What a day! We were outside in t-shirts. Brian returned home from a side trip to the city, where the weather was foul. He couldn't believe that we'd had such lovely sunshine all day long!
We have some guests here for the March break. Anna and Jake were drawn to the stable like it was a magnet. They hunted for eggs, along with Vickery, and were delighted to find several green tinted eggs, and two that were a pale pink. They laughed to learn that Achmed had live-released a flying squirrel in my house at 4.15 a.m., and I'd spent an hour retrieving the little guy. The cats were not as helpful in this venture as one might have hoped, but it all ended well. We came down to my house to look at flying squirrel pictures on the Blog, and that lead us to listening to wolves and owls, and that lead us to looking at the difference in owl feathers and raven feathers. We talked about how the owl's ears are slightly off-set, to help them locate sounds quickly, and how the Barred owl is the only one with lovely brown eyes. Jake and Anna took a feather home to show the rest of the family.
Then it was off to the toboggan hill, which, being on the north face of the hill, still has great snow! The only problem was it was too hot for snowpants! Tomorrow, the kids are all heading out to Hidden Valley for some downhill skiing, so they're getting in their snow time!
Tonight we all went out onto the lawn -- which is suddenly almost completely free of snow and dry! -- and looked at the constellations. Andrea told me she never sees stars where they live, not even the bright ones. Certainly not well enough to pick out the different constellations and planets. We had a great time, tracing Orion, and lining up along Orion's belt to take ourselves out through the universe -- left to Aldebaran, the bright eye of Taurus, and on to the Pleiades: right, to Sirius, in Canis Major. Everybody knows this star's name now, it seems... thanks to Harry Potter! We also found Canis Minor, the smaller of the two hunting hounds that follow Orion, and we found Gemini, Castor and Pollux.
In the northern sky, we traced the Big Dipper, currently standing straight up on the handle. That took us to the Little Dipper, Draco the Dragon, Casseiopeia and Andromeda... and then in the opposite direction to Regulus in Leo... Leo is a great constellation -- you can actually picture a lion here, by connecting the star dots!
Which seemed quite enough for one balmy evening in the middle of March!
We had no luck with the local wolf pack. Perhaps they were the other side of Lookout Mountain, or back closer to the Oxtongue Craft Cabin. Or perhaps they had remembered to set their clocks ahead and were already snug in their beds.
But... and what a beautiful but it was -- the Barred Owl happily hooted at us from the Lumina hill. I hooted back. He answered. Anna told her relatives about the way owls can fly silently. And Jake tried out his first ever owl call... 'Who cooks for you'. And yes, the owl answered him.
No comments:
Post a Comment