Today, another weird weather reminder, and something I haven’t really noticed or thought about in years: slush. Road slush, in particular. Today’s sudden warmth—it’s near 50°F (10°C)—melted water into the abundant snow (snowbanks help), and there you have it: heavy, wet, cold, and sludgy slush! Ready to splatter! On the roads, it’s an unappetizing brownish-gray as the road dirt is churned in by traffic—this is a nice example at the top of the village hill. If you’ve lived in a snowy northern city, where drainage is only as good as the sewage system and cars are everywhere, you’ll know slush build-up as quite the little menace. Getting properly splattered by speeding vehicles is so much more…thorough than the average puddle splashing. Especially when you get it in the face… Here in farm country, cars and trucks are way more respectful of the people walking down the road (as I do every day)—at least, they are on the side roads—and with the shrinking winters (this one so far excepted) and full ditch drainage, you just don’t notice slush too often. We haven’t had slushable amounts of snow in a while. The next few days ought to be interesting. As predicted (this time, they were right), the days AND nights are WARM until, it seems, Friday. Two winters in one?
It looks like you will have a good layer of ice on your next freeze. Maybe then you could skate into town. Good times for all.
Well, I’m getting ready to harvest and mulch! If it keeps up like this for three more days (and it just started raining!), the snow will be gone, and I can get at the carrots, check on the remaining beets, and maybe even throw down some grass mulch on the rest of the garlic! In rubber boots…
Mike,
Have you ever been a photographer in your prefarm life????? Your photos are sooo good. What kind of camera do you use? If this has been answered already-sorry, haven’t had a chance to poke in every nook and cranny on the site (and there are lots of those!).
Keep posting, Julie
We’ve had the same slush weather for the last two days. Should get cold in a few though. The best part about slush is kicking it off the undercarriage of your car or truck. I love to do that.
Stay warm.
willing hands: Um, thanks! I think I’ve commented on this before, people seem to like the photos, I’m quite happy with them, they get the point across. I’m no “photographer,” but I CAN now take pictures of veggies and stuff happening in the garden…I think I managed through determination, ’cause before, I couldn’t take a decent snapshot. At the beginning of tiny farming, I wanted to have a farm web site with photos, and I was totally frustrated by the idea that I’d have to get someone to take pictures. So I started doing close-ups of the veggies, as close as autofocus on the point-and-shoot digital camera would let me go, figuring, veggies look great, if I fill the frame with veggies, I can’t go too far wrong. And that works! A little cropping on the computer often helps things out. If you think about it, most people have no problem recognizing decent and not-so-good photos, so why shouldn’t you be able to take at least OK pics? I don’t know what a genetically gifted photographer or painter or whatever sees, but for me, after a while of shooting every day, I started to kinda generally see what things might look like as photos as you click, kinda connecting that ability to recognize good photos with the taking ’em part… Whatever, I’m quite pleased. Another modern tiny farming skill passably acquired! :)