Contact ME

Use the form on the right to contact me.

 

         

123 Street Avenue, City Town, 99999

(123) 555-6789

email@address.com

 

You can set your address, phone number, email and site description in the settings tab.
Link to read me page with more information.

IMG_1267.jpg

Book of Days

BOOK OF DAYS: A POET AND NATURALIST TRIES TO FIND POETRY IN EVERY DAY

Sign up on the Contact Me page

Filtering by Tag: shoveling

February 25: Morning shoveling

Kristen Lindquist

The weekend's snow storm did not extinguish the ardor of some birds, as I heard this morning while shoveling out the path to my office. A strange contrast, to be standing in shin-deep snow while chickadees are singing songs more appropriate to spring. The blue sky perhaps served as an aphrodisiac.

Chickadee's love song
as I begin to shovel
through deep snow.

February 9: Blizzard aftermath

Kristen Lindquist

This was one of the biggest snow storms I've ever experienced in Maine. My car was so completely buried under a snow drift, I couldn't even shovel it out myself--the snow was piled too high! The wind still roars, blowing loose snow around, undoing all our work to clear out the house and cars. Fallen branches peak from beneath finely sculpted drifts. Peaks and valleys of snow have transformed the landscape. At the feeders, goldfinches, chickadees, and house finches pecked through snow to get at the seed, then sat there eating, out of the wind, as long as they could.

Ice coats a finch's face--
she seems unbothered by it
while she feeds.

February 6: Red-shouldered Hawk

Kristen Lindquist

Back on 16 April 2010 I wrote a post about how I'm often fooled by blue jays mimicking hawks. I later expanded on this topic of bird mimicry for a monthly natural history column that I write for the local paper and my land trust's website. That's why, when I was up on my roof shoveling snow yesterday morning and heard the call of a red-shouldered hawk, I barely looked up. I had heard the local band of blue jays yammering not long before and just assumed it was one of them. After all, the red-shouldered hawk, while increasingly more common in Maine, is still an unusual sight in these parts. Especially in early February. I've certainly never seen one in Camden before, although individual birds have been spotted nearby by me and others in springs and falls past.

So I continued with my labors, heaving pile upon pile of snow off the roof. Until I heard the call again, louder and closer. I couldn't help but look up, if just to see this talented blue jay. Imagine my surprise when I saw an actual red-shouldered hawk fly through my back yard, moving down river. If ever I needed a reminder to be ready for anything as a birder, there it was. You never know when something interesting is going to turn up in your own back yard. (This new species became yard bird #70.)

Wind knows sixty words
for snow. Hawk only knows one,
which he yells loudly.

January 29: Up on the Roof

Kristen Lindquist

Today I gritted my teeth and finally did something that's needed doing for the past several weeks: I shoveled the snow off our roof. Since most of our roof is near-flat, it accumulated a lot of snow in these past few storms. So even though we had it replaced when we moved in almost six years ago, it seemed prudent to get up there and ease its burden a bit.

The more steeply pitched roof on the front of our house is visible from the lawn, and I could see actual drifts. (It's amazing what a difference it makes to insulate your attic better.) But because of its low pitch, the entire rear half of the building was virtually invisible. So while we've gotten a lot of snow in the past month or more, I was still surprised at how much of it was hanging out up there.

Once I figured out how and where to place the ladder, awkwardly hauling the ridiculously heavy thing through waist-deep snow drifts, it was simply a matter of scrambling onto the entryway roof, and from there to the pitch of the main roof. And then it was simply a matter of hanging my body as far as I could off that edge to shovel the front bits. By the time I got all that done, I was soaked. Then I had the entire playing field-sized flatter roof to do. This took a very long time. Hours, in fact. I estimate that I shoveled over a ton of snow, easily, off that roof. I shoveled off so much snow that I had to shovel the driveway and back walkway all over again after I came down--snow dumped off the roof had piled up there deeper than that from the last storm.

Physically challenging as all this was, I did manage to experience a few moments that made me smile, besides the moment when I'd finally hacked away at a 3-inch ice dam for long enough to knock it over the eaves. From that perspective, I was on level with the birds. Kinglets flew through the yard, and it sounded like they were right next to me, in the maple that hangs slightly over the back roof. Later, a downy woodpecker called repeatedly, as if in response to my repeated knock-knock-knocking on that block of ice with my shovel. And as big fluffy snowflakes began to fall--something beautiful but slightly disheartening given the task I was engaged in--a nearby titmouse loudly whistled his spring love song, "Peter, Peter!" I had a thought that in the spring, if my husband would haul the ladder for me (he's away this weekend, lest you think he's a slacker), it would be cool to go up there and lie down under the maple branches and see what flies through the yard at eye-level.

I don't belong here.
Snowy roof elevates me
among the kinglets.