36 Hours and 10″ later…..
Now then, to be fair they did say a light dusting of snow, no more than half an inch!
We got ten inches.
And, the local TV station in Seattle who insisted there was no snow, finally remembered that Whatcom County was still in America!
That was only because they were sent a list of school closures, like the whole bloody County had come to a standstill!
Much more to the point was the mass starvation that descended upon us. The bird feeder that is normally filled once a day was emptied three times by ravenous hordes of birds, Hitchcock had nothing on us!
Mass depredations were inflicted on the pyracantha. A flock of towhees, as above, descended on the bush next to the office window and picked the bush clean.
Now, these despised fruits have been hanging there since last September untouched. The bush is pictured by mid morning, mostly eaten, by dusk there was not a berry to be had, all gone. Bit of a mystery why they were left all winter until hard rations are needed. They could have easily nipped round the house and gone to the bird table, but those berries had to be eaten first!
The newly potted Alberta spruce. Don’t get much for your 80 bucks (re new pot) do you?
So that is our spring sprunging in late Feb. When are we allowed to get our dose of global warming? I’m mighty tired of paying to heat the greenhouse!
A delicious postscript, the TV station finally allowed that ‘out in the County’ to the East of Bellingham, more snow had fallen and actually quoted 8-16″ here and there. Guess who they blamed? Whoopee! The Canadians! All that nasty arctic air coming from the North Pole out of the Fraser river gap! they did stop short of accusing them of exporting it deliberately and illegally (just)!!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Oh dear, but it does look rather lovely.
I see what you mean about the pot, it does sound expensive,, although I haven’t looked at the prices here recently. It may well cost a small fortune to replace mine.
Oddly enough, we had a flurry of activity at our bird feeding station this morning. They have been largely ignoring it since we’ve been here but they were queuing up. I hope they don’t sense a change in the weather! Much as I have not enjoyed all this stormy weather, I really do not want any snow!
It looks lovely, but I prefer my snow in pictures and not outside my front door.
Great photos 🙂
A fair amount of snow fell here last week. This week the year’s third polar vortex is settling over the region. It is supposed to fall to -30 by the end of the week and it was already -20 today.
We hang bird-balls in the apple-tree. Customers include black-caps and woodpeckers with robins and pheasants foraging beneath.
Great pictures. Love the snow if I have time to just admire it, but it’s a pain if one’s got something to do.
I sat out having lunch on the front terrace yesterday. Warmest day of the year so far.
Don’t you just hate me? 🙂
Woodpeckers are my favourites. We have green and greater spotted woodpeckers in the garden. They seem happy to share the habitat.
Thanks CO – love the pictures, especially the towhee through the blinds.
Yes! In GB my birthday mid-Feb was often an occasion for the first coffee on the terrace. Here – never. 😦
Oops! G’morgen, Soutie!
I’m not sure what image / link that you are looking for, I’ll delete the 1st attempt and let you try again 😉
We have refugee woodpeckers. the neighbours cleared out a wood, thus demolishing the ‘des res’ of various couples. They hot winged it across the road and took up residence along our stream corridor. I never cut down dead trees, leave them to improve diversity of food stuffs for wild creatures. Interestingly, when it is cold they happily eat from the bird table.
My preferred location is the greenhouse, very pleasant in there when the sun is shining.
It is all melting away now, down to about 4″ left. All the local towns were at a standstill yesterday. Commercial premises made no attempt to open! No cars passed. Bit like some mad dystopian movie.
I mentioned we get spotted woodpeckers with red bellies and tried to link to a pic. Like this:
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRlZqls7UF774q_pYIyDpUEgDDg0kRlPP0Qk5cEaK1IVQ4I7s074A
This is the chap, Janus:
Thanks, Arrers. Ain’t he sweet? 🙂
Those berries require a good frosting before they are edible – but I assume you’ve had plenty of frosts earlier in the season? So maybe the bids just know to leave them as a reserve feed?!
He is very handsome, Janus. 🙂