t mind these late spring snows.  They quickly melt away, and before long we’ll be enjoying those long, warm summer days!

©Eclectic Grandma, 2018

Summer daze

Summer is rapidly drawing to an end.  Somehow this year it seemed to arrive late and to be planning on an early departure.  We had a lot of snow in April and on into May followed by non-stop rain in … Continue reading

Spring at Last!

Word of the Day:  Vernal (vur’ nəl)  “pertaining to, appearing in, or occurring in the spring.”

Last week I chatted about our big April snowstorm.  Since then we’ve only had a couple more inches a few days ago.  Patches of earth are starting to peek out from beneath the snow.  The dogs are roaming the yard more extensively now and getting out of the poop loop which sufficed them for a few days.  This afternoon I finally received the official message that spring is here; a hummingbird dive-bombed me while I was standing on the deck.  Demanding little creature!  Hastily, I ran back into the house to cook up the first sugar syrup of the year.  We go through very little sugar at our house; that is until hummingbird season starts.  Then we go through pounds and pounds of sugar until cold weather returns in the fall, and they hitch a ride south with the Canadian geese.

I am reminded of one summer day several years ago.  Chris, Sonja, and the grandsons were at our family cabin about nine miles from our house.  They called to ask about  the proportions of water and sugar for the solution for the hummingbird feeders.  I told them I usually did a 3:1 or a 4:1 water to sugar ratio. Later that day I got another call from them stating that the hummingbirds weren’t eating from the feeders.  I asked them, “You did let it cool enough after you boiled it, didn’t you?”  There was a moment of silence, followed by “Boiled it?” Ah yes, it has to be boiled into a simple syrup!

The first hummingbirds to arrive are the Western Broad Tailed Hummingbirds.  People often refer to them as Ruby Throats, but we don’t actually get the true Ruby Throats here in Colorado.  They are only found on the east coast.  To be such tiny little creatures, they are surprisingly feisty.  In late July the Rufous hummers arrive for a few weeks on their annual journey from their breeding grounds in Alaska back to their winter habitat in Mexico. They are a bright orange color with a dark throat band and are even more feisty than the others.  This commences what we call the Hummingbird Wars, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Wars of the Roses in English history.  The males of the two species spend  entire days driving one another off from the feeders.  The two types of females can’t be worried with this show of male dominance and will share the feeders with one another.  I wonder if this has applications for the human species as well?

Those of you who know me know that I am an amateur bird-watcher.  I have counted well over twenty different species of birds hanging about on our deck at various times.  We feed and water them year round, and they reciprocate by serenading us morning and night and sometime pooping on the deck railing.  Having  a heated  birdbath gives them much needed water during the winter.  Yesterday a red-tailed hawk stopped by for a visit on the railing.  All of the little birds and squirrels quickly vanished.  Somehow I think the hawk was looking for a live snack and not my sunflower seed!

It is sort of ironic that we now live so close to the cabin and property my parents purchased over fifty years ago.  For many years it was our go-to place.  Now that we live so close, we don’t go as often, especially since I can sit on my own deck and gaze at the Indian Peaks and the Continental Divide.  Some days we ask ourselves how much longer we can cope with the snow and the inconvenience, but then I look at the white-capped peaks, the bright blue sky, and the vivid green pines and know this is home!

©, 2015, The Eclectic Grandma

Be sure to check in on Friday for my visit to the Spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York!

 

SprIngtime in the Rockies

Word of the day:  Blizzard (bliz’ ərd) “a severe snowstorm characterized by cold temperatures and heavy drifting of snow; an overwhelming amount.”

I think we’ve been in the mountains too long!  In the past four days we’ve had almost four feet of snow.  Yes, I said four feet, not inches.  Thursday we had about ten inches, not too bad for a spring snowstorm.  We kept up with that by shoveling a couple of times during the day.  The next morning the girls woke me up at 4:30 AM to go out.  Sleepily, I took them to the back door, which opens on to the upper deck.  One look assured me that the little blind girl and the other girl with some arthritis would never make it across two decks and down the stairs.  There must have been twenty inches of white stuff on the deck that had been totally clear when we went to bed, so the girls and I went downstairs so they could walk out on to the patio and head under the decks to do their business.

Normally Colorado snow is light and fluffy, but this snow was leaden.  This was the kind of snow the Eskimos use to build igloos. It broke up into heavy white chunks somewhat like white cinderblocks and about the same weight. I decided I would try the electric snow blower on the decks while Bill tried to plow out front.  Wrong on both counts!  My little snow blower  just said, “No way I’m even trying to move that stuff!”   Our plow truck had the same idea; it couldn’t budge the snow. After a consultation with our neighbor, we all agreed that a front end loader was called for.

This snow was so wet and heavy, I could barely lift my snow shovel.  We actually have multiple styles of snow shovels, one for large areas, one for steps, one for the decks, and so on.  I think that may say we have way too much snow.   Bill likes a big heavy shovel because it is faster, but I prefer my lighter weight little plastic one.  It takes me longer as I plod along with it, but don’t forget, the tortoise won the race!

To top it all off, we had more snow on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning; we even had a bit of thunder snow which is always somewhat intriguing.  I  shoveled a “poop loop” for the girls in the back yard.  When two hundred-pound dogs can’t make it through the snow, you know it is deep and heavy.  While I was doing the poop loop, I worked from both sides; somehow that made the task seem a bit less onerous.  When I finally joined the two excavations in the middle, I knew how the builders of the first transcontinental railroad must have felt when east finally met west.  The yard is beautiful with all the white everywhere, but more suited for January and February.  Finally on Saturday, the guy with the front end loader arrived to clear the driveway, and a good thing it was too as my supply of Kendall Jackson was running dangerously low.

At least snow shoveling is satisfying in that you can clearly see where you’ve been, unlike cleaning house or other repetitive tasks like that.  One of my previous bosses told me that when you got tired of shoveling snow, you should tie a snow shovel to the roof of your car and head south.  When someone asks you, “What is that,” you know you are far enough south.  He may have had a point!

©2015, The Eclectic Grandma

Check in on Friday for another trip to Texas in “Let Them Eat Pheasant.”