You know it has been a long, cold, snow-covered North Country winter when… Each day we fill the bird feeder in the south yard with sunflower seed for the eight or nine species of song birds that flock around the farm house in the winter months, and the squirrels get their share, too, but it is a rare morning when the cottontails and whitetails partake of the feast together, 30 feet from the kitchen windows. This doe was one of six in the yard the morning after the most recent snowstorm. All of them appeared healthy and strong (and pregnant) and in good condition to survive the last weeks of this hard winter. The rabbits are almost daily visitors. This one seems annoyed by the interloper but doesn’t quite know how to shoo her away. (Photo by Patti Johnson)
Dispatches from a Northern Town 
If I could, I would, sit and look out into the wood. And she’d be there, in her chair as we talked about how how lucky we are.