Last night we heard a sound in the driveway that wasn’t wind.  Alex!   We wondered how he would manage with his plow.  Well, he didn’t.  He called in his big guns:

Alex to the rescue—with the frontloader. So nice to have a neighbor-plow guy-town road commissioner with BIG stuff in addition to the big plow on his big pickup truck! Love this photo because it shows how hard the wind is still blowing, lifting snow out of the bucket. And notice that vast mound between the edge of the porch and the driveway….

I just stood in the kitchen looking out the window and laughed!    The “plow” pile grew so huge the big bucket on the frontloader (or is that a backhoe?  or two-in-one?) couldn’t reach over the top!

He’s actually driving UP the plow pile to try to dump over to the back side.

And bless that man.  Remember that DEEP drift (about 3 1/2 feet deep) between the front door and the driveway in the first photo?):  Lookit what that nice man did….

Alex came in with the wide bucket empty, set it down gently about 4 feet from the edge of the deck, and then dragged all that snow back out to the center, then scooped it up to dump on the ginormous pile. That meant LOTS less shoveling for us! When the snow melts its gonna be a serious mudfest getting over to the garage!

Made us a wide clearing so we wouldn’t have to shovel as much.  DEFINITELY buying a snow blower before next winter!

This was the view out our bathroom window this morning.  Notice how high the drift is by the entry windows on the left.

And looking back at the house. The photo above was taken from the window on the far left. I was standing just uphill of the ginormous snow pile for this photo.

It was a glorious crisp morning! I love the strong shadows and the blueness of the snow and the wind-carved ridges in the snow.

Love those wind carvings so much I kept taking pictures. As I tell my students, there is quilt inspiration everywhere!

Eli spotted this cool overhang: yes, that is a “corner” of snow hanging on the uphill side from the wind!

Eli scraped the snow away under his feet to stand on the ground next to the drift from what blew over the roof. He’s almost 5’10” tall. Love how the wind whips a channel next to the house. We saw little tiny critter tracks in the snow near there.

Eli, Me with Widgeon, and Paul. We got the gas grill back up on the porch, then set the camera on timer. For once I was going to get into the picture, too, as we aren’t likely to see anything like this again for eons. I mean…snow as tall as the eaves?  It may be routine in the mid-west, but not in Maine!

Eli hoists the King of the Mountain, as said king’s leggies are too short to get him up to the top of the hill!  Eli also needs to go back up there and retrieve the shovel he left up top!

And the storm clouds have cleared and we have that GLORIOUS view back. Yes, the towns of Freedom and Liberty are off in the distance as we stand in Hope! I LOVE MAINE!

And yes, I really DO have art and quilting to share…stay tuned!  First post is tomorrow.

And a PS:  our neighbor is wonderful, but plowing is part of his business!  He gets paid for plowing, but he does it well and responsibly and promptly every snowfall.  It can snow overnight, and when we get up at 6 am the driveway is already plowed most often!  Lots of folks here in Maine have 2 and 3 jobs, including seasonal ones.  The landscaping folks work the earth when it is visible, and plow in winter, for example.  And MANY people buy a plow for their truck and then earn extra money plowing in their neighborhood.   It’s the way life is here in Maine, and I expect in most of the northern tier of the US where snow is prevalent.

Have been busy with Eli’s wrestling meets and working on a quilt (which I can’t share until about mid-April), but wanted to check in, and to share the best moment from the Super Bowl:  The Dodge Ram commercial.  Eloquent.  True.  The spirit of America.  Will be back soon with more. In the meantime, enjoy:

PS: My Uncle Eddie was a true cowboy, a ranch hand, in a small town up in the mountains of Wyoming north of Yellowstone; this commercial makes me think of him. He literally rode the fence rails on horseback in driving snow to tend the herds. He died last year at the age of 98, and I shall miss him. I loved that he would call me around Christmas every year after receiving our annual newsletter–it was such a joy to hear his voice strong and true even up in his 90s and know that someone old could still have all their marbles and keep in touch. RIP Uncle Eddie. And thanks to all the farmers and ranchers and every day folk like Uncle Eddie who make our country great.

My friend Cathy Neri, of Quilt Books Unlimited (visit her awesome booth at shows) sent me this clip on FB, and I just had to share, as you all know how much I adore our pug, Pigwidgeon.  Enjoy (and I’ll share what Cathy said:  spew alert…don’t have a mouthful of anything to drink!):

Well, it is clearly winter in Maine!   Now that Eli is in high school, wrestling begins around Thanksgiving and winds up in early February (in high school it began late January and ended the very end of March), just in time for the coldest and snowiest weather outside.  Currently we have warmed up to 21 F, with a wind chill of 7.  Hmmm.  Good day to stay indoors!

About 11 a.m. this morning. Notice the plow pile that is taller than the car and about 35 feet wide?  The snow on the walk is more than knee-deep!  When Eli shoveled them later, he measured:  24 inches deep in spots!  We didn’t get that much in snowfall, but it blows like crazy on our hill.

This is the view out the door this morning….that is hubby’s car and the snow plow pile.  We have received all that snow since the 26th!  Sheesh!  Snow is still coming down.  Well…coming down sideways with the wind!  Our drive wasn’t plowed when I got home last night and I slid sideways into the plow mess on the side, so will call AAA later this morning to pull me out!  Our wonderful neighbor and plow guy came when I called about 7:30 to plow and put down sand for me, but no luck getting out on my own.  So he drove me up to the house (a quarter mile from where I was stuck) and then finished plowing.  Then Paul got home several hours and inches of snow later, and he got stuck, too!  He got his car up this morning though, so only I need AAA!

So why were we out in this mess?  Well, this weekend was the Noble Tournament, the biggest, most competitive high school wrestling tournament in Maine.  There were 41 schools and over 400 wrestlers!  That’s a lot of sweating, mostly male, bodies <grin>! Eli did well for a Freshman, and came up against some serious competition.

The Meet is large: four mats going at once to get through the 400+ wrestlers on Day One.  PS:  Eli learned that Noble (the high school) is an acronym for North Berwick and Lebanon, the two towns!  Cool!

Eli’s first match again a kid from LaSalle in Rhode Island he lost by just two points.  He was seriously irked with himself, as he felt he could have wrestled better, but he worked hard and never gave up!  It was hard for Eli because in all of 7th and 8th grade, he lost a grand total of ONE match!  Welcome to high school and the big leagues and being the youngest again.

Eli is in red. The LaSalle boy has his arms in control, so Eli is arching up to keep from getting pinned. He managed that, losing only 5-7.

Alas, it ended this way, but still Eli didn’t let the kid pin him, despite being there:

Eli got out of this scrape…you can see the ref’s hand on the left where he is down on the mat looking to see if Eli’s shoulders are on the mat. Fortunately not!

On the way down to the meet earlier in the day, I pulled over in Appleton, about 3 miles from home, to snap this picture of the valley looking east–this is for Debby H. and all of you who prefer your snow vicariously:

The view from Route 131 over the valley; Sennebec Lake is down below the crest of the near hill.

Back to the meet:  Eli won his second match (also on day 1) handily:

Eli dominated in this match. Here he has his right are wrapped around and under the opponent’s right arm, with one hand on his neck to then lever and turn him over on his back.

And another move: grind your opponent into the mat so he can’t move. Erk! Here Eli is  doing that under-over-twist thing again.

For his third match on day 2, Eli  lost 11-0, his first shut-out in about three or four years!  They had removed one mat and opened up more bleachers, which made seating more spacious.

Despite the fact that the Massabesic kid (who was in the State finals last year, meaning one of the top two), Eli was able to be in control for a bit of the match, and there were several times where the ref called a “stalemate” and had them get up and return to starting position. On the lower left you can see Asst. Coach True Bragg in the black shirt.

Most of the match, though, the boy in green dominated.  He looks like a Junior or Senior.  My personal theory is that boys grow like dog years.  For every calendar year, they get 7 years of growth/strength.  If you take two boys of equal skill and weight, but one is two years older, the older boy will absolutely be stronger.  So Eli did a great job NOT getting pinned and taking him to stalemates.

About 2:20 pm after Eli was out of the matches, Paul came and suggested that, since Eli was out, I might want to head home as the storm was coming.  I decided that I could wait until it was all over at 8:30 and drive home tired, in the dark, in the driving snow, or I could be sensible.  For the first hour on the way home I regretted leaving, but the more I drove and the more it snowed, the happier I was that I was that much closer to home.  A two and a half hour drive turned into four hours.  The interstate speed limit is 65.  They had a storm speed limit up of 45.  Everyone was driving about 30 MPH!  At least here in Maine, folks are sensible and go only as fast as conditions allow even if the limit is higher.  I got to the bottom of the drive at 7.  Finally got to the house (3/10 a mile uphill) about 40 minutes later.  Thanks again to Alex!  Paul, Eli and the schoolbus got back to the high school after midnight and to the bottom of the drive at about 1 a.m.  I finally got back up and watched a Project Runway episode while I waited and worried.  It took them over half an hour to try to get up the driveway, then walk!

So that’s it for now!  I hope to finish a book about some people called the Red Paint People who lived in Maine 4000 (yes, four THOUSAND) years ago today and tomorrow, then start a quilt for a juried invitational exhibit.  It’ll be good to get back to fabric and thread!

Having a lovely post-Christmas lull, painting and enjoying being holed up in the house!

Winter blew in on a Nor-easter today. Currently it is 27 degrees, we have inches of snow, it is still coming down and, as it has most of the day, the snow is blowing past the snow sideways.

This house is so cozy and snug… perfect for staying inside and catching up on art.  I recently shared two in progress pieces for my watercolor lettering class with Val Webb.  Here they are, colored in:

The interlaced knotwork, watercolored. I need more practice, but I’ve learned so much including how to make it look like the center bit is rounded!

And here is the “S”:

Part-way there. I’d love to have a plum colored background, but my skills aren’t quite up to that yet. I want to practice more then see if I can put deep plum around the “S” and outside the yellow border.

I’m pleased with the shading on the yellow knotwork (my own design!), but the turquoise is a bit overworked.

Today I did this scroll. Getting better, bit by bit!

And just because I couldn’t resist….

Showing Pigwidgeon the pug ornament he, Eli and Paul gave me for Christmas. Can you say CUTE? PUG-LOVE!

And we’ll end where we began…with the snow blowing sideways!

Off the side of the living room porch.