You call this Spring?

First, Yvonne tagged me for a meme, so I’ll get that out of the way:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages (All Creatures Great and Small/All Things Bright and Beautiful 2 volumes in 1 by James Herriot. I actually had a wide variety to pick from, but this was at the top of the pile.)

2. Open the book to page 12 and find the 5th sentence: That man over there, bent double and slashing away at the air with one hand – he was castrating a colt in the standing position.

3. Post the next 3 sentences: And the one with his arm out at full stretch, his fingers working busily at nothing – almost certainly foaling a mare; probably correcting a carpal flexion. And doing it effortlessly too. Veterinary surgery was a childishly simple matter in a warm bar with a few drinks inside you

[Note: Thank God that last sentence was included. These are the first two of a four-book series that I can’t recommend highly enough for anyone who ever likes animals. The BBC series based on the books is fantastic too.]

4. Then tag 4 people. No thanks. I’ll pass on this part, but feel free to do it if you want.

Onward!

So on Thursday (remember, the equinox was Thursday! You’d never know!), I headed up to the Lake with mom and aunt Suz. We took care of the primary reason for the trip first


And we picked up our quilts at Quilted Memories (that's a 716 area code if you're in the area. No website, sadly). Also bought some fabric (duh). No pics of either of those. I’ll post quilt pics once I can get the binding on. I hate binding. Almost as much as I hate making labels. I need to find some good transfer paper so I can make labels with my computer. Any suggestions?

So after we picked up our quilts and some fabric, we headed over to the cottage.

The following is usually a big field on the main road into our community


Gee, I wonder why we had a major mosquito problem up here when I was a kid? When things aren’t frozen, there’s a pump that helps this water get out of this field and into the Lake, which “solves” the mosquito problem.


Yeah. It’s most certainly still winter on the shores of Lake Erie.


You’ve seen this vantage point before, many times, but I’d never seen it like this!

The Lake is still frozen. Yes, frozen. I wanted to go out and tromp around a little bit, but if I wanted to do that, I should have gone up a month or two ago when I could be a little more confident that the ice is thick. So I stayed up on the neighbors seawall and took my pictures from there.



That ridge there? It’s the one closest to the bottom of the picture? With the small animal tracks in the snow leading up to it? That’s the boulder that’s in almost all of my sunset pictures.


That’s looking east from our little vantage point. You can kind of see the “ice volcanos” that formed when the lake was starting to freeze. Oh, and those ridges? Probably 20-30 yards into the lake from the shoreline.

We then did a little driving around the community and stopped between our community (the Point) and the neighboring community (the Bay). RT jumped out of the car and got his picture taken with the frozen Bay and Dunkirk in the background. (Again, that would all be water in the background if everything wasn't still frozen)


After dinner at the country club, we went over to The White Inn, (sorry SJ! They have typos!) where we stayed the night


No, we can’t stay at the cottage in the middle of winter. It’s not winterized. That means no insulation, no heat (well, baseboard heat, but that’s not particularly effective vs. 30-degree temps!) and no plumbing. We drain all of the plumbing so it doesn’t freeze.

On Friday morning, RT wanted a photo-op with the White Inn in downtown Fredonia, then we hit the road southward. We stopped at the Grove City outlets (who knew that Good Friday was a major shopping day? That place was crowded!) then home.

Now, I have a second sock to cast off, then bed. Yap at you later!