Snowshoeing

I didn't do too much over the weekend, but I shoe-goo'd my boots and did get out some of my heavier winter gear (finally) and went snowshoeing around. My immediate back yard indicates that there are some rabbits or something living in the last pile of crap.  The pictures in this post may be difficult to see (indentations in the snow don't show up well in a highly compressed image).

I do definitely still have deer in the back though.  While the "highway" I found last year wasn't as heavily traveled, there were still definitely several sets of tracks.  

The little clearing behind the tree line is still the most active spot.  

I also came across some non-deer tracks.  These belonged to a two legged creature with rather small feet.  These were roughly a size 8-10, and narrow (or maybe it just seems that way since I have duck feet).  At this point it is worth noting that the active area is right on the property line.  I never paid for an official survey when I bought the place but I did my own, and the ribbons that someone else put up before I bought it (several trees have pink high visibility ribbons) are close but not on the property line.  They favor the lot behind me.  My lot goes back at an angle because Hubbard Rd isn't straight, but the ribbons go perpendicular to the side with periodic backwards corrections.  So it isn't really clear whose lot the high activity area is on.  The footsteps were, with only one or two exceptions, all on the other side of the ribbons.  This is all a really long winded way of saying that I am not the only person interested in the game back there.

I apparently had several blow downs back there.

Even though I haven't seen them, the deer are still curious.  There were many sets of tracks that went into these trees.  These are the beech trees that line the back edge of my back yard.  There is a good chance that from in there they can see the house, but because the beech trees don't lose their leaves until spring, I won't see them (brown on brown is good camouflage).

From this angle (and zoom in a little), you can actually see the red of my truck in the center if you look hard enough.

I also walked around the rest of the yard a bit.  It looks like my well is overflowing again.  

My guess is the daylight pipe that drains off the excess is frozen up.  Good luck finding it though.  It is in here somewhere.  If you think this just looks like snow, you would be correct.

Apparently I have had a couple of deer scoping out the front as well.  This trail actually went up by the shed and looped all the way around to the trails in the back.

While I was there, I noticed that my power pole is leaning again.  

I appears that it had another branch come down on the lines.  It is only a little one though, so I probably won't do anything with it until spring.

Sunday was the superbowl, so I didn't do too much except burn up all my cell data I could buy for the month and eating pizza.  We also got another couple of inches on Sunday we weren't supposed to.  I am noticing that I still have daylight when I leave work these days, so perhaps I will start installing windows in the shed (assuming it isn't frigid out.  It is hard to run all those tools with mittens on).