We are sad to report the death of Frank DeForge, long-time Joe's Ponder.  Frank was an avid fisherman and before his wife, Elsie, passed away, the two of them were first out in the spring and last to pack up their gear in the fall. We extend our sincere sympathy to Frank's family.  He will be sadly missed by them as well as his many friends.

We want to remind Ice-Out web cam watchers that you must use Internet Explorer as your browser.  Using IE, go to www.joespondvermont.com, click on webcam, and follow directions.  Following the link above won't work as my blog is in Google.  These are not your regular web cams, but actually security cameras at Bill and Diane Rossi's home where the Ice-Out apparatus is set up.  They were kind enough to provide them for use during the Ice-Out Contest.  From time to time you may find they are not operating.  They have been finicky this spring, and Diane has been in touch with on-line technicians trying to figure out the problem, but so far not much luck.  So keep trying.  They are up and down.  

Fortunately, Bill and Diane are on hand pretty much 24/7 to monitor the clock and setup, and if they are away, Fred and I will be on hand, so when the clock stops, we will post the information immediately, whether the cameras are operating or not.  For years we functioned very well by visually checking the clock twice each day, so the contest is not compromised in any way by the cameras being temperamental.  We acknowledge it's fun to be able to check the flag, temperature and weather here at the pond by going to the webcams, and we are doing everything possible to keep them operating.  It is no doubt frustrating for you, but it's equally or perhaps more frustrating for us.  Please be patient.

Our weather today is not as bright or as warm as the past few days have been, but that's a good thing.  It will slow down the melting and let the frost come out of the ground more gradually so perhaps there will be less mud in the roads, and it lets the ground absorb much needed moisture rather than having water flowing off the hillsides into the pond and down the rivers, causing flooding.  I don't believe it got below freezing last night.  That would have been good for sugar makers, but I suspect sugaring season is fairly well finished for many.  It was short this year - we hope also sweet.

Wet, warm and sunshine.   That pretty much sums up the weather we've had today.  We had a misty rain going on early this morning, but around noon it began to clear and got pretty nice by mid-afternoon.  We lost tons of snow, literally.  Water was running everywhere and tonight most of the snow is gone except where it's been piled up by shoveling, drifting or snow blowing.   It hasn't been exceptionally warm, but in the 50s is good enough.  Fred was at Bill and Diane Rossi's this morning and took this picture of the flag - it's listing a bit, but as you can see, the ice is still very white and hasn't pulled away from the shore much yet.  Someone was fishing in back of the islands on Wednesday, I think it was, and once melting gets serious, it's hard to find a place to get from land onto solid ice, so that tells us we have a while to wait.

Henretta is close to finishing logging in tickets - tonight she estimates she has about 1,000 more to enter.  The top picture was taken on April 11 - we figured she was about half way through; and today she sent a second picture showing us she's almost at the end.  There are approximately 2000 tickets per box.  We won't have a definite count until
she's finished and all the on-line tickets are added - we'll let you know.

The contest patterned after ours in Goshen, Massachusetts, is over.  The clock stopped there at 4:17 a.m. today.  Pretty neat - 4:17 a.m. on 4/17.  That's an easy one to remember.  They still have plenty of snow/ice on their little pond, by looking at the pictures, but their flag was set up near some sort of spillway, I think, and things open up there first.  Our contest always lasts longer than theirs, but I was a little surprised it happened down there as fast as it did - Bob Labrie sends out a newsletter periodically, and things were very wintery there until just a couple weeks ago - a lot like us.

We're definitely getting there, and we'll have regular updates on the ice conditions posted on home page soon; and keep checking the web cams, they are working off and on.  Diane says nobody can seem to figure out why they are finicky this year.  Maybe they got tired of all that cold weather and haven't warmed up yet.  Anyway, I just went on (using Internet Explorer) and they were working fine.

Another pretty day.  I opened my mail this morning and found this lovely photo from Cousin Ora in Rhode Island.  In spite of having more snow than normal there, they are still way ahead of us here at Joe's Pond.  That said, I understand that being on a northeast facing slope, we tend to have snow a lot longer than the happy folks on the opposite, southwest facing shore.  I was prompted yesterday to check on some of my own daffodils, the ones that come sooner than anything else in the flower garden because they are in a raised bed at the south end of the house.  The snow has been off there for about two days, and now the daffies are showing up.  They are way ahead of any of the others scattered about among other perennials in the garden - those are still under mounds of snow from the snowblower action all winter long, but by the time the early ones are going by, I'll have a new batch in the front lawn garden.  The only other sign that spring is here are the pussy willows.  They are definitely coming to life.


Everything is very wet on our lawn - there are spots where the water is sheeting down over the grassy areas under the snow with only an occasional bare spot sparkling with running water letting us know there's melting going on underneath.  In back of our house where my small vegetable garden is, we have a small brook carrying the water away from the house as it comes off the hillside and the wooded area above.  There is still a foot or more of snow in the woods.

Speaking of wet ground, there is a notice in today's Caledonian Record that the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail (LVRT) is off limits now due to both mud season and because it is unfinished.  The trail will remain closed so that work can continue as soon as it has dried out enough on the section from St. Johnsbury to West Danville.  The trail saw lots of snowmobile traffic this winter, and walkers have used it during the summer except last year and again this year it is officially closed during construction.  It is expected this section of the trail will be opened late this summer for hiking and biking.  The other section that is being worked on this summer is Morristown to Cambridge.

Here's something to get your heart pumping - especially if you are a skier ----- or the mother of the skier.  This is a video middle son, Bob, took a couple weekends ago while skiing at Burke Mountain.  He has one of those cute little cameras attached to his helmet, like Tim Hebert used for his snowmobile video a week or so ago.  Be sure you have your speakers on so you won't miss the sound of the skis and Bob's vocals.  Take a look. Click here.  He's about finished with skiing until Joe's Pond opens up. You'll find this video posted on home page, too.

We've had another very nice day and got shed of a lot of snow.  Not only that, but late this afternoon I finally saw some robins making whoopie out in our yard.  It's really good to have them back here.  There still aren't many bare spots right around our house where they can find food, but there are only a few birds so far so there shouldn't be a problem.  This photo is at the edge of our driveway next to the big spruces.  The robins seemed to like darting in and out of the thick branches. Spring is here, but it hasn't been ideal as it probably won't freeze up again tonight, making about three warmish nights in a row, and that may mean the maple sugar season will taper off rapidly, if it hasn't already in some places.

We told you yesterday about Ted Palmer-Benson, the guy with the drone and camera outfit visiting the pond; today Diane sent me a picture he'd shared with her.  Really nice quality and gives us a bird's eye view of her house and the neighbors'.  You can almost see our house over the ridge at the top right!  It also gives you a good idea of how much snow there is still left around the pond.  Don't forget to click on the picture to enlarge it.

We got our phone and DSL back today.  We were blaming Fairpoint, thinking they were tinkering with stuff or that after the long strike things had gone awry and we were paying the price, but it turned out to be a very old phone connection where the line comes into our house.  The covering on the wire had deteriorated letting water and snow onto it and then the heavy snow around the box had pulled the wire nearly off the terminals and finally broke it, and that's why we at first got intermittent phone outages and only very slow DSL, and finally nothing.  It took the Fairpoint serviceman about 5 minutes to locate the problem and fix it.  Now we are back to normal with all our gadgets working perfectly. Both of us were playing "catchup" answering e-mails and doing the normal stuff on line this afternoon, but tomorrow we should be pretty much back to our daily routines without the frustration of finicky internet service.  

The next thing we're going to try to remedy is relocating the satellite dish so that next winter Fred won't have to climb onto the roof to clean off the dish every time we get a heavy, wet snow.  I'm hoping we can get it closer to the ground, but that may not work, of course.  We took down a lot of the trees in back of our house a couple years ago, so I'm hoping that will help.  It's worth a try, and if it works it will be way better than having him climbing around on the roof in the dark during a blizzard.  No, I don't "send" him out there on nights like that - he insists.  I think on some level he enjoys the challenge.  It's a man thing, I guess.  I do appreciate it, but I'd really rather not have to worry about digging him out of a snowbank one of those nights.

Today was the kind of day we've been wishing for since about January 1st.  We had bright sunshine and temperatures in the 60s with a light south wind - perfect for being outside, except there's not much bare ground to walk on, dig in or admire.  Just snow and mud.  But we aren't complaining.  It was great just to be able to go outside without earmuffs and mittens.

We had visitors at the Ice-Out flag site today.  A fellow by the name of Tim Palmer-Benson came to Rossi's with his cute little drone to take pictures of the block and flag.  Diane got some really good pictures of him, too, and his drone.  I expect we'll be seeing lots more of these in the months ahead.  As interesting as they are, and even though they may be very helpful in many ways, I imagine they can also be annoying and intrusive.  It will be interesting to see how they are accepted (or not) and how we adapt to having them around.  The two top pictures above were taken by Diane.  The next two were taken by the drone.  That's a really interesting shot taken from some distance above the ice.  If you click on the image to make it larger, you'll see more definition of the ice.  The Ice-Out flag is bottom center of the shot.   I believe the camera doesn't take video, just single shots, but Bill told Fred Mr. Palmer-Benson took over 400 pictures. He has a web site, Scenes of Vermont you may want to check out.  He said he plans to return to Joe's Pond this summer, so no doubt we'll see more of the drone.

I'm going to write this and finish as soon as possible because our internet has been finicky all day - off more than on - and left us in the middle of doing something with suddenly no internet so many times I finally had to give up. When it was operating, it was much slower than usual - very frustrating, waiting for things to load.  We have also been without our land-line telephone service most of the day, as well.  That has been acting up off and on for a couple days, too, but today it has been more off than on.  We'll get it checked tomorrow, I expect.

Thanks to my temperamental computer, I got to take a few breaks outside on the deck - yes, it was actually nice enough today to do that!  What a great spring day, and tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer, again with lots of sunshine.  We could practically hear the snow melting and the buds on the trees swelling.  There were birds like this pretty flycatcher Fred caught with the camera, and we heard geese scouting out the pond (we hope they are  discouraged by finding no open water and keep flying north!), but no sign of robins yet.  We are gaining a little bare ground here and there, so I expect they will show up any day now.
 
Here is another sign of spring.  The annual Cinco de Meow party.  It was a big success last year and promises to be even better this year, so try to join the fun at the North Congregational Church in St. Johnsbury on the afternoon of Sunday, May 3.  If you have questions, get in touch with Helen Morrison, 802-563-2488.  It will be fun for the whole family. Click image to make it easy to read.

 
Yesterday it was cloudy and there were one or two light  showers in the morning, but the sky began to brighten and it  was comparatively warm in the afternoon, so we walked down to Rossi's to deliver some final Ice-Out tickets I had and to pick up some mail Diane had for me.  I took a few pictures along the way.  The top one is of Talbot's - the fence caught my attention.  It was an optical illusion when I first looked at it, reminding me of a zig-zag rail fence, but then I realized there are alternating down rails and level rails along the steps down the steep incline from their garage to the camp. 

At Craig's there was part of a path, but then a ridge of snow - perhaps from earlier plowing, and the snow looked pretty deep.  And the last one is the Ice-Out flag through the trees.

The road was wet but not really muddy, and there was no traffic.  I think most people are wary of our roads this time of year and don't venture on them unless they have to.  And that's a good thing - the less traffic on muddy roads the better.  We see people speeding past our house and often wonder how their cars stay in one piece.  There are serious dips in the road where culverts go across all the way along West Shore Road, and locals know to slow down, but people not familiar with the road sometimes hit them pretty hard.  We often find pieces of tailpipes or other bits of metal in the road this time of the year.

Woody has enjoyed today, too.  He's been outside basking in the sunshine and this afternoon spent long hours in the garage waiting for a mouse or chipmunk to show up. He has a couple of places up overhead where he can nap.  On sunny days it's nice and warm there with the heat from the roof, and he quietly waits for "game," knowing small critters hang out in the wood pile and overhead rafters.  He spent some time in the driveway watching the birds.  I think they tease him, flying back and forth out of reach.  We'll be outside enjoying tomorrow, too.  I may have to break out the lawn chairs . . . ! No, I won't park them in the snow - I'll put them in the driveway.  That's the only bare spot we have so far except a small patch just beyond the snowbank above - that we can't get to without climbing the bank and wading through a couple feet of snow.