Snow Adventures Part One 02/16/2010
 This blog is just the first one in the “Snow Adventure Series”. Last Thurs., 2/11 at 3 am it began to snow here in Forney, Tx. . By 7 am. we had probably about 4 inches of snow which to us is a huge snowfall. This is when our adventure begins…. Because we live in Texas where it is hot most of the time we have shade cloth over all of our dog pens. We put it up about 3 years ago and it has withstood some terrible thunderstorms and very high winds this past year. It is put up on pvc poles and with bungy cords and rope…quite secure. On Thurs. morning with the snow covering them our shade cloths (over the dog pens) looked like possible avalanches. (I really was concerned that they would cave in on the dogs) In several pens they were so bowed down that I could hardly get in to feed the dogs. Sweet hubby says....just take the rake and go under them and shake off the snow.....off he goes to work and both of the girls gone to work also. I like to think of myself as a pretty Texas tough woman so I know I can handle it. Well, easier said than done....spoken by one with no snow experience.....that snow was so heavy and when I could push up the shade cloth all of the snow just landed in the middle in a bigger and heavier boulder that was immovable. The temperature was about 33 degrees so the snow was pretty wet and packed itself into big boulders quickly as I tried to work. All the while I am working (with curious Bassets underfoot) it is snowing very heavily. We did not expect any real accumulation of snow as for us even 2 inches is very unusual. Soon it becomes clear to me that even IF I can get snow off of the shade cloth in a matter of an hour they will be covered again with no letup in the snow fall in sight. I realize now that I have to sweep off the snow and then take down all of the shade clothes. Remember that these things are put up to last and now the weight of the snow makes the tension on the bungies very tight. With my squeegy type rubber broom and a knife to cut the bungies I began the task. After an hour and a half …..Victory !! All shade clothes down and out of Basset reach. I came inside.....my coat was soaked through (didn’t even know that was possible) and I was very wet and cold but avalanches avoided. (many of the pvc poles had already broken from the weight but the pens looked like skeletons with the shade cloth gone….see the before and after photos). The pile of snow in the pens was a huge fascination to Wally and Sunshine who jumped on them, dug into them, tried to eat them and finally Wally topped off the biggest pile making it into yellow snow. Wally spent the whole time standing on top of the biggest mound of snow in his pen like king of the hill. Every time I tried to get a picture though he jumped off. Wally and his daughter Sunshine are just two of a kind. They are such silly dogs. all of the others were snug inside their cozy houses....filled up the day before with lots of fresh sweet straw and all snuggling with another warm Basset body. Tess (pregnant) and her mama Zoee were inside the house with Wilma and Betsy (the grumpy old girl). I could never have suspected just how much more it would snow. By supper time we had about 8 inches and by Friday morning we had 12 ½ inches…..an all time record snow fall in one day in Texas. We would have had a shade cloth avalanche for sure !!    Snow Adventures Part two 02/16/2010
Blog #2 in the “Snow Adventure Series”, on Thurs. 2/11/10 it continued to snow ALL day. We had a great time when everyone got home from work and went outside to build a snow basset. We could never build a snowman…..too conventional. My husband, Jim is quite a snow sculptor so he did the hard work. I did paws and body work but he did the Basset features. We tried to use cinnamon to give our Basset some coloring and to show off his features but that didn’t work too well. We actually took these photos on Friday (the day after we built our snow basset). When we went inside to warm up we discovered that our power was off. This was 5 pm. on Thurs. night and beginning to get dark. We found all of our flashlights, candles, kerosene lamp, etc. and figured it would fine in an hour or so. We are so blessed to have propane as our fuel source for our stove and water heater so we had hot water and could cook on the stove top (lighting it with a match). I made spaghetti and we ate by candlelight, hubby and our two daughters……waiting for the lights to come back on any minute….another hour….Again we are blessed that we have a wood burning stove in our living room and had stocked up on firewood….so we could keep the living room and downstairs fairly warm as the temperatures were dropping into the twenties by then. At suppertime we had about 8 inches of snow and it continued to snow very hard until Friday morning…..record snow fall of 12 ½ inches of snow…..and still NO POWER. Our electricity was off from Thurs. at 5 pm until Sat. about noon. It was quite an adventure. Beautiful, beautiful snow which we enjoyed…..lots of candles and dark nights. No TV, computer, etc. and by Sat. the upstairs in our house was 55 degrees….a little chilly. But we all survived and really even enjoyed our time together. I took some wonderful videos and photos of the fresh snowfall and dogs first time out in the snow on Friday morning early BUT while previewing them I accidently erased ALL OF THEM……I cried for awhile and then we went out and took more photos/videos but several hours had passed and the snow had melted some. So even though there is a lot of snow in these photos and videos there was even more than that. You can see the snow videos on my flickr site by going to the homepage of Blessed Bassets and clicking on the flickr link. There are 5 videos there. The Bassets loved the snow and all of them got out to play in it ….everyone was very happy !! On Sat. with our power on we were warm and watched a movie. I have never been so thankful for electricity in all of my life…..we in America are very spoiled and don’t realize all of the many comforts that we have…..this time without power was a good reminder for us. We did enjoy our once in a lifetime snowfall adventure !!     |
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