Cool - or more accurately, cold  and rainy here tonight.  The day started with some sunshine, but by mid-afternoon that was gone and we got a cold, steady rain.  There was fog over the valley along the brook leading into the pond as the temperature began to drop.  We have been in the 40s most of the day, and tonight it's just about at the freezing point and that will be the pattern for at least through the weekend.

I got a really nice picture from Andy Rudin today - his garden is in full bloom with spring flowers.  Doesn't it just make you happy?  Thank you, Andy. gI'm not going to show you a picture of my garden - it is still half covered with snow, except for the raised bed at the end of the house where I hope to have some daffodils pretty soon.

The weather people are saying we can expect "below normal" temperatures for the next five or six days, and possibly some snow.  I think Ma Nature is a bit behind with her weather this year, but I have no doubt I'll be whining about the heat in another month or so.  Such is the nature of us humans, I guess.  I was watching an old "Magnum, P. I." the other night and someone was describing the weather in Hawaii as being "always the same, so the days flow endlessly by, lost in the perfection of warmth and sunshine."  It sounded kind of monotonous to me; I really do appreciate Vermont's variety and extremes.  

In one of the old newspapers I've been searching through, I found a short note that some lady had picked a bouquet of buttercups and found wild strawberries in bloom in November of 1911, I think it was.  I guess Mother Nature had even the plants fooled that year.

Oh, I nearly forgot.  I have an Ice-Out ticket count for you.  We logged in a total of 15,086 tickets this year.  Not bad for a year when it was so cold the ink froze in your pen before you could make out the ticket.  And it's still so cold most days the web cams don't work consistently.  Even so, the ice is melting slowly and we'll have more interesting reports as time goes by, I'm sure.  Once we have all our expenses tallied, we'll know how much the winner will get, and then we just wait for the block to slip through the ice and stop the clock!