We're still pretty ice-covered, but recovering from the latest storm.

Today was beautifully sunny much of the day, and the trees were sparkling with a thick coating of ice. That's our house, surrounded by shimmering trees. Temperatures remained below freezing most of the day so there was very little melting except in a few sunny, sheltered spots. There was a brisk wind that made it seem much colder than it really was and made the trees literally crackle. There is also a thick coating of ice under about six inches of heavy wet snow, and that made it hard to shovel or snow blow. Fred said he had to make several passes over the driveways to clear them. Jamie was plowing with "The Peach" (his plow-jeep made from various parts of several junked jeeps), so Fred had only our neighbor, Henretta's, and our own to do. He had time to take some pictures, of course. Actually, it was much more spectacular in reality than shows in the pictures - and hearing the crackling in the treetops made being outside an adventure. You'll recognize looking down West Shore Road from our turn. Fred took this picture about mid-morning, and later that cloud bank overtook us and the sunshine was gone for the rest of the day.

I don't think any of our woodchucks (four-legged variety) bothered to try to break through the encrusted ice and snow to check the weather today, but if one had, there would have been a shadow. Here in the Kingdom our groundhogs make their "test appearance" on a more appropriate date, like perhaps April 1. They're no fools.

One thing the farmers in the area always used to do about this time of the year is check their woodpile and the hay in the barn. That's because we're about half way through winter, and they wanted to be sure there would be enough of both to last until spring. We checked our wood supply - we're good.

I've had lots of feedback about the "Cat and Crow" bit I posted yesterday. In case you missed it, better check it out.