The "Pond" emerges

I believe I've mentioned the "pond" in the TundraGarden before.  It fully emerged from the snowbank today, although a bit the worse for wear.  The arctophylla seems to be intact.

However, we had an awful lot of snow this year, and the snowclearing efforts have been correspondingly vigorous, in an attempt to move most snow onto the lagoon and sea ice while it is still thick enough for heavy equipment to operate safely.  The idea is that it will help keep the mud in check and the roads will develop fewer potholes.

In the process, a loader bucket seems to have caught the bathtub (which is what the pond was in a former life) and deformed it enough to cause a good bit of the porcelain to come off at on end.  It may eventually look a bit more natural, but it will also start to rust.

Oh well, everything is archaeology in the end.  Something for my professional successors to puzzle over.  Unless of course this blog survives.

Robin in Barrow

I was driving back to my office from a meeting when I saw a familiar-looking round-breasted bird hopping along on the ground beside a frozen puddle.  A few seconds went by before I thought "Wait a minute!  That looks like a robin."  The sun was behind it so I had to wait for it to move a bit to see the orange breast, but sure enough, it was a robin.  

It's not the first one ever in Barrow.  A couple years ago some friends emailed me pictures of a strange bird they didn't recognize that the husband had taken.  A robin.

We still have a couple feet of snow on the ground, and much more in drifts, so it's kind of odd for a robin to be hanging around in this anyway, and we haven't had any really big storms from the south that might have carried it up, so who knows what it is doing here.