A Day in the Life

More snow.  My kind...to begin with.  Light, fluffy, no wind.  Enabled me to sweep out, not dig out.  Easier on the back.

Had snowed about an inch or so at 6 a..m. when I awoke.  Snowed briskly all morning.  Think we got about five inches.

After checking the weather with NOAA and seeing that the temperatures were going to fall and the winds were going to come up later in the day, decided I'd better fill the wood box.  Also needed water, so made a run to the spring and filled my water jugs.  It's becoming quite a stretch for me to get my containers situated on the paver as the ice and snow build up around the water pipe.  Hello down there!

 

Drove by the post office and picked up my mail, dropped off a couple of books at the library and picked up two more. I've just discovered Margaret Coel.  Have just about finished her Blood Memory and checked out The Drowning Man.  Ms. Coel, according to the jacket end flap, lives in Boulder and is considered an expert on the Arapaho Indians.  I also checked out Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra, a "Rich, heady, many-layered...a magnificient tour de force...an extraordinary first novel," according to the Los Angeles Times Book Review.  Wow!  I'll let you know.

Also stopped at the grocery store in Nederland and got what I needed to make what turned out to be kind of a Creole stew.  It wasn't gumbo because I didn't make a roux, but used Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning and it was tasty. 

And it went with the weather, which has turned just as extreme as NOAA predicted.  The wind picked up late this afternoon and is really blowing now.  I got some fairly decent photos of the snow devils up on the mountain just to the north of the cabin.  Here's one:

And here's a shot just out the front door.  It wasn't snowing at this time.  That is just blowing snow.  I got a face full trying to get this photo.

I just braved the elements and put out some food for the fox.  These photos were taken last Saturday night.  It was dark and snowing so they aren't high quality.   I believe I'm correct in thinking this is the male which, I see from a quick check, is called a dog, regnard or tod.

Isn't he a beauty?  Look at that tail!  He was so little last year that the wind blew him around like a snowflake, but he gave the vixen two kits last spring and he's really come into his own this winter. 

They usually travel solo, but one night not too many weeks ago they were both here together.  He has a lot more black on him than she does.  

I don't envy anything out there trying to scrounge up a meal in this weather.  Supposed to have a low of 4 degrees F tonight with wind gusts up to 37 mph and windchill of -16 degrees F.   This is really an interesting life!  What makes your day?  Teddee