Snowing at My House

It's snowing (again!) and it was just so pretty this morning that I had to make a quick little video of it. The above video was made from just outside my front door looking out across the yard.


This is also from the front porch, but looking into the north field.

I just LOVE snow. I think it's because I lived all my life in the south (until recently). Snow is always magical and exciting to me.

Popcorn!

This summer I grew some bantam popcorn, just for fun. The ears are tiny, about 3" or 4" long. Many of mine were even shorter due to incomplete pollination or maybe lack of water. But I still got lots and they're beautiful! They're colored like "Indian Corn" and some of them have purple husks.


The kernels are teensy tiny.


And when they're popped they're still teensy tiny! This popcorn has a great flavor. I put some salt on it and no butter. It's delicious. One nice surprise is that the kernels, being so small, have very thin hulls so even the old maids are easy to chomp on and eat. They don't hurt my teeth at all.

Frozen Bee

After several days of below freezing temperatures, and lows near or below zero, we had a warm sunny 45 degrees yesterday. The bees took cleansing flights, so they could poop and get comfy again. Some of the girls strayed too far from the hive and got too chilled to fly back. I found this one on a cleaning rag on my clothes line this morning, dead, with frost on her feet, back, forehead, and one antenna.

On the one hand, things like this make me sad. On the other hand, it's natures way of ensuring only the most capable bees eat the food stores and raise the new brood.

ATVing in the Snow

We have some beautiful snow on the ground. A couple of days ago we decided to go out on the ATVs and look at animal tracks. We went late in the day, shortly after 5:00 p.m. The light was fading and we ended up circling back to the house with our headlights on.

We saw some tracks but they'd been filled in by snow so they were only divots in the surface. It was impossible to tell what made them. We had a ton of fun anyway, and I only got stuck once!

Deer from my Greenhouse

This photo was taken from our greenhouse which, interestingly enough, is also the bathroom. Hey, *I* didn't design it! Actually, there are a lot of good ideas in it - the greenhouse space is heated, and water is readily available. It does make one feel a bit exposed when stepping out of the shower though :)


Closeup of deer showing how clean and lovely my greenhouse windows are :p

Thanks to everyone who sent kind and helpful comments about Louie. He left us on the 31st of December. It was time. He was hurting and grumpy. He had a very happy, rich life and his last moments were with people who loved him feeding him his favorite treats while he snuffled the breeze contentedly. We grieve his absence from our lives but we celebrate the time we had with him.