Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Snow Day!

 


Snow days are few around here. I hope for snow every winter as I love the way it transforms the landscape, softening the lines of buildings and trees. It adds light to the day and I can often tell if snow fell during the night by the faint light filtering into the bedroom. 
Although I am no longer teaching, there was a frisson of excitement at the thought of school closures. Those days always seemed like gifts - a day free of duty to do what I liked. 


The Varied Thrush is an elusive bird and I see them only when it snows. Its normal habitat is the dark evergreen forests. This one hung around for a short while, long enough for us all to admire his orange and black colouring. 


Dark-eyed Juncos are regular visitors to the garden, so handsome with their sharply defined black heads. They are common most of the year here, but tend to go further north in the summer. 


Spotted Towhees usually feed on the ground, but like the suet, especially now when the ground is covered with snow. All morning, while the snowflakes swirled around, birds took their turns at the feeders. 
We collected the little girls this morning as their mother needed to study. They played in the snow, making angels, climbing the pile of snow shoveled to the side of the drive, and slid down the small slope in our garden. What fun!


Several Chestnut-backed Chickadees stopped by. I watched three of them for a long while, chasing each other through the bare lilac branches, swooping across the snow-covered lawn, and chirping among themselves. It looked as though they too were playing in the snow. 


Tall hats on dried flower stems. Colder weather is here for a few more days and the snow will stay, then quickly melt away. 


A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, 
unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder."
Susan Orlean

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Snow Day!

  Snow days are few around here. I hope for snow every winter as I love the way it transforms the landscape, softening the lines of building...