All Kinds of Weather and A Fabulous February Trial

I meant to post last week, but time got away from me.  Our weather has been typically crazy, so maybe it is just normal.  Who knows?  Rowdy has been happy with the snow.  In fact, last Thursday night it was 2 degrees F at 9 pm and I could not get him to come inside.  He laid on the dog bed on the front porch for an hour and a half and stared me down every time I tried to get him to come in.  He loves the cold.
 
But only a few days prior to that night, we had a wonderful warm weekend with bright sunny skies.  It was so warm that I heard a lot of buzzing coming from under the big maple in the back yard and found honey bees raiding the bird feeders in search of protein.  This photo is at the base of the tree where a lot of the seed gets dropped, but the bees were actually in the feeders as well. 

The three female alpacas took advantage of the sunshine and warm temperatures to get out in the pasture in search of something green to eat. I'm not sure how successful they were.

And 2 days later, it was back to snowy, frigid February.  

 This past weekend, Grover and I attended the dog trial put on by our dog club in Zanesville.  Our last trial was in December, so it was fun to be running again.  Going into the trial, Grover had 2 of 3 legs of his Excellent title in Jumpers with Weaves and 1 of 3 legs of his Excellent title in Standard.    We had a really great day on Saturday, getting qualifying scores in all 3 of our runs!  In addition to Jumpers and Standard, we ran in a class called FAST at the Novice level.  This was only the second time we have run in this class, so we have to start at Novice and work our way up like with the other 2 classes.  One of the reasons I entered this class is because it is the first class on Saturday morning and Grover is usually pretty wound up in the first class he runs, so this kind of gave him an outlet to burn off some of that craziness, which he did, getting a Q and second place.  He then went on to Q in Excellent Standard, with a third place and then a Q in Excellent Jumpers with a first place.  So he earned his Excellent Jumpers title, which moved us up to Masters level for Sunday.  I was so thrilled with our day.  There was no way I was expecting Sunday to be as good.  And we started out with Standard and a couple mistakes that caused us a no Q there, but our Jumpers run was wonderful.  Out of 16 dogs that Q'd, we were number 11 and we ran it in 9 seconds under the official time.  So we got 9 points toward our eventual goal of a MACH.  But we need a LOT more!  Here is our run in Jumpers on Sunday:  

Masters Jumpers Run 2-14-16

After the trial, Grover and I went over and spent a couple days with my mom before we headed home yesterday.  So things have been rather busy.  I think Sam is planning to tap maple trees today, so I may have more on that next time.


 

I warped up my small loom for a couple of scarves this past week, but haven't taken photos yet.  And I continue to work on the long sweater.  I am onto the second sleeve and still have hopes of finishing while it is cold enough to wear it.  I think I'll make it.  I will possibly finish it while I am feeding wood into the fire under the sap evaporator in the next couple of weeks.  It is so nice having the evaporator enclosed in the sugar shack.  It stays toasty warm in there.