Friday, January 14, 2011

Winter's Song

You may recognize this scene from my last post. Sunday evening we got whacked with about 6 inches of snow and sleet. It would snow heavily for a while and then switch to sleet for a bit, making for a dense, crunchy coating of fluff and ice. It has remained very cold all week so most of the snow is still with us today, although I have just begun hearing large chunks of it letting go from the roof. It is warming some today so I expect most of it will melt. It's most unusual for us to get this much snow and even more so for it to stay so long. At least the sun has been out the past couple of days, flooding the house with it's warmth and cheerfulness.

This is walking down my drive, going towards the road. I always have liked this rock ridge. We took many walks but also made time for naps, eating hot soup and just generally taking it easy. I am feeling better although I have resigned myself to the fact I cannot drink coffee anymore. Probably need to lay off the caffeinated tea too.

I did get to feeling well enough to have some major fun too! Nothing like good laughter to relieve stress. It was mainly Jack's idea to construct a sled. Now, we are not used to such weather and so we don't have equipment for work or play in it. You can't just run down to the store and buy a sled or skates here. So, after trying cardboard boxes, which didn't offer the speed we were after, we switched to the old redneck standby; tin. An old piece of roofing works wonderfully.

You just can't steer it very well, so you pick your trajectory well. Or at least try to. My land has some wonderful rolling hills on it and two driveways, one leading up a fairly steep hill. All in all, the course we eventually laid out was about 200-250 yards long. By the time you neared the end you were screaming down through the front yard. Literally and figuratively in my case. I haven't had that much fun in a while! Sometimes Jack and I would ride together, which was really fun but harder to steer. You have to lean hard one way or the other to direct yourself. Other than smashing headfirst into a couple of pine trees we did pretty good. Finally, we got a good trail going and only veered off once when we jumped the compost pile and landed smack in a huge blackberry patch. We both cut our faces up a little but Jack valiantly fought the briers to retrieve my hat that they had snatched off as we plowed through.

So, the past couple of days have been back to the grindstone, so to speak. I'm throwing again and will hopefully have these orders out soon that some of you have contacted me about. I have some miscellaneous pieces still that I may put up soon. I'm investigating ideas for a permanent website and have read something about being able to put different pages in different tabs up here on Blogger. Don't know if that would be best for a commercial site but I'm going to look into it.
Hope you all have endured the cold too. The days are noticeably getting longer again and I am anxious for warm weather. Been pouring over the seed catalogs and what seeds I already have to see what I want to grow this year.


*Cowboy Junkies

6 comments:

JoJo said...

Sure glad to hear you are feeling better and having fun to boot. There are some great decafe tea's and coffee's out there I am a caffeine junkie but have learned to enjoy the not ones sometimes.
Went on an outing today and will down load some snow pics too but not as much as you have. Ours is melting fast on the moutains.

Tossing Pebbles in the Stream said...

I am glad you are feeling better and can get some fun out of the snow.

I don't think we have more than you. Go figure. They have lots of snow North of us and lots south of us. We do not get lake effect snow here which is what brings the heavy snow falls. I have followed the interesting weather you have had in the south and up the east coast.

Lots of things will work as a tobaggan. Try the hood off your truck. :) A large equipment inner tube can be fun also You can sometimes get patched up ones cheap at a tire shop. Come the summer you can float down a river on them. Enjoy.

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Hi ANnie, glad you are feeling better. That shot of you sledding in your makeshift rig was great - what fun! We didn't get any of the recent snowfall here on the VA eastern shore and the Dec 25 snow is all gone so Grenville and I are ready for more!

MamaHen said...

Hey Jojo! yeah, I just dropped the coffee all together 'cause it's more than the caffeine but I may have to check out some decaf teas. I like the herbal ones.
Our snow is STILL here. I can't believe it.

Hey Philip! Yes, we have had some interesting weather and I hear we may get a bit more snow towards the end of the month.
We considered the inner tube also! but we could not get out to find one. Due to the number of possible obstacles too, we need something we can steer a little better than a sheet of tin or inner tubes! ha! I ran over one of my apple trees too; that was not good.

Hey Beatrice! well, I would have thought ya'll would have got some more snow by now.
We had great fun sledding and are already planning for the next snow.

Frugal Canadian Hermit said...

lol. Looks like you're having alot of fun Annie. Glad to see it. It sure does seem like alot of different places are getting alot of extra moisture this winter. Us included.

MamaHen said...

Hey Mark! yeah, we had a blast! I looked at the almanac and it said we are due for above average snowfall this year. Hhhmm. Yeah, it does seem a lot of places are getting it this winter.