Real Snow!

I realize that this isn't a big deal to many of you, but we don't often get a foot of snow in Kentucky, so I'm excited! Snow just floated down like big white feathers, it streaked sideways in the wind, it fell in buckets and just kept coming. Then the shiny ice pellets came, sounding like millions of june bugs tapping on the windows. This was followed by- guess what?- more snow!


Since we've been off all week (believe it or not, we teachers are more excited than the kids), I've had time to work on art, and also to try out my new camera. I stood on my back porch and took pictures of birds at the feeder about 30 feet away; if had set up the tripod (not really practical in the snow) and zoomed in all the way, I could have taken pictures of their eyeballs. I LOVE this camera!


I call this cardinal Marilyn because she loves to pose- or really, she's probably just a glutton because she's always at the feeder. I thought she was beautiful, though, and she didn't flit around as much as the smaller birds. Did you know that birds can move astonishingly quickly? Unbelievable! I really did need a tripod.


Hey! I just found out we have another snow day tomorrow! Whoo-hoo!

Aurora

The extra-cold weather we've been having this winter got me thinking about those far northern places where it's almost always cold. In some of those places, people endure not only the mind-numbing cold, but somehow withstand extended periods of darkness as well. I cannot imagine how they survive such conditions; I whine and complain if the mercury dips below the freezing mark, and hate it when it's already dark at 6:00 p.m. I tried to picture what it would be like, to live in a place so dark and colorless. And I thought about the aurora borealis, which plays an important part in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pullman. Most of the story takes place in the far north; just reading it made me feel cold. I've always wondered what the aurora really looks like, and if seeing it could in some way compensate for the cold there. So here is my imaginary aurora borealis, to distract me from the cold. You may notice, however, that I couldn't stop myself from including some "ice flowers" in the foreground.