My oldest son married a girl from New Hampshire. He met her in Florida where they both lived and worked. I was living in Florida too, with my husband and kids.
After they married they bought a house in Kentucky where her parents lived.
A few years later we (my husband and kids) moved to New Hampshire.
The following summer, her (my daughter-in-law’s) parents came to visit us in our new place because they went to New Hampshire every summer to help a man put on a big yearly party – at the Bass Farm.
The house we bought was less than a half mile from the Bass Farm!
I find this to be bizarre.
The Bass Farm
The man who owned this huge place passed away last year (I think) and all I knew about him was that he had a huge clock collection.
I also heard that he was difficult to get along with and very rich.
When one and a half feet of snow fell last week, I kept seeing this blue tint in the mounds.
I enhanced this photo a bit in picasa to bring out the blue better so it actually wasn’t quite this bright.
I am not a scientific type person, so I’ve added a link underneath the photo to explain why snow (and ice) sometimes looks blue. I just thought it was unusual and pretty.
"blue" snow
Read more about what makes ice and snow blue at the
Early Friday, Feb. 26 I woke up to a dark house. I’d had the wood stove going for a few days by then, so all I had to do was go down to the basement and throw more wood in. Thank goodness for a big stove that keeps burning all night long.
Then I went back to bed hoping for power in the morning. It came back on 3 days later – Sunday night at 5:00.
Cooking on the wood stove
I heated food on the wood stove – anything left over or thawing out that needed to be eaten – and spent most of my time lugging buckets of snow downstairs to melt for washing dishes and flushing the toilet. We have a well which won’t work without electricity. I could use just whatever water was left in the holding tank once the power went out, then no more.
Fortunately we’d had a bunch of snow so I had all the “non-drinking” water I needed.
The kids had to play outdoors – yay!
The kids found things to do to keep their minds off the fact that they couldn’t play video games or go on the computer and the dog was having fun too. We all got a lot more fresh air than usual.
winter road
I took the camera when we walked up the road to give some cornbread to an elderly neighbor. The snowy scene made a perfect photo. Besides calling the power company to get updates, there was not much to do other than the basics of survival. Being “powerless” gives us all a good idea of how life was for our ancestors and we all agree that we would not have wanted to be them!
My outdoor kitchen
Then I dug through my “outdoor refrigerator” to find the thawing chicken and marinated it for cooking on the grill.
In fact, I have lots of food to cook and my freezer is now bare.
In December 2008 I went without power for 8 days when the ice storm hit and had no way to keep warm. My goal was to have a wood stove for just such emergencies, so I am thankful that we could stay warm.
Wednesday the northeast has some nasty weather. Many places saw a little snow and then it turned to rain, but where I live in the hills north of Mt. Monadnock, we had all snow. About a foot and a half of it!
Heavy wet snow
It was the nasty, heavy wet stuff that was a pain to shovel and weighed down the hemlock trees.
My neighbor's black lab loved it!
The dog had a blast chasing my snowballs. By the end of the day the snow depth was over my knees in the yard.
An early measurement
This is an early measurement. We got about 4 inches more after this…
Basement slider- I won't be using this door any time soon
The metal roof on this house emptied the snow off like it’s suppose to, but that meant lots more shoveling.
Snowfall from the roof!!
It is Thursday- the day after- as I post this and we are getting lots of rain on top of all this snow and flood watches are in effect. My friends in Florida sent me photos on Facebook of their trip to St. Lucia. It looked pretty nice.
New England's Narrow Road 