Champion Avalon Una Howffcarbonel, Field Champion

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

A few pictures from last Spring, when the D litter, born December 30, 2008, were little pups. Hard to believe they are yearlings now. Here, Deodan and Domovoy Dmitri, Delilah, and Wilhem DeKooning lounge around the front yard. Red-brindle Stripe stands in their midst.

We will soon have Daffodyls again, but they are not blooming yet. The bamboo takes a beating most every winter and does not dump the crispy brown leaves until late spring at the earliest. It probably looks even worse this year, since some of the shorter varieties spent over a month covered in snow.

Drakar peers innocently from behind a fallen log.

Mystery blue flowers on the left, Bloodroot on the right.

Close-up of the blue Mystery Flower.

Snowmaggedon

The Fimbulwinter swallows our front yard

I had to laugh when I saw our latest Virginia snowfall had been named "Snowmaggedon". I was already thinking we were in the midst of The Fimbulwinter, that dire season right before Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods. 

We were barely dug out and back at work from the last snowstorm, but we knew a big one was headed our way.  Once again, we ransacked a couple of grocery stores on our way home from work Thursday, as we knew we would be going nowhere on Friday.  Or Saturday.  Or Sunday.  We already had snow shovels, which was good, because the stores were sold out of those. Once again, we laid in several bales of straw and several hundred pounds of dog kibble. Once again, North Mountain faded to white. . .

Dmitri and his mother, Churanova, hunting the Fenris Wolf

Legend has it, Fenris is the dastard who swallows our sun at the end of the world. If we have an "F" litter, that will be the biggest, blackest pup's name. I love Norse mythology. Lately the score for my life has included continuous mental airplay of "The Ride of the Valkyries" and "The Immigrant Song" by Led Zepplin. You know it too, unless you slept through the Seventies: "I come from the land of the ice and snow. . ." Obviously snow was the central reality of Viking life, as it has come to be the central reality of mine.

I wonder if there was a Snowshovel of the Gods, back in the Day? (Possibly I have become snow-obssessed?) Thor, the god of thunder, had a hammer named Mjolnir. I read that in a comic book somewhere. . . He also rode around in a chariot pulled by goats, but that did not make the comics. I have named my very own Three-Pronged Ice-Hammer Of Death after it. After Mjolnir, not Thor's goat-chariot. I use Mjolnir to chip packed snow and ice from the skislope, formerly known as "the steps to the paddocks up the hill".

Wolf-hunting practice. . .

. . .just in case the Fenris-wolf does show up!

 Jackie always gets to be the wolf.

(Some of us may have wolf-hunting confused with making snow-angels.)

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep--

And poop to scoop before I sleep!

--doggerel with appologies to Robert Frost