Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. We haven’t seen temps above freezing in a week. Yesterday it hit the 30 degree mark. Nights are in the teens and twenties, but so far no single digits. Let’s just say the temperature doesn’t fluctuate much from day to night. We’ve had a few little snows but nothing to write home about. It seems to come in dribbles and drabs. Nuisance snows are what I call them. Just enough to coat the ground and driveway, but not really enough to make it worthwhile to snowblow. A darned nuisance. We’re supposed to get another one tonight and into tomorrow. An inch here; an inch there. Big deal.

Even though it was cold and a bit windy yesterday, I bundled up in my warm down parka, slapped my “Elmer Fudd” hat on my head, grabbed the camera and went for a walk. After all the food over-indulgence of the holidays, Rick and I put ourselves back on the South Beach Diet for a few weeks and I figured a nice walk would help that along. What? You don’t know what an “Elmer Fudd” hat is? It’s the kind that has ear flaps on it that you can either tie up on top of the hat or pull down over your ears. I wasn’t trying to make a fashion statement here, just wanted to keep my head warm.

My goal was to walk through the woods and all the way down the road to Green Turtle (a little over a mile round-trip). I hadn’t been in the woods in a long time and a visit was long overdue. The sun was shining brightly which hasn’t necessarily been the case lately, a real plus when trying to take photos. I’m going to take you with me on the walk, but in small steps. I took a lot of photos! First we visit the part of Green Turtle that is right at the end of our street, the part where it drains out over the dam. As you can see: frozen. I tried to take a photo without my shadow in it but it didn’t have the same impact, so I’m in it, bulky parka and all.

Here there are some nice cattails growing even though they hacked a good part of them away this summer. Not sure why either, they didn’t look like they were harming anything to me. Because it’s the outlet for the lake, the water is not completely frozen here.

The ice that has tried to form around the base of the cattails look like glass UFOs, or maybe sombreros!  Very cool. Take a closer look:

My fingers nearly froze taking these shots. Old Man Wind was trying to give me frostbite! I was hoping that once I was in the woods I would be sheltered from him.

To be continued ...

I knew we were in trouble when I heard the plow scraping our road at 4:30 a.m. That meant it had snowed enough to plow. I didn’t even bother to get out of bed to see what it was doing, I just went back to sleep. Here is what I saw when I got up:

Now mind you, it got up to the low 40’s yesterday so there was no snow left on the table and chairs, nor on the deck railing. I figure somewhere between 4-6 inches of heavy, wet snow. I didn’t go out to measure because it was pouring rain. Yep, you heard right. Rain. On top of snow=slush. Heavy slush. No, more like sludge. So heavy it would appear that our forsythia hedge has suffered some breakage, as have some bushes against the garage. I need to go out and see if I can shake the heavy slush/sludge off the branches and see if some of them spring back. Rick was able to use the snowblower on the driveway, but only just. At least it wasn’t an ice storm!

When I got out of bed yesterday morning and tweaked the curtains open, what a sight lay before my eyes. The snow (all four+ inches of it) had stuck to the everything in sight and turned my yard into a Winter Wonderland. It was cold though, so we started a fire in the stove to ward off the below freezing chill. eBay can attest to how cozy the fire made the sun room.

As the sun made its way up I grabbed my camera and headed outside.

The wet snow had fallen without the aid of wind or even a breeze, allowing it to stick to and pile up on everything. Even our clothesline!

As the sun rose higher, the sky turned a brilliant blue.

And the moon shared the sky with the sun.

Before the snow, our weather had really been warm for quite some time so the snow didn’t stick as much to our driveway and we didn’t even have to use the snowblower. Rick did move some snow that had stuck right in front of our garage and I did have to shovel the front steps, but all-in-all it was a lovely first snow without much impact. It didn’t get warm enough yesterday to do much melting and the trees are still wearing most of their winter white clothing this morning. Today’s temperature is predicted for mid 30’s and by Wednesday we may get rain, so our snow won’t last much longer. I’m certainly enjoying it while it’s here!

Not much going on around here lately. We spent a quiet weekend doing mostly chores. Saturday we finished stacking the two cords of wood, so now we’re ready for colder weather. Our weather over the weekend, however, was balmy and sunny—and mid 60’s! Now, I ask you Mother Nature, why couldn’t you have given us this weather earlier on so the trees would have been happier? Speaking of the trees, that’s another time consuming chore. I ran Johnny over the yard again to mulch the final leaves that had fallen and Rick did leaf blowing duty in various spots. The big oak in the back yard still has leaves, so I’ll wait until they drop to go over the back yard once more and then it will be time for us to change out the mowing deck for the snow blower.

We did take time out on Sunday morning to take the dogs for a walk on the old Jungle Habitat grounds. Not much remains of the old enclosures except some fencing and tall, heavy wrought steel gates. Some of them look like they used to keep T-Rexes and velociraptors captive. You just have to use your imagination. But in reality, where lions, tigers, and elephants used to roam there are now only squirrels, chipmunks, deer and bear, bicyclists and dog walkers. The dogs love it because they can be off-lead, meet other dogs and people. On this walk we didn’t see any other dogs.

I hadn’t realized there was so much bittersweet growing here! It covered the trees. Next time I come I’m bringing my garden clipper so I can take some home with me! I know it’s parasitic but it’s so pretty.

And talking about parasitic ... the vines here are pretty creepy. They take over the trees.

This one looks like it created a loop to catch someone or something in.

The bark of some kind of birch tree glowing silvery-gold in the sun.

A watering hole along the way is always a good thing Bella says.

The moon looks like it’s being embraced by the tree branches, don’t you think?

We do a loop of about a mile and a half. It’s a nice walk along the abandoned road system with some short climbs. The dogs were pooped when we got home and slept while Rick and I did the outside chores. A very full weekend of just “stuff.”