Spring Melt…Finally!

 
This is Marg’s Railfence quilt using fabric from Kansas Troubles Cattails and Clover collection.  This quilt will be for a man so I suggested a leaf themed panto and we decided on Bushberries.  The shape of the leaves in the panto match the leaves in the fabric print.  Marg had brought Dream Puff batting to make it a light, high loft quilt.  The backing is a soft brown that looks like a batik print but it is not!

As you can see things are finally melting here, we got up to +15’c, the hottest we’ve seen so far this year. I took a picture of what is left of our quinzee this morning and then again tonight.  Look at how much snow has melted today!!!  Can you tell I’m excited!!  :)

A few weeks ago I noticed a few otters playing on the ice and then a few days after I noticed a brown lump on the ice.  I first thought it was a dead animal so sent Tim out to investigate but he came back to say it wasn’t a dead animal and for me to go look.  I was curious so trudged through the deep snow and brought my camera.  This is what I found.

It was a half meter wide pile of mud, grass and weeds from the bottom of the lake, it appears a muskrat, or other similar critter, made a breathing hole in the ice and covered it up with the mud to protect itself from prey when it comes up for air.  This way it can just stick it’s nose into the space in the mud and not expose itself out of the ice. I had never seen these before and upon walking around the bay I found a second one, Tim said he had seen these before when he has been snowmobiling on other lakes.  Below is what it looks like today.   It will be a few more weeks before all the ice is gone as the water you see is just melted snow, there is still a few feet of ice below.  You can see why I thought it was a dead animal from the dock.