[geo] cache stash

For years, Todd has maintained that a typical Indiana winter is grey and overcast, without the benefit of evergreen forests (like those in the Pacific Northwest).  I've protested that Indiana winters are bright and cold, with brilliant blue skies over snow-covered meadows.

This year, at least, Todd is right.  We've had weeks of grey skies and dead grass, and although I still prefer this to the dreadful heat of summer, it's been a bit dreary.  Yesterday was sunny and warm, so we decided to go geocaching - with a little help from Borga and some more experienced geocaching friends.

Our deciduous forests are still bare, of course - it's only February...

...but we have a few evergreens around.

Someone made a fairy door in the forest!!

I've never been geocaching before.  Geocaches are camouflaged containers (hidden in stumps, rock piles, etc.) that have their location coordinates uploaded to a central website.  Using your cell phone, you can isolate the location to within 100 feet.  That's still a pretty large search area, and I certainly earned my extra toast last night, clambering over logs and scouring through leaves for treasure.   Geocaches contain trail logs, which you update, and sometimes little trinkets too.

You take a trinket and leave a trinket.  Then, update the website, letting people know that you found a cache and that it's still safely hidden and available for future discovery.  Todd displayed an uncanny ability, discovering 3 caches.  Note:  I found zero.

The weather was so warm and pleasant that it was hard to believe that just a few days before, we had snow. 

It was so strange.  It started snowing around 5 a.m. and snowed steadily until around 11.  By noon, due to a slight rise in temperature, the snow was completely melted.  But I enjoyed photographing it while it lasted!

I hope we get more snow soon!

I'm finally ready to start winter sowing my flower seeds.  Today I will be drilling holes in 55 one- pound plastic spinach tubs, filling them with soil, and planting the seeds.  I hope to plant nearly 450 seeds by the end of next week!  Hopefully the freeze-thaw cycle will make the seedlings so hardy that they can be popped in the ground by mid-March.  I can't wait to see what the front field looks like when the greenhouse gets installed and the rows of flowers start coming up!  I am even planting several annuals, like sunflowers.  Someone gave me several different varieties, including the Titan sunflower, which has flower heads that are TWO FEET wide!

I guess we'll have plenty of seeds for the birds next winter.  :)

Have a great week!