Monday morning early it started snowing/sleeting here, with thunder. I didn't look out to see if there was lightning, but I suppose there was. The snow stuck to the grass and there was quite a bit rain down on the plains. It didn't freeze my tomato or zucchini plants and tonight I'm going to cover the zucchini with a sheet. No protection for the tomato because, lets's face it, those little starters on the plant are never going to ripen and are too small to bring inside.

I discovered that our friend Bucky Beaver has started working on aspen trees across the yard from the river. So we lost another tree, but today I put chicken wire around the remaining ones and they should be okay. Bucky cut down the tree, which is about 6 inches in diameter, and then cut the top off the downed tree and tried to drag it back to the river through the culvert but it got stuck in the chicken wire covering the end of the culvert.

The advent of cold weather around here necessitates draining the sprinkler system using the air compressor. Bucky or someone like him has chewed a hole in one of the pipes coming from the pump house. The river is high so the hole is underwater and I can see the air bubbling out of it. We were wondering where that leak is, and now we know, but need the river to go down about a foot so we can fix it, even temporarily with duct tape.

Of course having a big leak in the system has compromised the efficiency of my air compressor operation, but I did the best I could to blow the last bits of water out of the various pipes and hoses. Anyway, the pump is dried out, which is important, and the rest can wait until I can get in there and fix the hole.

Bummer, though. I lost my favorite reading glasses in the river. I had put them on the roof of the pump house for safe keeping, and got them back when I was done, but then bent over to do one more thing and sure 'nuff they fell into the raging waters and were gone in an instant. I envision Bucky the Beaver sporting around in some nice red framed reading glasses.