Enough (Snow) Already!

7:30

8:00

It's a spectacular morning of snow, all the trees, their limbs, frosted with white.  The sky is gray, with streaks of cream, the lake a sheet of brilliant white snow.  It's also mighty cold, 9º in the shade.  We had a least 15-16 inches over the past day and a half and we love it.  Schools are closed today which is rare since Chautauqua County is used to at least  couple of hundred inches of snow each year if not more.  We moved our bird feeder to another window, filled it, and the sparrows and finches have just found it, and 8-10 of them a gorging on sunflower seeds.  There are so many that they seem to discourage other birds as we get mostly finches and sparrows, occasional cardinals, woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, and juncos. This is the kind of morning where we are grateful for retirement because we don't have to drive to work although in my forty five years of  teaching, for forty three of them I could walk to school!

Cardinal In Our Lilac Tree

  Good Morning, Miss Vickie!

Yesterday started with good intentions; though it was snowing hard, I went out and shoveled a path to the car, cleared if off, and drove up the hill, intending to go to yoga.  By the time I hit  #394, however, my good sense took over and I turned around and came home.  It was not worth the nail biting drive to yoga, through heavy snowfall and icy roads.  It was a smart decision, something I am not known for.  It was strange because I usually go to yoga, to have a morning here at the lake.   Evie was busy as usual, doing her thing and taking photographs of the birds at our feeders,  so I went out and it took me a good 45 minutes to get our parking area cleared, as well as some of the road.  Shane, our plow guy, came by as well.  I actually shoveled in shifts, coming in to get warm, then go back out again because it was still in single digits.

Common Redpoll

Hairy Woodpecker

Around 11:00, it warmed up to 12º and started to snow hard, so I strapped on my skis and went cross country skiing through the campground.  I love skiing when it snows hard, making it difficult to even see where I am going.  It was cold but not unbearable until I hit open areas, where the wind blasted my face, forcing me to look sideways.  I was out for an hour, enough to get some exercise and not risk getting frost bite.  In fact, I was really sweaty when I got home, having put on three layers of warmth.

Cross Country Skiing Along Woodlawn

For lunch, Evie and I shared some leftover pizza from Saturday night along with her homemade vegetable soup, and I watched another episode of TREME.  It can be awfully slow.  The rest of the afternoon neither of us did much.  We read, watched TV, did a few things around the house but stayed inside until around 3:00 when I went back outside, shoveled the parking space again, came in and made Turkish tea and sat down to read.  About 5:00, Evie, wanting some fresh air, went out and did some more shoveling as it snowed most of the day.  And I looked out earlier this morning, and we easily have another six inches on our parking area from last night.

After relaxing with a glass of wine, we had a great dinner of breaded pork chops, apple sauce and home fries.  Evie seared them and put them in the oven to bake just before wine time.  They were huge but we managed to devour three, saving the fourth for a stir fry later in the week.  We got caught up on some TV, watching The Good Wife and a new series that just opened on Showtime called BILLIONS which at first looked disgusting but by the end, we sort of liked it.  Kind of.  I was intending to watch the match up between the Cavs and Golden State but when I checked, they were behind by 30 at halftime so I bagged it.  We watched some Stephen Colbert and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore before going up to bed.