Quiet too long

Gee, Feb 6 was the last blog.

Well, we've had weather. And the last couple of weeks at work have been frenzied.  It's the end of term, and we usually have two weeks between terms, but this time we only have one week.  It's our punishment for having had a week off at Christmas ...

So it's been work work work and shovel shovel shovel.

Then we got 4 more inches after I shovelled the walk to the porch.  Next is a "fooled you" picture, because snow was over a foot deep out in the yard already and the latest came down on top of it.  But there's still a lot of snow out there.

This is a picture 365 entry.  Thelma's cat Dorie is NOT supposed to be on the kitchen table. "But most of me is not really on the kitchen table", she says.  It's white outside of the window because of the snow covering the driveway and the fences

These are the girls from across the street waiting for their treats.  Lucy (black) loves her treats but is not the pleading, compulsive beggar that Rosie (yellow) is.  I tried to get a picture of Rosie with her "poor pitiful me" look, but I failed.

This morning I awoke to a car covered in ice.  Roads the same.  I worked from home, although by about 2 it had warmed up enough to make driving possible. Now the snow is Whumpping! off the roofs.  Thank heaven.  I don't have to shovel it.

Tuesday is Town Meeting Day, and I will exercise my civic duty (and take a vacation day) to attend.  Meeting fellow townspeople and hearing what the issues are, and voting on them, is important.

James Russell Lowell, Verse 2

Last night we had an inch or so of snow followed by freezing rain (accompanied by thunder and lightning!) and then about 4" more snow.

Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch-deep with pearl.

Apologies To Readers Who Have Had Quite Enough of Winter

I love a fresh, undisturbed snowfall. When I was a girl, and snow fell overnight, my mother used to waken my sister and me in the morning with the first verse from “The First Snowfall” by James Russell Lowell.

The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

The snow predicted for Tuesday night didn’t begin in the gloaming (the last hour before sunset) but in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.  Most schools had announced on Tuesday that they would close. Since the storm warning covered the entire state of Vermont – with some local warnings a little more dire than others –many Vermonters (including me) stayed at home and watched the snow come down all day and into the night. By Thursday morning we had a bit over a foot, on top of the 6 or so inches already on the ground.  The wind piled snow deep enough on the roof so that Thursday and Friday afternoons I raked the roof (Cassidy Engberg helped with the porch roof). This morning I shoveled the raked snow away from the porch so that as snow slides off the porch roof it doesn’t pile up by the windows.

I am overjoyed that after 3 days we have a bright sunny day and so much of the snow is still pristine. It has stayed very cold, so while the snow is no longer fluffy it’s still light and a far cry from Heavy Wet Stuff. Old Man Winter has realized that he’s neglected our part of Vermont. Just as we’re digging out, a storm  starting tonight that was supposed to be no big deal will suddenly bring 6 to 12 inches more. Gee. It’s like the weather in New Jersey. (That’s a joke, folks.) 

Click on the photos, taken today, to enlarge them ...

The sparkly snow photo below (be sure to enlarge this one) demonstrates a winter phenomenon called “diamond dust”, or light glinting off very small, very dry snow crystals. Sometimes at night there will be snow flurries of diamond dust, and that is nothing short of  magical. I’ve tried to take pictures of it before but I got a good one this morning. In photography, the light is everything.