Life in a Northern Town

For the past few years, I've done a little photography project that I call Monday Melt: every Monday in April, I go around the property and take pictures, so that I can compare them to past years and see how our spring is coming along.

(And yes, I know it's not Monday, but I took these pictures on Monday; I'm just now getting around to dl'ing them from the camera!)



As you can see, we have a ways to go yet.

( A couple more pictures and comparisons to past years under the cut )

Starting next week, I think I'm going up to 2 Kismet updates a week: Mondays and Thursdays (just like the original Hunter's Moon schedule!). Right now I've got a few pages done in advance, and I'm having a lot of fun working on it -- I want to keep the story moving forward!

Also, if I'm giving you two pages a week rather than one, I feel less guilty about using lazy artist tricks, such as copy-pasting backgrounds or doing whole conversations in one gigantic panel. ;p

I'll drop back down to the page-a-week schedule if this turns out to be hard to keep up, but I'm enthused and ready to get this horse running again. Let's do eeeeet!

As an extra bonus, this is what my driveway looks like right now:



(Dog optional.)

Come on, spring, you can do it ...

This is what my backyard looks like at the moment:



Yeah, it's snowing. This is a damn sorry excuse for a May day, is all I have to say about it ...

There's a little bull with stubby, velvet-covered antlers that's been hanging around the last week or two. I got some decent shots of him browsing around outside the back door last night.

( Photos under cut )

The footbridge across our creek melted out of the ice today. Naturally I had to grab my camera and document this momentous occasion.

Ever since the creek started melting, a few weeks ago, it's been impossible to cross. (Well, not really impossible, but with rapidly moving water over ice of indeterminate depth, probably unwise.) I was delighted to get a chance to get reacquainted with the temporarily-inaccessible part of our property.

( Pictures and commentary )

We had quite a little blizzard on Sunday. I hiked down the driveway with the dogs to get the mail, taking pictures along the way.

( 7 pictures under the cut )

Finally with the pictures! These are from my trip back home at the beginning of June.

( Quite a few pictures under the cut )

Moose galore lately. It's becoming routine in the morning to let the dogs out and watch them erupt in a frenzy of barking as they discover the latest yardmoose. Of course, this is not really a safe situation for either the dogs OR us; moose are bigger than Thoroughbred horses, after all. And it probably takes a special kind of stupid to sneak around trying to take pictures of them after the dogs have gotten them riled up.

( Unwise picture under the cut )

Not that they seem to care; these particular moose are entirely unperturbable. I've seen the idiot dogs stand within 15 feet, barking, and they just go on about their moosely business.

The primary ones hanging around have been a cow and twin calves from last year's crop. It's tough to determine moose size when they're laying down, so I'm not sure if the one above is from that group or a different one. I did see what I'm pretty sure was one of the calves by itself yesterday -- either Ma and Bro were around somewhere, or else they'd died, although it's only been about a week since I saw the whole group together and I don't think there have been any large predators hanging around.