Snow On The ButterCups

Where I come from they call them daffodils, ‘Round here these yellow harbingers of spring are commonly know as buttercups.

There’s a saying, too, “It always snows on the buttercups.”

But it didn’t look like that was going to happen this year. We’ve had a mild winter, with barely a trace of the white stuff all December through February. So over the last couple of weeks, as the bulbs pushing through started to lend a little color to the brown winter lawn, it seemed this year might live down that bit of weather lore.
Then yesterday, with March a full week old, and the buttercups in full bloom a storm took shape out west, driven by a cold blast to remind us we’re still two weeks shy of spring. Some time after midnight the snow started falling, giving us the first real snow of the year. By sunrise, the yardstick showed two inches out back of the house, and it kept snowing well into the morning.

As so often here, the storm was quickly followed by clearing skies and gradually rising temperatures. It’s late afternoon now. The icy roads are gone. The melting snow drips steadily off the roof. It’s already disappeared from all the hills facing South, leaving them a brighter green. This time tomorrow it will all be gone.

Spring can’t be too far off, the maples are in bloom, and we can leave winter behind, now that it’s snowed on the buttercups.

Feedin’ The Stove

During the cold snap last week we kept the woodstove in high gear, ‘round the clock.
Feeding a woodstove is one of those things I never could have dreamed would become such an essential part of our lives. Late summer our first year here someone asked how we were going to heat the house that winter. We looked around for the thermostat---it had never occurred to us a house could come without heat.

A week later we got our first woodstove, a leaky two burner box that wasn’t too efficient. Really cold nights we’d sleep as close to it as we could. By morning the fire would have burned out out and the bucket of water we kept in the room just in case was frozen solid.


From then on I’ve spent part of every fall or winter cutting wood for the stove. First few years I did it all with a 17-inch bow saw, we couldn’t afford better. Cutting wood took up most weekends.

Prosperity and common sense brought us much better and more efficient stoves. A chain saw has made the work easier. Cutting wood is always a good excuse to spend a day outdoors, getting exercise, outside.
And I’ve learned all kinds of practical things. I scout the woods in summer for trees to cut. Can make a tree fall in any direction, and some won’t no matter how carefully you plan. It’s always the gas or file or wedge or sledge or chain I need that I left behind.

Know all the trees now, and to burn polar or maple when it’s not that cold, and save the hickory and oak for deep winter. Elm and persimmon won’t split, locust will, and it will put out heat but won’t leave coals. Cherry throws some colors as it burns, the nutwoods and cedar smell great as they burn. That hissing and pop in the fire is some poor bug who thought he’d found a safe home in the log.

And, there’s nothing better than coming in out of the cold to a room with the woodstove roaring.

Rainbow Hunting

A rainbow is always a welcome surprise. But over the years I’ve learned to recognize when conditions are absolutely right, and thereby increase chances of catching one.

We were unloading the truck yesterday afternoon in a cold rain, but to the south and west patches of blue could be seen breaking through the clouds. And no sooner had the rain moved north then the sun was shining on us.

Good time for a rainbow, I remarked to my on. Soon as I searched upward he shouted “There it is,” directing my attention further down toward the horizon.

And what a rainbow it was! Not only were the colors especially bright, a double rainbow taking shape. And this this rainbow was near enough, there was enough drizzle in the air, we could glimpse where it touched down in the field above and to our left, and further down, in a wide arc, near the bottom of the holler. “

“There’s the gold!” my son joked, pointing where the hues kissed the ground. We stood a full minute or more admiring the colors and curve before I thought of taking a picture. By the time I hobbled to the house and back with a camera, it was starting to fade, the bow breaking up. But you can see where it touches down if you study the left side of the picture closely.

And as for rainbow hunting, here’s what I’ve learned. They only appear when the sun and rain-bearing clouds are on opposite sides of the sky.

Best chances are when the sun in shining in the morning as rain is approaching from the West, or in the afternoon, as the sun breaks through the clouds just after a storm has moved through and the dark clouds can be seen to the east.

Even when you expect to see one, it’s a cause to smile.

Spring In Winter

Hasn’t been much of winter yet. Except for a few days of below 10 nightly lows to start the New Year, it’s been unseasonably warm since fall. I guess its a continuance of the cyclicly higher temps which made last summer such a scorcher. But it seems, at least for now, the drought is behind us. Rain has been falling with some regularity since fall, the earth is damp. Grasses are starting to assume more green, and there’s green showing even in the woods. Out front of my office the daffodils—others call them jonquils or buttercups— have pierced the ground with the tips of their spears. That might be a month early, give or take a week.

I wouldn’t count winter out, yet. Two months more could bring us snows; the worst snowstorm we ever saw fell almost mid-March, gone n days. But Winter warmth like this carried tow dangers: when the weather changes, and it inevitably will, the transition is usually ushered in with violent thunderstorms, even tornadoes. And if the warmth continues too long, or isn’t broken up with prolong spells of serious cold, we end up with an early spring and the prospects of a killing frost like we had last Easter. It was a hard freeze, really, that robbed the warming season of all its glory.

So while I greet the green as sure sign spring’s to come, I hope it doesn’t arrive too soon.

Polly's Branch

For a year-end hike five of us headed over to the Bridgestone Firestone Centennial Wilderness(http://www.sparta-chamber.net/attractions_search_details.asp?AttractID=6) area in White County area yesterday. The corporation donated 10,000 acres of Scott’s Gulf to the state a few years ago. What a gift to all! Plenty of trails and much to see if your idea of a great time is the great outdoors

Took the Polly’s Branch trail down to the falls and river. Highly recommended; it was beautiful in winter and can only imagine what it’s like in spring when the stands of rhododendron are in all their glory. Nearby is the Virgin Falls pocket wilderness area and trail, another gem.

You can follow the trail straight in and back or, like we did, as a loop of about seven miles or so. First part of Polly’s Branch trail an easy stroll through the woods of little more than a mile to the first of several falls. From there the trail descends at a gradual climb, past other falls, down to the river, then along it for a good ways. Much to explore.

Of course whenever you hike to see falls, the hike out involves a climb. This was pretty gradual from the river, and we took the Chestnut Mountain Trail back, for the loop. Once you climb out of the bottom it’s pretty easy but not as well marked or worn as the trail in. We wandered off trail at one point but quickly found out way back.

Only passed one set of campers the whole five hours there so had the entire area to ourselves. All this pristine wonderland there waiting, whenever you take the notion to get out and experience this great state, Tennessee.

Seven plus miles of hiking, fantastic scenery in unspoiled wilds. Great camping sites and plenty of photo ops. A great way to wind down the old year!!!





A return visit is now a New Year’s resolution.

Winter

Six weeks of not much to say. First day of winter last week but already the dusk lingers longer into the short afternoon, sun already embarking out of South for North on the long journey which will carry it all the way through June.

Much needed rain, daffodils showing green through the too-warm earth, but the season hasn’t arrived yet. There’s a cold bite coming. It never misses, if it only reigns for a day.

Another Christmas passed. Stockings hung again from the old mantle riddled with traces of tacks, nails and staples which suspended the dreams of generations of children grown old, grey forgotten. In places the mantle is now a narrow long slit, so many Christmas stockings over the years.

The day is always special, a measure of another year, a hallmark for the next. The older I get the less there is about Christmas that matters than the sounds and laughter of family and friends. If there were no such holiday we’d surely invent it, an excuse to infuse light and warmth into gray days , cool nights

There comes a time each winter when the winds howl out of the north, across the ridges and up the hollers herald the cold. We haven’t seen it yet, but it’s coming, sure as the spring to follow.

Homesteads

A friend and I spent yesterday wandering the shore and woods surrounding Center Hill Lake. We’d come across an old map of the area and wanted to see if we could find a couple of landmarks. A good excuse as any for getting out and about in the brisk November weather.

The lake was created by the Army Corp. of Engineers back in the late 1940s/early 50s’s with the construction of Center Hill Dam across the Caney Fork River. The dam stopped the water of the river and its tributaries— forcing all who had lived along their banks to relocate to higher ground.

We never made it to our destination; even the best map is a poor indication of the rigors of the hike, through gulleys and brambles, up bluffs and around mud.

In the course of our ramblings, though, we came across the tell tale signs of a few abandoned homesteads. Up one branch, the water level had retreated to winter lows, revealing the fallen chimney and rock foundations of someone’s dreams. In the thicket woods we traced an old wagon road to remnants of another chimney, a mountain spring beneath a moss carpet nearby. Further on, down another hill, a rectangular limestone wall encircling a rich patch of bottom was all that suggested here was home, long ago.

In passing, we briefly wondered what life must have been like there, way back when, and moved on.

I always think about places like these after the hike, and wished I’d spent just a little more time there. For I may never pass that way again, and there’s something I might have missed.