New Snow

It started last night. Just enough to cover the ground to a depth of about half an-inch. It is clearing this morning when I took this picture,looking out the upstairs patio-door-to-nowhere to our wood shed and back deck.

What the photo doesn't show is the wind. I guess it is about fifteen to twenty knots out of the east.

I am surprised by how quickly conditions change. Last week the ground was super-saturated from days of heavy rain. Water was pooling in the low-lying areas and flowing over Green Timbers Road just down from our place.

Then the skies cleared and the ground froze.

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone...

I have been itchy to get the house decorated for the holidays. But before the ground gets covered with a foot of snow--or worse thaws out again--I wanted to clean out the large cat run beside the house. So I rubbed cold cream on my face and put on Denny's boots and devoted an hour this afternoon to doing that. I had to make two round-trips to the edge of our lot with the big wheelbarrow, bumping over the hard frozen ground with the wind in my face. But the cat run is so pleasant now with a couple inches of fresh hay covering the floor.

The sun was already lowering in the west when I came back inside. I wanted to vacuum the floor but the cats were all into their afternoon naps and I didn't want to disturb them, so I amused myself with other things for a while and ended up taking a nap. With five cats.

After I woke up and watched the evening news, I went out and took a photo of the lights on the front of the house.




The sky was clear with a million stars and the Milky Way overhead. The weather forecast had been for snow. In fact, a snow advisory is in effect for our area for tomorrow morning.

So it looks like the weather is going to change again.