"Why should only the outside world get time off for bad weather?" Mark asked Sunday.  Before I knew it, I'd agreed to a one-hour delay on Monday morning.

And it was a good day to sleep in.  A full weekend of rain had filled my wheelbarrow rain gauge and set the creek into moderate-flood mode.  (Moderate flood means we can't get out with hip waders, but I could walk nearly all the way to the ford without being impacted by high water.)  Don't worry, rust-phobes, I flipped the wheelbarrow on its side after taking this picture.

The flood reminds me that winter is a season of tough choices for homesteaders.  Do you relax and soak up the peace and quiet in preparation for next year's growing season?  Or do you take advantage of days without pressing plants and animals to get some big-picture projects done?  Mark leans toward the first option and I lean toward the second, so we meet in the middle --- we slow down some, but also slip in projects non-essential enough that they never make the cut during the growing season.  (And I get extra time to write.)

Winter is also a good time to catch up on blog posts that didn't make it into the summer queue.  For example, I seem to have never mentioned how I experimented with tempting our seven-year-old-but-not-yet-fruited dwarf Yellow Transparent to make fruit buds.  The problem tree was slated for removal this spring since it sent up scads of watersprouts in 2012 after I pruned to remove extensive cicada damage.  But I decided to tie each long, vertical twig into a loop instead, and the trickery does seem to have promoted the formation of fruiting spurs!  I'll keep you posted next year about whether actual flowers are forthcoming.

What big-picture projects are you slipping in between snow storms?