Solstice 2022

Bomb Cyclone Elliot

We didn’t escape the effects of the bomb cyclone that blasted the country over the holidays. Fortunately we just stayed home and didn’t have any travel plans. We got mostly rain, freezing rain and high wind, with the resulting storm surge. It was actually quite an impressive storm. We had hurricane force winds and all that goes with that. It was dangerous to go outside during the storm.

The storm surge was the highest we have encountered, we think. Shackford Point was awash.

We thought we had gotten off pretty lightly. We lost power and internet/phone for twenty-four hours or so. When we did the addition we added an automatic backup generator, so it came on and we were comfortable.

Gusts above 76 mph were too much for our yard and we did more landscaping by wind.

If you look closely at the second picture, you can see a second pine laying across other trees. So we didn’t fare as well as we thought.

Mammals

We reported out on the birds in a separate blog. The mammals hunkered down and survived the storm.

Solstice Celebration

Preparing Cinnamon Rolls

Meg’s friend from college, Su, helped Wink make our holiday meals.

We start the day with stocking gifts and champagne al a orange.

The stocking gifts were followed by breakfast.

We had a gift exchange after breakfast. Andrew made pet portraits as his gifts.

Su got a plush kittie.

Mark got an octopus.

After a short nap, it was time to prepare the Holiday Feast, Roast Beast. We tried something new to me, reverse sear.

The way this works is you cook the beast at low temperature and allow it to rest. Then just before serving it you finish it for ten minutes at high temperature.

We were all very happy with the reverse sear result.

Fun with B&B, Benji and Baya

Druidic Solstice Celebration

We planned a bonfire for Boxing Day and invited the neighbors. I expected to have a roaring fire. We had the cut and split dead elm tree as the core of the fire and thought it would burn well, hubris, pure hubris. The fire was a spectacular, EPIC, humiliating failure. I guess there was too much moisture, ice from the sleet and wood not seasoned enough and despite heroic efforts we were not able to get a sustained burn.

I guess I am going to have to surrender my Moeller card for this abject failure.

This brings the 2022 blogs to a close. I think this is the earliest in the year that I have accomplished thus feat.

Reflections, in 2020 I had 6685 files for 62.3 Gig of pictures, in 2021 15546 for 148 Gig and in 2022 20358 in 142 Gig. Twenty twenty-two was more like a preCovid year as we did some travel and got out a lot more. I would guess that 15 to 17 thousand pictures per year are fairly normal preCovid. So things seem to be normalizing.

We are planning some trips and a family gathering for the new year.

I hope you all had a happy holiday season and have a good new year.

Mark, Wink, Meg and SU