Today has been so cold - never got out of the teens and tonight is going to drop into the single numbers above AND below zero, depending on the location. At 6 p.m. it's only 7 degrees and the wind is still whipping, although it isn't quite as strong as it was last night. The wind is out of the north, or maybe NNW, and it funnels along the flat just beyond our driveway and there are huge gusts of dust swirls down West Shore Road. When it's this cold and the road is frozen without any snow on it, the dust is terrible. 

I had errands to do in Lyndonville (dentist) and St. Johnsbury (groceries) today, so I had to be outside some of the time. It was bitterly cold. I wasn't really surprised to see that the two smaller ponds are frozen over completely again - this time with glass-like smoothness and only a few patches of snow. It looks as if it would be great for skating, but I imagine it is only an inch or so thick at this point. It sure is pretty, though - and we don't often see it that clear of snow. With near zero temperatures tonight, the big pond may be frozen over by morning. 

I noticed that boat is still submerged at the Injun Joe's boat launch area. And of course the ice is pretty solid around it and getting tighter by the hour. There is probably little hope of getting it out of there now unless the weather warms up considerably to release it. I'm wondering what sort of fluids - gas and oil, certainly, are being released into the pond. If there aren't leaks in the tanks and motor now, there certainly will be if it stays there all winter. It's too bad the owner didn't get it out when it first went down, when the weather was mild. 

I saw a couple of signs today indicating that businesses had sold out of Christmas trees. It seems that more people are getting natural trees this year because they are staying at home due to the pandemic. That makes perfect sense, I guess. Lots of people will have an old fashioned Christmas, perhaps for the first time ever - and they may not even realize it. It wasn't too many years ago that people didn't travel very far for Christmas - families tended to stay close by and everyone wanted to be at home during the holidays. 

Actually, even when I was growing up, Christmas was more about school pageants, singing carols as a group, usually at an evening  gathering either at the school or church where parents and neighbors came to watch and enjoy refreshments after the program. We all learned our parts and dressed in sometimes make-shift costumes; and if we were lucky, Santa visited.    Sometimes we all got a candy cane wrapped in cellophane and a tangerine, or maybe a  construction paper cone filled with hard candy. We sometimes drew names and brought a gift for the boy or girl whose name was on the little slip of paper. We were secretive about whose name we drew - and always curious about who got our name. We usually had a Christmas tree in the classroom (all eight grades in one room at the Plains School) and we all helped decorate it, making paper decorations or sometimes painted pine cones we'd picked up in the woods on "field trips" in the fall. Our teachers usually handed out special treats, perhaps home-made cookies or chocolate fudge. Nobody had much money to buy gifts, so often they were hand-made. It was an exciting time. 

I still remember the scents - the tree, wet wool, and "school room" smell. Chalk dust and cedar pencil shavings was the "normal" smell; the wet wool and pine scent was seasonal. In the spring the smell included to odor of moist, warm dirt and melting snow. Yes, melting snow has an odor. Maybe it really isn't the snow, but the whole earth is thawing and warming, and that does have a distinct smell as it emerges from under the snow. 

And that's my reminiscing for tonight. Now I'm going to pour a glass of wine and put together something interesting for supper. Maybe rice with broccoli and turkey nuggets. I made chocolate chocolate-chip cookies on Sunday, so dessert is taken care of! Plenty of chocolate is a great antidote for whatever is bothering you, I find. I may have a cup of hot chocolate with my chocolate chocolate-chip cookie . . . !