Friday

Garbage Day!
It's around 13 degrees above zero.

• Friday Night: Partly to mostly cloudy. Low in the low teens.
• Saturday: Increasing clouds. Chance of light freezing rain at night. High: 36, Low: 25
• Sunday: Mostly cloudy with a bit of light freezing rain changing to plain rain. High: 38, Low: 34
• Monday: Sun and clouds and mild. Chance of a shower. High: 50, Low: 37

WKTV is reporting that the searching continues for Greg Williams, 47, of Stafford Avenue, who disappeared on New Year's Day after leaving a note telling his family that he was going coyote hunting. He usually hunted on Tassel Hill.

The Forest Rangers' mobile command was on site early yesterday, and the Red Cross Disaster Relief Unit arrived to take care of the searchers.

The parking lot behind the Fire House was filled with vehicles including several snowmobile trailers and some from TV stations.

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Christmas trees and poinsettia are on their way out; Amaryllis and Paper Whites are blooming.

In the center of the village, the "snow mountain" in the Post Office parking lot is just starting to grow!


Two friendly "snowmen" wave to passersby at the top of Sanger Hill!


Out in the countryside, wind has whipped snow into frothy-looking banks of "meringue.

You can look from Brothertown Road across the Oriskany Valley and see huge icicles hanging on the walls of the quarry .........


........... and from Hanover, you can see beyond the Zweifel Farms all the way to Hamilton Hill.

Out a Bailey Lake, tracks made by ice fishermen pulling sleds.

Some deer found a place to forage in the sun.

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Have a warm, safe weekend, everyone!

(If there's anything you'd like to have me add to next week's "In Timely Manner," let me know!)

Meagre information

From the O-D - "Police Search for Missing Waterville Man." WKTV has the same story.

Special Add-on

To (at least partially) answer to question: "What's going on with all the Police and the helicopter?"

Here's the official word from the Sheriff's Post as of 9:35 this morning.

"There is a search being conducted for a person believed to be lost in the vicinity of Tassel Hill." "The subject is NOT an escaped convict. If that were the case, there would be alot more Police and fewer Forest Rangers."

Thursday

(Sorry! I overslept and then got immediately sidetracked with E-mails and phone calls!)

Direct from Barton Avenue: thanks, Missy!

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Recyclables Day!

Clear and very cold.

My thermometers are ranging from -10 to -8 to -5.3.

• Thursday: A mix of sun and clouds with a few flurries possible. Continued bitter cold. High of 0-10 degrees.
• Thursday night: Partly cloudy and very cold again. Slight chance of flurries. Low between 0 and -5 degrees early...slowly rising temps toward morning.
• Friday: A mix of sun and clouds with a chance of flurries. Not as cold. High: 26, Low: 12

As soon as residents heard the forecast, they began to converge on Foodking: "emergency preparedness," as it were!

And birds - without benefit of radio, tv, newspaper or blog - were battling over sunflower seed in my bird feeders!

The greediest was this red-bellied woodpecker. He worked on a block of suet 'til it was nearly gone!

I rode around the community looking for other bird feeders: quite a few, but the birds think there should be more!

Here are some of the varieties of birds that were at feeders, yesterday ............. photos from "Google Images."

Cardinals,

chickadees,









tufted titmous(es) - or is it "titmice"?











house finch,











juncos,












mourning doves,










and my fairly rare pair of Carolina Wrens.

Out in the cornfields, watch for wild turkeys and flocks of little Snow Buntings: you won't see them until they all fly off, flashing their white wings!

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About the Rotary Clock, which has been telling the same time for a couple of weeks - the Rotary has been advised that the Village is attending to it.

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And there's something else going on, but no one seems to know what it is!

Wednesday

It's BIG TRASH DAY!

18 degrees and there's light snow falling.

The forecast had been for 1 - 3", overnight.

The way clouds rolled in over Pleasant Valley, yesterday afternoon (as seen from S. Brothertown) it looked as if we'd get 1 - 3 feet! I just measured 3" on my front porch and steps. (Hardly the best place to take a measurement, but that's as far as I'm going right now!)

• Today: Scattered flurries or a few squalls. Windy with blowing and drifting snow. Becoming bitter cold. Temps falling from the upper teens in the morning to upper single digits by afternoon.
• Tonight: Partly cloudy and frigid with a chance of a flurry. Low around -5, but as cold as -10 to -15 in the North Country.
• Thursday: Sun and clouds, with a chance of snow showers late in the day. Bitter cold. High: 9, Low: -3

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Missy Brouillette just sent me this great picture! She and Wayne and the kids spent ten days in sunny Florida, visiting her family, and came back in time to play in the snow!

X-C Skiers are out, following field trails, waiting for deeper snow to make the woodland trails easier to manage. Stan Dziekonski told me that Ann and Robin Kinnel (his neighbors) told him that there's a new X-C trail that starts just behind Glen House and connects Root Glen with the Kirkland Glen. Welcome news, because it's a real ski trail: a lot less steep (and scary) than the walking paths.

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When I posted this picture of the ornamental ironwork on the tower of SouthGate Ministries, a day or two ago, it reminded me to look and see if it were the same pattern as that in Jeff Reynold's photograph of the "pink house" East of Sherburne:

It isn't.

Nor is it identical to that on Mrs. Tonetti's home in Sangerfield ........

.... or the old Welsh Church that is now the home of the Waterville Historical Society. But they probably all came from the same place: a foundry located in the old C&H building (now Pumilia's Pizza Dough) on Route 315. Senior historians of the 1960s and 70s bemoaned the fact that one of the former owners of the property had seen fit to burn all of the drawings and destroy the moulds of the scores of ornamental castings that had been made there in the late 19th century and decorated so many elegant buildings throughout this part of New York.

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Have you clicked on the New Link?

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I'm looking for a professional paint & wallpaper person: can you suggest any?
Please E-mail the Writer.

Sunday afternoon ride

It snowed just enough, earlier, to make the hemlock woods next to Loomis Road look as if they'd been sprinkled with confectioner's sugar ........

..... and turn the view of Sangerfield from Newberry Road into a patchwork quilt .......

and also make driving on the back roads really slippy.

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Out in the countryside, bashful builders;

and back in the village, other youngsters had been busy ..........

.........and having fun!

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Trying to make shoveling just as exciting,

....... two Frenchmen plan their attack on a solidly-packed obstacle!

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Tomorrow's BIG TRASH DAY!

(but they won't pick up a snowbank, I'm afraid!)

Tuesday

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Welcome to
"At Home in the Huddle 2008"

Save this as a new bookmark or favorite.
Links to earlier blogs are on the left-hand side of this page.

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It's nearly 28 degrees. There doesn't appear to have been any snow overnight nor is there any falling, now.

• New Year's Day: Snow, heavy at times through early afternoon. 3-6" of snow likely, but 6-9" possible on the Tug Hill and in the Adirondacks. High in the low 30s.
• New Year's Night: Occasional light or moderate snow. A few more inches possible. Low in the mid to upper teens.
• Wednesday: Occasional light snow. Otherwise, clouds and some sun. Becoming bitterly cold. High: 18 in the morning, but falling all afternoon, Low: -6

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New Year's Greeting are flying back and forth all over the country, and even from Ann and John Cockell in England to everyone in Waterville!

This was the Bell Tower, last evening.

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Colleen Emerson sent me this cellphone photo of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree that she took last week when her mother, Gail Gale, took six of her grandchildren to New York City!

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Depending on today's weather, I'll either be out and around looking for pictures to take or I'll be adding a few more links to this site. Either way, I'll be back later!

Have a grand day!