Here are a couple of pictures for you ice watchers wondering how the pond is melting. Shelly Walker sent these from today, taken from her house on the south end of West Shore Road.

No, that isn't open water with a foamy wave coming ashore - that's wind-swept slush on top of ice - thick ice, that won't be gone overnight. It has taken a beating from warm air and brief sunshine working on it today and water from surrounding brooks raising the level of the pond and changing the temperature underneath. It's all working towards ending the contest - but not quite yet.

By the way, the ticket count was over 13,000 this year. That means there will be a pretty darned nice check for some lucky winner - or winners. With that many people in the contest, it could be there will be more than one winner. We'll see. But now all the tickets have been logged in so when the clock stops, we're ready! Thanks to Henretta Splain for all her hard work typing in thousands of numbers.

The rain began earlier this evening, but it has been more like showers - nothing very hard yet. I guess that may happen around midnight here as the storm descends on us from the west. Everything needs a good washing - there is always lots of mud and dirt left on the grass and roadsides after the snow melts, so most of that will get washed away. When we were out turning water today I noticed that our big bed of lilies is free of snow and has green sprouts coming up already. They will like the rain, no doubt. I brought in some pussywillow twigs and a couple clippings from the apple tree I hope will sprout some green leaves to go with them. I also brought in my tall snow-measuring stick from the back yard. Shortly after I got it out there I didn't bother to look at it much. With the amount of snow we had, it got to a point I just didn't want to know anymore.  Now there are some pretty big patches of bare ground here and there!

So we're making progress. Stay tuned!