Creek Notes: 2010-02-04

I’ve just returned from my morning Chicken Run–a routine that sends one of us–more often than not, me–to open the latch on the hen house, and if not walking the dog unleashed right away–also open the gate to let them range.

Today, and for most of the past and most of the next week, they’ll not have any bare ground to forage for seeds and grass tips. I made a point to encourage them out of the pen towards the barn stall where I scattered egg shells, shredded tortilla shells from lunch left-overs and mixed bird seed.

With any luck, that’s where they will be when–I’m thinking today is the day– the snow rushes off the red barn roof landing in the chicken pen. Fatalities are a possibility, and I’d be faced with eating Dionne, Blanche, Rhoda or Caroline.

I took the snow shovel to see if I could make our ascent up the bank from the plank any less likely to cause a fall, tossing six inch slabs of hard snow into the creek. Instantly they turned to soft saturated tufts the color of lint and vanished in the warmer spring-fed water of Goose Creek, bound for the beach.

It is now as good as it’s gonna get for some while, so I’m trying to smooth the irregular ice as much as I can for a base on which the coming 8-12“ can call. The only bare ground I see through my window is a patch of southern-exposed gravel road; by and large, the remainder of our road is in as rough shape as I’ve ever seen it.

I called the Check VDOT office yesterday afternoon to ask if they intended to make a more serious and careful pass than the one-way once-over on Sunday. Yes, they’d come take care of it. They didn’t. So I’m expecting our two miles of luge run to become even worse by this time tomorrow and stay that way for lord knows how long.

I had a new picture in mind to post here (the one you see was pulled from my Flickr gallery by Zemanta plugin for Word Press) but just realized I left my camera bag out in the car overnight. No harm done, provided I let the camera and lens come up to temperature slowly, then bring it in and leave it in the unheated room a hour or two before bringing it truly inside. Maybe that’s being over-cautious, but I’ve realized, here on the eve of my fixedness of income, that the stuff I have is pretty much the toys I’ll have when I leave it all to Goodwill and Angels in the attic. I have to make it last.