OmegaMom

It was up in the 50s today.  Yay!  Woot!

The rhubarb are beginning to show little red pen1ses, just the very starts of the explosion of greenery to come.  I posted pictures last year from about two weeks later, and you can see how they end up looking like weird red brains before they open up fully.

The snow is almost all melted from the back yard, the sunny side of the front yard, and the driveway.

OmegaDotter has taken to wearing her flip-flops.

The twilight has now extended to about 11 p.m., which means that any opportunities for watching Northern Lights is now vanishing into the mists.  Oh, if there’s a whopper of a solar flare, I might stay up until 1 a.m.  But then again, I probably won’t.  At least this year I finally saw some aurorae, and was totally, absolutely jazzed; all the result of the sun—at last!—gearing up from the solar minimum and producing some flares and plenty of sunspots.

There are pussy willows popping out; I have been watching their spread from the lower regions—which are warmer—up, bit by bit.  The pussy willow line has almost reached the altitude of our house.  (This is not to say that our house is high up; we are at about 700 feet above sea level.)

Many thanks for the virtual “there-there”s about the dotter’s foray into tween-hood and the relationships between the sexes.  I have told her she can be T.’s “girlfriend”, which consists of maybe holding hands and taking walks, but dating waits until she’s 14 or 15.  There are other issues, but they are related to living in a redneck-y, Bible-belt-y area of Alaska, and I may or may not discuss them in another post.

Right now, though, I’m just enjoying the real beginning of spring.

Spring has finally arrived Chez OmegaMom.  The snow has completely melted from the yard.  Robins are serenading us in the morning and deep into the “night”.  The gloaming is creeping up; it is 11 p.m. as I write this, and it’s still late twilight outside—sunrise was at 5:51 a.m., sunset at 10:05 p.m.  The trees and shrubbery are filled with leaf buds, which I swear seem to grow as you watch.  You can definitely see the changes from day to day.

Within a few weeks, all the houses on all the streets in our area will be hidden from view again by the riotous abundance of greenery surrounding them.

And, as happens each spring, the rhubarbs get a hard-on.  Thick, red, hard penile stubs emerge from the ground in clumps and look infinitely pornographic for a few days.

Then the hard-ons explode into wildly wrinkled, alien looking baby leaves.  A week or so later, suddenly the plants look like ordinary rhubarbs:  the aliens have vanished.

It’s an amazing transformation.

Alas, the pics we had of the hard-on stage were out of focus, but here we have some aliens emerging from the penile cocoon:

Here’s a more pornographic looking item; imagine it without its crinkled taffeta skirt:

Brains for the vegetarian zombies:

The rhubarb plants give my hubby and me something to giggle about in delayed adolescence.  Then, later in the year, they give my hubby rhubarb to make pies.

I, unfortunately, am not fond of rhubarb pie.  Hopefully we’ll be able to ship one off to OmegaGranny.

Aside from that, I have been walking in the mornings, enjoying the sunshine, the explosion of growth, the rich smells of moist dirt and growing things.  And getting mosquito bites—of course.  And raking—endlessly—the yard, in bits and pieces.

Hail thee, festival day!
Bless’d day that art hallowed forever–
Day whereon Christ arose,
Breaking the kingdom of death!

I am not religious, in any manner whatsoever.  But I have lovely memories of Easter Sundays as a child, going with my grandparents to Easter service at a high Episcopalian church with The.  Most.  Awesome.  Pipe organ.  And singing that particular hymn, which is indelibly engraved on my memory.  The pipe organ would play the deepest notes possible, making the flagstone pavement vibrate, and then…then, when the Joyous!  Triumphant!  part of the hymns was hit, the trumpets making a blaring fanfare to celebrate.  (Much to my dismay, a long, detailed article about that organ is no longer available.)

So today was Easter.  Of course, we had an Easter basket for the dotter…but we had no dotter for the Easter basket!  She spent the night at her friend A.’s house, and blew eggs and dyed them and hunted them there.  So our Easter basket sat on the table, alone and forlorn:

(Note the mini basket up front, for her doll Ling.  Credit for this entire creation goes to OmegaDad.)

While we hung around (in blissful quietude!), OmegaDad was making pita bread, tortillas, and lavosh.  Yum!  The pita bread/lavosh dough produced a lot of gas, so much so that it looked like the rising bowl was going to…well, rise itself!

Eventually the dotter decided she wanted to come home, at which point she dove into the basket:

Inside the basket was a bounty of crinkle-cut paper confetti in many spring colors, in place of the green plastic grass that ends up being eaten by pets the world around on Easter day.  OmegaDad and the dotter decided to pile it on top of my head, topped off with a whirling yellow pinwheel:

Then she and I had to dye eggs, which is always fun.  We had a polka-dotted affair:

We had a starburst:

And we had one that really, truly looked like a planet.  It wasn’t just me who thought so; I was staring at it pensively thinking how much like Jupiter it looked, when OmegaDotter saw it and gasped, “OMG!  It looks just like a planet, Mom!  Let’s make it Saturn!  Let’s paint a ring around it!”  So I did; in fact, I painted two rings:

From this angle, alas, it looks either like the X chromosome or like an elongated infinity sign (the dotter’s notion, again) or an analemma.  (Windows LiveWriter, by the way, does not recognize the word “analemma”, harrumph.)

Our array of eggs:

I hope your day was as fun and filled with confetti as ours!

This past fall and winter, we had two hens die, so now that it is springtime, the husband’s thoughts lightly turned to—of course—new baby chicks.  So, this fine Easter weekend morning, OmegaDad and OmegaDotter trekked off to the local hatchery and brought back a Belgian Bearded d’Uccle Bantam (mille fleurs variety) and a Frizzle, both about two weeks old.  We now have Miss Frizzle:

And Millie:

They are happily ensconced in a heated plastic tub in the garage, and I am, of course, falling in love with them because they are so cute.

Yes, spring is rapidly springing here.  The snow has melted off the north side of our front yard.  Now, you’d expect it to melt off the south side first, but the south side of our yard is shaded by trees, so the north side gets freed up first.  In the back yard, the back two vegetable beds are now snow-free, and we have purchased black plastic to wrap the beds to heat them up and thaw the soil in preparation for planting.

In our rock garden at the foot of the kitchen stairs, one happy Leopard’s Bane is leafing out luxuriantly.  In the garden behind the house, the lilacs are budding their leaves. 

A mama moose and her calf have been wandering the neighborhood eating everything they can find that has sap running through it, so I am planning to cut up strips of Bounce to tie onto the lilac bushes (this is rumored to keep moose away).

The trees have pussy willows bursting out at the tops.

Today it unofficially hit 50F here in Suburban Alaska.

Spring!

So yesterday was the first time I was able to see the dotter at one of her gymnastics meets.  Her first real meet was two days after I headed off to Arizona to help take care of mom, and she had a second one while I was still there.  Being a doting mom, I just have to show off her beam routine:

Her handstand was a thing of beauty.  Everyone around us commented on how long she held it and how straight it was.  Alas, her landing wasn’t that good, which ended up moving her from a 9.0+ to an 8.9, and a red ribbon on the beam as opposed to a blue.  Wah!  And, yes, her split jump isn’t very good, but everything else she does on the beam is generally great.

Of course, since she had filled my camera card up with videos of Newman the cat encountering Wooly the cat, when I went to record other routines, the video card was filled up.  After gnashing my teeth at the small capacity of my memory card, I investigated, and promptly deleted two videos of yowling cats rolling around on my office floor, and was able to record her bar routine, too:

So she may be going up to Level 4 this summer, which is honest-for-goodness’-sake team level.  IF she stays focused and works hard, and doesn’t goof off with her buddy K. all the time, which she tends to do.  Doesn’t matter to me, but she and K. have been bitching and moaning about not moving up to Level 4 and how they want to and, gee, they can do their back handsprings and a Level 4 dismount, and blah, blah, blah.

In the meantime, the planet is blasting onward towards the spring equinox.  Tonight, the sun will set at 8:00.  This throws our entire dinner-time zeitgeist off—OmegaDad spends the winter with dinner being cooked after the sun sets (most often long after the sun sets), and the rapid shifting of the seasonal light takes a while to mesh with his cooking brain. 

All the light does not mean warm weather, alas.  In fact, we had well above average temps for two months—mostly while I was in Arizona—and as we move towards official Spring, the temperature has plunged below normal for the past two weeks.  This leaves me generally grumpy.  I managed to rant and rave and cry at OmegaDad this week about how I HATE Alaska and I just WANT TO GO HOOOOOME!  Um.  What can I say?  Seeing all the pictures around the intertubes of people’s swiftly growing snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and what-not, and reading about bike rides and lovely weather…well, it just makes me mighty damned jealous.

OmegaMom opens the door and peers into the bloghouse.  She’s carrying a feather duster, which she uses to quickly dust off the blogroll.  She tidies up the BlogHer ads, re-arranges a few Twitters, sits down on the sofa, and sneezes at the poof of dust that she stirred up.  She looks around, frowns, taps her teeth with a fingernail, and says, “Hm.  What we need are some flowers!”

“I think I’ll put some lilacs here.  It’ll make things smell so lovely!”:

“This spot here needs a close-up of some of our wild rose.”:

“Tsst, tsst, tsst…hm…what next?  Ah!  Let’s put some trollius over there.  That’ll make that spot bright and cheery!”:

“Now, to keep the wildcats away, let’s bring in the Leopard’s Bane.”:

“And I think I’ll finish the decorating by putting some sprigs of this mysterious blossoming tree right here.”:

Well!  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?!  Ahem.  I was brought back to my blog-ly duties by a plaintive email from my Unka Bill, who was wondering why every time he visited my blog and hit refresh, it was still showing May 27.  Um.  Well.  Yeah.  See, I’ve been busy enjoying the flowers and the sunlight and the rain.  And yard work.  And being chief cook and bottle washer for OmegaDad whilst he rebuilds the formerly-stable-soon-to-be-greenhouse.

Then there was the pizza party, when OmegaDotter’s friend A. came over to spend the night and we made homemade pizza.  He was a hoot (as he always is), and we had a grand time, though he and the dotter stayed up incredibly late.

Then I found a new author and series.  Um.  Seven books in about ten days?  That sounds about right.  I do love me some hot post-apocalyptic science fiction!

Then I got sick.  Not badly, but enough to put me in bed for a day and a half, sleeping it off.

And then I was turned onto Broken Picture Telephone, a game which is like the classic game of Telephone, except with notes and pictures instead.  I have been busily scribbling and writing notes for two days now.

Anyway:  HI!  I’m back!  Didja miss me?!

The blog has suffered intensely because we’ve had spectacular, wonderful, gorgeous weather.  Yesterday our local Mesonet station hit 82F; today it hit 78F; on Friday, it was in the low 70s.  These have been record-breaking temperatures.  The sun has been shining, the birds have been singing, and I have been raking.

And raking, and raking, and raking.

I am, as a result, achingly sore in my shoulder, arm, and hip muscles.  I also have a fantastic sunburn.  Wah, wah, wah.  Pity me:  We’ve had weather to die for, and I’ve been outside for three days straight, playing in the yard, and discovering that, yes, Virginia, Alaska sunlight can give you sunburns.

A week ago, the snow was all the way down the mountainsides; now, it’s melted up two-thirds of the way.  A week ago, the trees were brown and bare; now, leaves are exploding everywhere you look and our neighbors’ houses are fading away behind the greenery (as is our kitty-corner, catty-wompus sliver of a view of the smaller mountains to the north of the valley).

This time of year is called “break-up”, because the ice encasing the rivers finally breaks into chunks and is swept downhill, down to lakes and the ocean.  There are bets and lotteries based on when various rivers will break clear.  There is also the problem of ice dams–where the chunks of ice manage to get snagged on something, then snag more chunks of ice, which capture still more, until you have a jumble of ice damming up the river.  Wayfarer Scientista has a lovely description of break-up in her area; Bill Hess was up in Wainwright, helping some native Alaskan whalers prepare an ice ramp for their whaling ship; AKMuckraker, over at Mudflats, took a walk along a creek today, along with some great pics; and Hig, at Ground Truth Trekking, has been using the (lovely, wonderful, long-awaited!) sunlight to play around with Fresnel lenses.

Our lilac bushes are putting out leaf buds and what looks, to me, like the beginnings of lilac blossoms (?):

Some fresh new trees leaves catching the sunlight:

And our pasque flower survived the winter, too, and is about to bloom:

So, essentially, everyone in Alaska is making up for six months of winter weather by soaking up as much sunlight as possible.  It’s amazing just how much being able to be outside and just bask can change one’s disposition–I am practically manic with delight at the joy of springtime.  Anyway, something has to give when one is obsessively enjoying the weather and the yard and the leaves and flowers and and and…and in my case, what gave is the blog.

Git yer minds outta the gutter, dudes!

I’m not talking about sex here, dammit!  I’m talking about…

Spring!

Frost heave!

A yard that due to 3 days of more-than-50-degree weather (yes!) has been freed from a layer of snow, only to reveal…

Hummocks.

Lumps.

Hollows.

Mud.

Seriously–I think we didn’t notice last year, because we weren’t out in the yard this early.  This year, we have chickens in the coop in the backyard, so we need to be trudging across at least twice per day.  And so, this year, we have noticed that the yard on either side of the septic tank is at least a foot-and-a-half higher than the area right over the septic tank.  OmegaDad is in dire fear that this means we have a Problem with the septic tank; I am convinced that after a week or so more of 50-degree-plus weather it will subside.

When you step on certain spots on the lawn–spots that look nice and dry and solid, unlike the spots that are pools of mud–they crunch beneath you, plunging your foot four inches downward in a single instant.  WHAM!  So you’ve got these unnatural spots where you innocently stepped…and you’ve got the natural spots where the ground just sank because the ice has already melted from that one six-inch-square area, unlike the surrounds.

It is very interesting.  It has the Omega Grownups thinking seriously of purchasing a roller drum for the tractor, so that we can smooth things out once the ground has thawed more evenly.

Today we had monsoon style clouds up over the mountains, and, once again, I cursed the fate that had me out and about without my camera.  (”The fate”, aka foolish forgetful OmegaMom.)  OmegaDad and I were driving to Home Debit, enjoying quality time together because the dotter is off having a Hannah Montana-filled overnight with best bud K.  As we swept up into the parking lot, one of the clouds over one of the mountains simply…dropped.  People who live in the southwest are familiar with this activity in the summer time thunderstorms; the precipitation beneath this one, however, was bright white rather than dark grey.  It was a thundersnow dropping onto the side of the mountain, highlit by the sun, and it would have been a stunning, awesome picture.  But I didn’t have my camera with me.

Damn.

Anyway, expect to hear more about SPRING! from me as the days go on.  I am practically dancing with excitement!