First days back home

I am adjusting to being back in Montana. It's not really too hard - all I have to do is look at the snow covered mountains shining blue and white in the sunlight. Beautiful!!!

Ok... the first day was a little hard as the sky was overcast and a strong wind was blowing with the temperature at the freezing mark. Not exactly the home coming I would have liked. But yesterday and today have been sunny and the wind relatively light. That's more like it!

Initially the only snow other than on the mountains (and boy does it look cold to see snow covered mountains on a cloudy day!), was snow in the shadows of buildings, etc. Other than the green of pine trees everything is a dull brown. The night before last it snowed and that 'prettied' it up. The snow was light and most of that has now melted away.

Even after almost 3 months away from here everything - so far - appears to be as I left it. Even items I forgot to put away in buildings were sitting here and there. Oops.. how did I forget to put that away?! Some willow branches were on the ground outside the house and had to be picked up, but not as many as prior winters as I have trimmed that willow tree back quite a bit.

I found my furnace changed how it operated. I set the thermostat at 53 F and the furnace would run from 52 to 57 to give me a 55 F average. When I returned I found the furnace now runs from 47 to 53. Not sure why it changed. Fortunately even with the cooler temperature in the house my water pipes did not freeze. One of my plants did die, and another lost half of its leaves. Jan did stop by to water my plants so their condition must be due to the cooler house temperature.

My garden's carrots and beets that I had stored in my house's crawl space came through the winter quite well. I already made a batch of carrot bread. Now to dig up the remaining carrots from my garden.

By cleaning the ashes from my wood stove pipe prior to leaving, and vacuuming, this helped remove the house's wood smoke smell as the house didn't smell too strong of wood smoke when I returned. I already have grown accustomed to the smell again as I no longer smell it. The same happens with the smell of fresh cut logs at the lumber mills. Normally I don't smell them, but have noticed their smell the past few days. I like their smell.

My house is dustier than normal. (That bad!) Even when I am not around the dust seems to settle and grow! I spent this morning cleaning some windows and furniture. I need to do 'spring cleaning' soon on the rest of the house before I get distracted with other things.