More snow

We had two sunny days Monday and Tuesday. With the sun’s heat and a gentle wind, bits of ice fell from the tree branches in a rain of diamonds. It was magical.

Another storm, this one unnamed, rolled through toward the end of the week. We had light snow on Thursday.

Light snow on Thursday

The forecast for Friday night was for up to 6” of snow. Terry said he’d be happy with an inch and a half. “You put your order in, dear,” I told him. “See how far it gets you.”

We watched the weather anxiously yesterday afternoon. “Every hour that it doesn’t snow is a victory,” Terry said. As often happens when snow is on the ground and temperatures are above freezing, a thick fog developed toward nightfall. 

Fog Friday evening

By 8:00, snow was falling in clumps. I knew we’d had significant accumulation when I woke up at midnight to absolute silence. By chance, the inside of the house was quiet. The refrigerators, freezers, and furnace were all in the “off” part of their cycles. Neither Terry nor Skippy was snoring. All outside sounds were muffled by a blanket of snow. 

When the sun came up, we saw that like Isaiah and Jacob, we did not get hammered with as much snow as predicted. We had 3” instead of 6”, but it was heavy, wet, heart attack snow. It was also spectacularly beautiful, the sort of snow that stuck to everything and piled up to seemingly impossible height on small objects. It made it impossible not to get “Winter Wonderland” stuck in your head.  It was also hard to not photograph every single thing that I saw when I went out to do the chicken chores.

First, I shoveled the snow from a patch of ground outside the coop door because the girls do not like to walk in the snow. I sprinkled the scratch grains, and out they came.

The girls enjoying their scratch grains

Here are some pictures of the landscape.

The fifth oak

The apple orchard

The pine trees

The young oak by the driveway

The snow accumulated on the empty seed heads of (I think) purple coneflowers.

Remains of native flowers from last summer

Snow on purple coneflower seed heads

Terry used the snowblower to clear the driveway. He was pleased that it did not get stuck in the chute. The temperatures today hovered at nearly 35°F. It continued to snow off and on, but much of it melted. Between the wind and the warm temperatures, all the snow was gone from the trees by the end of the day. There’s still snow on the ground, but everything else just looks damp and dreary.

I’ve started doing the crossword in the newspaper. The easy one, not the one from the New York Times. This afternoon Skippy helped by batting at the end of my pencil. Here is a picture of him standing in his water dish, licking water from his right paw. I have also seen him use his left paw.

Skippy standing in his water dish

Every time Terry or I get up, Skippy runs to the door of the cage, ever hopeful that food will be coming. He does not like dieting, but who does? I tell him that if I put food in the bowl, he has to stay in the cage for a while, but he doesn’t care.

PLEASE! SOMEONE FEED ME!

As the end of January approaches, we are cautiously optimistic that we won’t have severe cold this winter. Terry thinks that if we make it to February 1, we will definitely not see temperatures of 20° below. I, on the other hand, remember that the three coldest weeks of my life, when temperatures were -40°F every morning (80 to 90° below with wind chill) were in February. But that was in North Dakota, so maybe Terry is right. If he is, we might have peaches this summer! Peaches!