January Days

While I feel sorry for the plow drivers and ski resorts, I am loving this January weather.  We continue to have day after day of clear, crystal blue skies, with the occasional grey or rainy day.  We had a few bitter cold days again over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, where it got up to a balmy 17* one day.  Still, as long as you were bundled up, it wasn't that bad.  This came across my newsfeed on Facebook and it really made me laugh.  This was so totally me on those freezing cold nights and mornings!!!

Friday, Jan.13th was wicked windy.  There were gusts between 50-70 mph all day long, into the early evening and that's when the temps started to dip to single digits.  We'd gone into Sandwich to do some errands and saw that the Canal was extremely choppy.  When we got back to BBay we went over to the train bridge.  I could barely keep my footing in the wind.  I don't think I've ever seen surf like this in the Canal when it wasn't a nor'easter or hurricane.

These pictures don't do the waves justice at all.  It was high tide and the wind was screaming.

Needless to say, we didn't see any marine traffic this day.

It's hard to see, but this was taken from my windshield, because the rollers were very impressive from this angle.

Locust trees against the late afternoon sky on the 14th.  This is at my mom's.

Old building at the E. Sandwich Grange.

Flooded cranberry bog with a skimcoat of ice, on Old County Road.  Bogs are flooded in extreme temperatures to protect the plants.

Along Rte. 6A, E. Sandwich

At the Sandwich Marina.  These boats are in a vacant lot for the winter.  I didn't notice the masts sticking up when I first drove past them, till I got to the other side of the marina.  

Jan. 15th was the most frigid of the entire weekend. This cold steel brought to mind the scene in "A Christmas Story" when Schwartz double dog dares Flick to lick the flag pole. 

This was my Project 365 picture for that day.

Sunset from the back door, Jan. 15.

Another gorgeous, cold day on the 16th as well.

Stoked to see this Dead sticker on a canoe at Shawme Pond.  We are everywhere.

Shawme Pond starting to freeze, but not enough to skate on.

Don't these roots look like bones?  Especially that 'arm' in the upper right corner with 2 bony fingers giving the peace sign.

Shawme Pond.  That's a buoy in the ice.

My old stomping ground in Western Washington, is experiencing this, to which I say, "Better them than me!"  I'll take freezing cold and clear any day over snow!

A Trip to the Cranberry Bog

While I was at mom's, I decided to take Pepper across the street for a walk at the cranberry bog.  This turned out to be a mistake because she picked up a ton of ticks and we saw a rather large coyote staring at us which unnerved me as well.  Still, I have always loved this place and I used to play, and ice skate, here all the time while growing up.

The dirt road into the bog from the street.  There never used to be a gate to get in, but the owner installed it in the 80's to keep people from helping themselves to his cranberries, something my parents strictly forbade me to do. If I was going over there, I was told to stay off the bog itself and don't wreck the man's crop.  

Cranberries are grown on vines on the ground.

They have their own bees to pollinate the flowers in spring.

Not sure when this old truck was abandoned but it wasn't there when I was growing up.  I sort of recall it being there by the mid-80's.

There's a tree growing up through the window on the door.

Pump.  This looked a little bit different when I was living here, and there were always HUGE bullfrogs in the water.

Water channel to the pond, which supplies the irrigation for the bog, and allows the owner to flood it for harvest, to keep the plants from freezing in cold weather and during the winter. Once it's flooded and frozen, it's suitable for skating but it also makes for very bumpy and uneven skating, unlike a pond.

To my knowledge, this pond has never been named.  It's very small.  There is an old rumour from the late 1800's/early 1900's that a railroad caboose plunged into this pond and rests at the bottom.  The railroad tracks run along the edge of this pond, on the left of this picture.  I have never been able to ascertain if that story is real, and believe me, I have asked around.  I once asked some 'old timers', 3 women who were children in the 1890's if they knew about the caboose and they told me that it was a rumour when they were children too.  I had a childhood friend who had a home on this pond and we once took her rowboat out and around it, trying to peer into the murky depths but we couldn't see a thing.

Some spillage from the harvest.  I was bummed that I missed harvest time this year because that process is pretty cool.  They have a machine that the run over each bog island that loosens the berries from the vines.  Then the bog is flooded and the berries float to the top, where they are gathered together with floating booms that are pulled to the edge of the bog, then sucked up from the surface of the water into the trucks.

I loved walking these tracks.  I wouldn't do it today but back in the 70's, the world was still a safe place for children to play in remote areas without worrying about pedophiles and predators. I used to put pennies on the track and wait for the train to squash them.  I liked waving to the engineer of the freight trains, and to the tourists on the Scenic Railway in the summer.

Despite my parents' admonishment to stay off the bog itself, when I was a kid I couldn't resist going out there and jumping over the water channels.  Although I did try to limit that activity to spring and the post-harvest, as fun as it was to listen to the popping of the berries under my feet.  It's like popping bubble wrap.

Mr. Halunen lived in Wareham and owned the Standish Bog Company, of which this bog belongs. He has since passed away but his family continues to operate the company. The cranberries grown here go right to Ocean Spray!  The cranberry juice in your fridge just may have been made with berries from this bog.

I always called this area 'the sand pits'.  It was way more sandy with less trees in the early 70's, but this spot fed my imagination and I would always play here, either alone or with Diane and Sharon.

Next year I hope to see the harvest!