"Now Comes the Deepest Snow, the Remainderment of Winter"

How true, as we have a six foot pile of snow in our driveway, at least another 6-8 inches fell overnight and it continues to snow heavy, soft flakes this morning, the first back at the lake since February 1st, when we headed off to Bristow.  Though we both miss the girls, it's always nice to come home to our Lake Chautauqua; I think it's special because for thirty years, we were mostly here on weekends and just a month during the summers.  So it's still delicious to wake up in the morning at the lake, especially on a morning like this, where there's a fire going inside, it's warm and cosy, and outside its all whiteness, with a hint of Sandy Beach.  The snow is so heavy that we can hardly see the other side.

No birds yet as the feeder's are empty from our visit.  Most of the winter birds, junco, chickadees, and wood peckers are warm blooded and need a lot of food to survive the winter.  In fact, they spend most of their day feeding, to keep alive.  They live around five to eight years, whereas an owl may live to fifty and Canadian geese to twenty five, perhaps because they don't migrate in the winter.

We went into Mayville, where I saw a doctor about my cough; thought it was allergies and gave me some nasonex to see if it helped.  We then went to Tops, a snowy windy day, to get groceries, came home and closed up our porch.  Evie  then made 'healthy' cookies, with peanut butter, oats, wheat flower, coconut flakes and chocolate, just a little snack to keep us happy in the evening.  It's been cold and windy all day, 11 degrees right now at 5:00, though it's not as dark and gray as usual, as there's a bit of open sky, and it's not snowing.  I just finished by 5th or 6th Jack Reacher novel, so it's back to my biography of Stalin called THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR by Simon Sebag Montefiore.  I got a little tired of all the political trails, the killings, hangings, shootings, of anyone who thought 'differently' or just anyone who might be a problem.  What Stalin did to his people equals if not surpasses in numbers and evil what Hitler did to the Jews.  It's scary to think that something like this could happen in this world, that one man could be so powerful, so feared, so revered by those who thought of him as Father Russia, yet so paranoid, so heartless, so careless, even inhumane towards human life.  I don't know if I can keep reading though the trials will end soon, and then WW II will begin, which, it's estimated cost Russia perhaps 40-60 million lives in their attempt to stop Hitler. Russia, not the US, really won WW II so I have read, with their unrelenting sacrifice of Russian lives, to stop Hitler, the most famous being the battle for Stalingrad, which broke the back of the Nazis.