Crazy weather

I told you about our snow that began on November 30th. It ended with a total of about 10 inches. I didn't think we'd see bare ground again until spring. But what a difference a week can make! The two pics below were taken exactly a week apart, on Dec. 2nd and 9th. Quite a change, huh? Most of the rest of that snow is gone, too.

The spring-like conditions of the past week have certainly helped shorten the winter!

This morning I woke up and looked out the window and saw this:

(Side note: Look at all that green grass!)

We'd had freezing drizzle overnight, and the strong, gusty winds made the accumulated ice break off the branches in chunks.

The lilac bushes were kind of strange-looking. I don't recall ever seeing ice formed in stripes like this before:

It was still very windy when I took that photo (with the iPad), so it was hard to get a clear shot, but you can see the stripes well enough. The wind blew hard over night, so I'm just guessing that somehow the gustiness of it caused the striping effect. Interesting.

I wonder what the rest of this El Nino winter will bring!

Christmas decorating

We might have a white Christmas... or not. It's white enough for me right now, with just enough snow to cover the ground. However, with above-freezing temps predicted for this weekend, it could disappear. Never fear, though... there's snow in the forecast for next week, just how much remains to be seen.

We had some freezing rain on Monday, so the trees are coated with ice yet. I took these photos on Wednesday... when we actually had some sunshine for a while, making it a glittery world... to show you the "decorations". Click any pic to enlarge it.

The above photos were taken in the morning. Late in the afternoon I took some more when the sun was close to setting. You can see the color difference in these below.

I really should finish my decorating! The tree is up, and it has lights on it, but that's all. I was planning to have my little helper assist me with the tree on Monday, but due to the freezing rain, school closed early and she went to daycare instead. Since then I've been sewing... and I'd better get back to it!

It happened

I took these photos Saturday morning.

Yep, frozen solid.

It's not very smooth. It was windy. There were also a lot of little 'things' in the water... like the fuzzes off of dandelions. They were surely some kind of bits from weeds having gone to seed. Seeing them in the air on Friday made me think they might've been those other 'white' things. Actually, I did see a bunch of white things coming down in the middle of the afternoon. I wasn't sure if they were really the 's' things or not... until they landed on the deck and melted away. At least they were short-lived. I'm sure there'll be more soon enough. Ehn.

It's good sewing weather, though. I'm making progress! :)

Fallness

Fall is definitely making its presence known. It seems like it wasn't that long ago (and it really wasn't) that we had a couple of days of 80°. But Friday morning we woke up to this:

Yep, that's ice. Brrr.

The trees are turning color, although this doesn't seem to be one of those years where everything is so brilliantly colored in our area. This ash tree is trying its best, though. Not bad, as far as ash trees go.

The leaves are dropping, too, very gradually so far.

Such a pretty time of year. I'm not quite ready for it to be so cold, though. And I sure don't like that 's' word I've seen in the forecast. I hope Indian Summer arrives soon and lasts a loooong time! The farmers need it, and especially some drier weather, to get the crops out of the fields.

Sunshine and daggers

We had SUNSHINE yesterday!! It really helped (with the mood, as well as with melting the ice)!! Our ice is about 99.9% gone now, with only a chunk hanging here or there.

We had some rare sunshine for a while on Saturday, too, and I couldn't resist taking these pics of the ice on the trees, because they were very pretty, despite their brokenness. They were so sparkly! It's too bad it doesn't show up very well in the pics.

The ice melted in interesting ways, creating some mean-looking daggers. Some of them were even angled because of the wind.

These hanging from the evergreen tree the next morning looked downright wicked!

I guess there's beauty to be found practically anywhere. But I'm going to have a really hard time seeing it in our next round of rain/sleet/snow that's coming up this week. Ack.

If I have to look at it, so do you

(Sorry about the photo overload. But I don't want to drag this out. Even if I broke it down into several posts, it'd still amount to the same page-loading time overall.)

My kitchen windows (north side of house) yesterday... totally iced over:

View out the south living room windows:

Outside of the house:

Far side of the deck railing:

This is what the grass looked like:

Closer look at the "glass grass". If you look closely, you can see the individual blades of grass inside the "glass".

Our poor lilac bushes:

Lilac bush inspector:

Our poor maple tree really got it again. (Note the lilac bush inspector's photo bomb.)

The evergreen trees were heavy with ice, too:

So heavy, in fact, that this big branch fell to the ground. I'm not sure if it's a top, or where it came from.

The asparagus has sort of a blown glass look to it:

Wreckage along our driveway:

The view down the road from the end of our driveway... and that's only sleet... it hadn't started snowing yet:

Look how thick the ice is/was on our mailbox! (Yes, it desperately needs a paint job.) I wonder what our mail carrier used to knock the ice off of every mailbox she came to. It must've been slow going yesterday, but at least she made it through!

Electric fencer shelter:

Water hydrant:

Interesting fence decor:

The lilac inspector found this ice-covered branch that looks like an animal!

Now we can't see most of what's in those photos.....

..... because it's all covered with 8-10 inches of wet, heavy, "heart attack" snow! Only two pics of that. I just couldn't take any more.

Had enough? Yeah, me, too. At least our power remains on, although it flickers often and has been out for a few seconds several times.

No Courtney here today. She doesn't have school, but she went to her other grandparents' last night, because there was no power (and still remains so) at her house. We had lots of fun yesterday (and the day before), so soon (hopefully) I will show you some of what we did. Trust me, it'll be more COLORFUL than this post!