Escaping for freedom or food?

週末に降った雪が溶け出した昨日、見るもびっくり。
住宅街から少し離れた所にある、遊牧地から６〜７頭の馬が脱走！馬達は私の家から６軒先にある家の庭までたどり着き、芝生を食べだした。大雪で柵も役に立たず、馬達は容易に逃げ出したのだろうと思う。午後には全ての馬はまた、遠くに見える遊牧地に戻っていた。彼等にはつかの間の自由だったようだ。
The snow we had last weekend started to melt yesterday, and we had a surprise!
6 or 7 horses escaped from their ranch which is located west of our neighborhood. These horses reached the house, about 6 houses down and started to eat the lawn. Probably these horses ran away from the ranch because the big snowfall helped them to escape more easily from the fence. However, these horses went back to their ranch in the afternoon. It was a short time of freedom for them.


こんなハプニングが起きた日の夜１０時過ぎ、今度は家の庭にいつもとは違う訪問者が現れた。暗がりで何か動いているようなので、またアンテロープだろうと思ったが、どうも何時ものよりも大きく、角の感じが違う。ようく、見ると大きな牡鹿だ。角もかなり長く、迫力満点。いつものアンテロープの時のようにお勝手の戸を開けるのもちょっと恐い。暫くして何処かへ行ってしまったので、安心していると、今度は自分の家族6頭つれてやってきた。今まで、家の庭に鹿がやって来たのを見た事はなかったが、この大雪で、なかなかえさが探せずここまでやって来たのだろう。ここは、野生動物を間近に見るのにことかかない。でも、また芝生にダメージが、、、ショック。
On the same day after 10 pm, we had visitors in our backyard. I thought it was antelopes again, but it was a little bit different from regular antelope. It was bigger and had big antlers. That was a big male deer. So I was a little bit scared to open to the back door, which I always did when antelope came to scare the antelope away. After a short time, he was gone but he brought his family to our backyard. Until this time, we didn't see any deer in our backyard, probably they were looking for food because of thick snow cover. We always can see wildlife near us but our lawn has damage again... shock.

Still snowing

金曜日の夜から降り続いている雪はまだ、降りやまず未だこんな景色です。
Since Friday night, it was still snowing, and outside looks like this.


今回の雪は水分を沢山含んでいて、非常に重い雪であります。雪かきをするにもシンドイ。
家の前にある樹木も雪の重さで、おじぎをしたまま。
The snow is very heavy because it contains a lot of liquid water. Shovelling the snow is really, really hard. The tree in front of our yard is bending because of the heavy snow.

玄関前のポーチにもつららが、、、
So there are icicles on the porch roof...

玄関を開けると、ほら、この通り吹きだまりができてる。
When we opened our door, we saw blown snow on our porch.

で、この雪質を利用して雪だるまをつくりました。へへ。
Then, we made a snowman. He he.

これが、この２日間で降った雪です。
This height is the accumulation of the snow for 2 days.

It is October!!!

そろそろクリスマスカードを用意する時期となりました。こんな写真はどうでしょう？
In this season we need to think about Christmas cards. How about these photos?

なんて言っている場合ではありません！

雪ですよ、雪！！！

１０月１０日に、大雪です！

It is snow... and more snow... in October!

この雪はどうやら来週の月曜日まで続き、積雪は１フィート以上になるということ。
あなた、信じられます？この２、３日前まで７５度F　あったにもかかわらず、今日いきなり３３度F　の寒さ。やっぱりここは、ロッキーの山岳地だったと言う事でした。
This snow storm will be continuing until Monday. And the accumulated snow is going to be more than 1 foot! Can you believe that? A few days ago we had 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and now the temperature has dropped to 33 deg F. After all, we live in a part of the Rocky Mountain region.

Lawn repair and trespassing

今の家は庭が広いのですが、芝生が荒れていて整備し直さなければなりませんでした。秋になってやっと芝生の種まきに最適の気候になりました。で、先月中旬に種をまき、３週間経ってやっと芝生の芽が見え始めました。嬉しいよねえ。

Our current house has a big yard but we need to restore the lawn. The Fall season is the best season for seeding the lawn. We seeded the lawn in the middle of last month then after 3 weeks, we saw new sprouts.


新芽です。
These are some of the new sprouts.







しかし、この種まきに先んじて、簡易フェンスをたてなければなりませんでした．というのも、まずアンテロープがこの庭を通り道にしていたのと、向かいの高校から生徒が何人も裏の教会まで通り抜けして行くからです。この高校生たちは非常にたちが悪く、この簡易フェンスを建てたにも関わらず、隙間を通り抜けようとするのです。先日、堪忍袋の緒が切れて、とうとう苦情の手紙を高校の校長と、裏の教会の牧師、また教育委員長の所へ出しました。数日後、校長が訪ねて来て話をしましたが、「ここは長い間空き家だったから、生徒も通り抜けが習慣になってしまっていた」「隣の家の奥さんは生徒の通り抜けを気にしていない」などと、まるで、生徒に通り抜けを奨励し、苦情を言っているこちらの方が間違っているような口調です。全く飽きれました。校長がこの調子では問題の解決は余り期待できそうにありません。

However, before the seeding, we had to erect a temporary fence because antelope used our backyard for their pathway. Also the students from the High School were trespassing to go to the church behind us. These high school students are really bad in that they tried to sneak into our yard from a very small gap between the fence and the porch. We could not stand it anymore so we sent out a letter to the High School principal, the church pastor, and the superintendent. a few days later the principal of the high school came to our house and said they will try to protect the property, but the students used to pass through our yard because our house had been unoccupied for a long time. In addition, he said that the lady next door said she did not care or mind if students passed through her backyard. We are surprised at what he said as if he encouraged the students to do the trespassing and it sounded like we were the bad people because we complained. From this conversation it seems like we cannot expect anything from him.











また、ウサギがこの辺に沢山いるのですが、こいつがこの簡易フェンスを食いちぎって穴をあけ、出入りしています。きちんとしたフェンスを建てるまで問題は続きそうです。
There are many rabbits in this neighborhood and these rabbits chewed on our temporary fence and made a hole for their own pathway through our yard. It seems that these problems are continuing until we get a real fence.