We've had a couple of pretty nice, fairly warm days - probably enough to start the sap running in our area. Today has been in the 40s, and tonight will drop into the 20s again. We started the day with sunshine - not the piercing bright sun we had yesterday, because there were high, thin clouds and those thickened and by noon the sun was pretty much history. Nice to have it warmer, though and see the snow melting a little. As you can see we're kind of in a snow bowl -- we have a long way to go here. It has settled about a foot during yesterday and today. We'll get there!
     I've had a couple of days of very productive work on the West Danville History. And then there was today. I began editing some sections I'd written a while back and found there were some things I was remembering seeing "somewhere" that I wanted to include. But search as I would, I just couldn't find what I was looking for. I knew it was a newspaper clipping and I have a couple of files of those - some Patty Conly gave me that were photo copies of clippings from the Historical Society, and other's I'd either copied or cut from newspapers over the years - my own personal stash. But I just couldn't find what I was looking for. 
     I have kept newspaper clippings for Joe's Pond and now have two big albums with various clippings about Ice-Out and other events peculiar to Joe's Pond - but in my mind I was seeing the article I was looking for as a loose clipping that perhaps Patty had given me. Finally, late this afternoon, I dragged out first one of the big Joe's Pond albums and then the other, an earlier one I had indexed - and there it was!! I could have saved myself sooooo much time and effort if I'd just looked in the right place - the most obvious, as it turned out, but I let my mind clutter up my logic. 
      Now I had what I was looking for, and when I brought up the file I had been working on to begin writing it into the story, I found I'd already written what I was searching so frantically for. I just hadn't gone far enough to find it - but that at least explained why I was so clear about needing to include that bit of information. 
     I think I need to take a break. And that's what I'm doing. I've closed down the manuscript for tonight and now that I've shared these pictures of our yard rimmed with snowbanks, I'll go out to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of wine and decide what to have for supper. Yep, it's "supper" around here. "Dinner" is either at noon on Sunday or when we go out to eat at a restaurant en the evening. Going out for "supper" wouldn't be nearly as appealing as going out for "dinner." Right now, I'm just glad I can start off tomorrow not still wondering where that newspaper clipping is. I'll probably have some other obstacle arise, but usually it's only brief and I can work around it. Today was different. Not a very productive day, but I can't complain because I made such good headway earlier in the week!
     By the way, Nancy Amidon Burgess has some really great pictures of the snow over at her house on her Facebook page. She is right on the point of land that gets lots of wind, so the snow has really piled up around her house. 
     We will all be glad to get a little rain - but a real heavy rain storm could mean severe flooding. We'll see what the weekend brings - it could be more snow for us here at the Pond. It's just Mother Nature letting us know she's in charge of March -- in a big way.