Rain makes itself heard.

It beats a staccato on the roof.

It taps against the windows.

It plunks itself into puddles.

But snow ... ah, snow.

Snow makes no noise. It arrives stealthily in the night, falling ever so softly to the ground, wrapping everything in a soft coccon of white and silence.

When dawn breaks, it's a Winter Wonderland.

~Me

And so this is the scene I was greeted with this morning. Each time it snows (this is the third time) it sticks a little more. On Monday it snowed all day long but we only accumulated about an inch. Had it stuck and not melted as it was coming down we would have had about 4 inches of wet snow. On Tuesday morning when I opened the curtains and glanced down I saw that someone had been taking a walk along the upside-down canoe right under our window. We looked up the prints and decided it was indeed a bobcat. Take a look.

Does it creep me out to think a bobcat was right under our window? YES. But I am not afraid, only in awe of this life we are living here.

And this morning our driveway was a trail of these prints, which we think are coyote. Notice that the prints of the cat above are wider and less elongated. You can almost see the claw marks on the below photo which mark it as canine. Also, I am not showing the gait of the animal here, but it was more like a dog walking than a cat. It was just ambling along. Plus, I thought I was awakened by a few sharp barks about an hour before the sun came up.

We had a bit of trouble getting Destin back in the house after his morning romp. He loves the snow, of course even though he looks to be giving me the raspberry, this is probably more a "I don't want to come in Mom" than "I don't like the snow Mom" reaction.

I am assuming that you saw Rick's blog post on our anniversary cook-out dinner just a few days ago? Here is what the same scene looked like this morning:

Brrr! Build that fire back up!

This post was going to be longer and include the past few days' goings-on but it is late in the afternoon now and we have a pot of chili on the stove. We have not been able to use our oven now for over a week due to a faulty switch that switches between the broiler and the oven, so a part has been dispatched from Canada and is on its way. Total bummer. 

It was also going to include my weird experience with Rick's "burning sage for good luck" over the campfire. (also in above link). But I don't have the time or mind for that now. I'm hungry. So you will just have to wait to read about my experience "smoking sage" or rather breathing in sage smoke.

Until then!