Snow

This is the scene we awoke to yesterday morning -- inches of beautiful snow! I can enjoy it since, apart from filling bird feeders and taking warm water and food to the chickens, I don't actually have to brave the icy roads and go anywhere. The cozy feeling of being inside the tiny house inside the glass snow globe is what I like when the flakes are swirling outside our windows.

There's always the danger of the water freezing -- as it did at my younger son's house -- as it did at our house 30 years ago, a few weeks before that son was born. That January was one of the coldest winters we ever had -- school was closed for six weeks in our county and our water stayed frozen about that long. I came home from the hospital, with a fresh c-section incision and a new baby, to a house with no running water. But what I mainly remember, aside from the kitchen floor, perpetually muddy with water slopped from buckets that my husband brought from the nearby creek, was the joy of sitting all day on the sofa, holding my beautiful infant and basking in the warmth of the woodstove.