Frosty Sunrise

With all our cold weather, I've been hoping we would get one of our really spectacular heavy frosts—where it looks like snow covers everything. But so far, no luck, or else I've missed it by sleeping in.

We had a little warm spell last weekend, warm enough for me to wear sandals to the opening of the new art co-op in the small town closest to where we live.

This morning, though, we had frost again—and though it wasn't spectacular, the sunrise was pretty enough to send me digging around in my purse for my camera.

That whitish glaze over the grass is our frost.

Come August, I will be longing for cool mornings like this one!

Steve's Sycamore/Winter Fog

Here's a great winter view of our neighbor's sycamore tree, courtesy of my husband who was home at just the right time to take this picture.

Remember to click on the picture for a better view.

A Spell of Long, Hard Freezes

We are deep into what is most likely going to be a record-setting number of days of hard freezes, more than I can ever remember all at once and definitely longer than the ice storm spell of 1989.

Yesterday, there was snow to the south of us–Ocala and Orlando areas–but our air was too dry to permit the white stuff to make it to the ground, for which we are cursing our luck because if it's going to be this cold, we might as well have something pretty to look at!

This morning when I got in my car to go to work (yes, I work on Sundays), it was 16 degrees and the frost had painted these beautiful little star-like designs on the side of my car. (You can click on the picture, above, for a better view.) Driving in to work on a rural highway, it was frosty on both sides of the road, and as I was driving there were bright little twinkly lights emanating from the frost.

I keep hoping we will at least get one of our beautiful heavy frosts, so I can post a picture of something besides my car in the cold weather—but so far the frost has not been heavy enough to really show up well in a photograph. I guess the air has been too dry.

Brrrrrrrrr!

The last time it was this cold for this long was in the winter of 1989, when I moved back to Florida from California. Two days before Christmas, there was an ice storm—which I had never experienced before, and may never experience again.

This week, we have had several straight days of hard freezes, with more to come. I know that much of the rest of the country is in much worse shape from the cold than we are, but since we're only used to a couple of days of hard freezes at a time, we are really feeling it.

This morning, three faucets in the bathroom (sink, tub, shower) weren't producing hot water. My husband had to crawl up into the attic and thaw the pipes out with a hair dryer; very luckily, none of them was broken. Tonight, our freezing temps start at about 8 p.m., and you'd better believe we will be leaving those faucets on to drip.

Here's a big OM MANI PADME HUNG for all animals and humans that have to be outside tonight. (That's the bodhisattva Chenrezig's mantra that carries many blessings.)

Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter

It's been raining and cold and we haven't seen the sun for about a week—reminiscent of one new year's in Berkeley, in the early 1980s, when I counted 10 days that we didn't see the sun.

And because I grew up in Florida, I'm used to a lot of sunlight. I don't lie outside to tan any more, but if I go for too long without sunlight, I begin to feel a bit comatose. That winter in Berkeley, I'd get up, walk to work, come home, and go straight to bed. I'm trying to resist the temptation to do the same thing now, but it's hard.

All this rain is knocking the remnants of autumn's leaves off all the trees. Pretty soon, beauties like the one pictured above (a pignut hickory, maybe?) will be bare skeletons, reaching bony arms to the sky.

And if we needed any certain signs that winter is upon us, they have come over the past three nights—the high chirruping cries of sandhill cranes, arriving (late, I think) for the winter.