Hardiest of the foolhardy

After our second round of snow, ice, and record-setting low temps, we are inching back into the 70s, which is a bit warm for February but I haven't heard any complaints from man or beast.

However, looking upon my flower beds I find that the bulbs have endured the snow and ice quite well. The daffodils are up over an inch in the old beds. The hyacinths are new and already breaking ground.

Alas, there are a few foolhardy tulips trying the same. Tsk, tsk. They won't fare as well if (when?) we have another round of it. They'll be making me work to cover them with newspaper and weight it down with brick, only to hope they don't get their little tulip noses freezer burned.

Welcome to Texas, I'll say. May your bulb be well fed enough to try again next year.

Savvy kitty

The weather is once again giving us a layer of ice and more snow than we want. (At this stage of February, any snow is too much snow.) The bright side of things--and that's saying a lot since we're to have record low temps--is that this is to last two days and not last week's four. Hope springs eternal in the house-bound breast.

I'm doing laundry and working on a freelance project, considering starting my way through the tax receipts. I've put out more bird seed and will have to do it again, I can tell. The outside kitties have been given food in a spot which won't get wet.

So I put the towels from the washer into the dryer. It vents into a sheltered corner of the patio which should be blocked by house and garbage cans from the worst of the wind. As if from thin air, the alpha female cat Duchess appears and takes her place under the hot air from the vent.

It may be a small brain, but it's dedicated. In this case, to keeping warm.

It's like a holiday!

Cabin fever isn't pretty under any circumstances, but to those of us not used to being weather-bound-to-the-house for 4 days in a row, it's just pure misery. Even if there were things we could and better yet, should, be doing, we weren't. Or, at least, I wasn't. In retrospect, this place could be in a lot better shape if I'd stopped grumbling as I looked out at the snow/ice and concentrated on the inside instead.

But I didn't. It's a mess. That's all there is to it.

Yesterday however was a different story. The sun appeared and the temps rose and the streets cleared as if swept. It was time to leave the house and where better to go than Walmart.

It wasn't a singular idea. My first hint should have been the difficulty in finding a parking spot not still in snow-clutches. I drove around a bit, found something suitably close to a cart repository, and went in. There I found several hundred of my nearest and dearest friends, half of whom were already in line.

It would appear that the entire town had come down with the same solution to cabin fever: shop.

Not like it wasn't needed. Our cupboard was getting a bit bare itself. Scurvy could set in with the lack of fresh fruits and veggies. I pondered that there would have already been a run on such, but the stockers in the produce department were busy filling the bins. As were those at bread and eggs. Cheese was a bit thin and there was no house brand unsalted butter (makes one wonder, yes?), but I grabbed the last bag of the catfood I had a coupon for and bravely headed to the check-out.

All of the counters were open. I don't think I'd ever seen that. The lines snaked into each other, but by some miracle everyone knew which one they were in. More importantly, they knew which one their neighbor was in. There was actual camaraderie. We were all in the same boat and we were sailing together. I talked to people I knew and people I didn't. Twenty five minutes passed at a reasonable pace.

As I went out, I smiled at those coming in. Just a little smile. A knowing smile. A I'm-gone-you're-in-line smile.

Taking the blame

So a couple weeks ago, already tired of the Super Bowl hype and hypers on the media, I complained to an email friend in Connecticut that I wished it would snow!

Cue the old proverb: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Now, I totally and completely believe that God hears us all the time, that our prayers are answered for the good of us, and that sometimes the answer is no.

But how was I to know that He'd take me seriously this one time?

You see, this morning, on top of the crunchy ice, we have about 3 inches of snow here. At least the main roads are cleared out and you'll just be driving on/through snow, but the side streets--oh no!

But the Super Bowl hype is quieted down, like political ads the day after elections. We've been 24/7 weather around here.

I mean, I wasn't really serious, Lord. Not really. Just a little bit. Enough's enough?

Are you listening?

There was a reason I stopped baking that recipe...

...and now I know what it is.

With ice and snow on the ground, with the sun shining and the wind howling, with the temp at 22 and set to go lower, not higher over the next three days, it seemed like a good idea to bake bread.

I have several standard bread recipes which I'm quite good at baking. I'm also not afraid to try something new, but since most bread recipes of the white/wheat variety are the same and we certainly didn't need cinnamon rolls (although that may be on tomorrow's agenda--see the above paragraph), I decided to go for quantity.

Years--YEARS--ago, I had made a recipe which produced 6 loaves of bread. Six. I knew it took a bag of flour and assorted other staples I was bound to have on hand, and so I went hunting for it. Found it, with appropriate notes on flour cup variances and size of loaf pan, and the date: October 1977. Wow. I was a new mother. Wasn't I an adventurous soul.

But I hadn't had a Kitchenaid do-it-all mixer then. Surely this would be easier. But as I poured in the 8 cups of liquid and the half bag of flour, as the machine started making little grindy noises (it's at least 25 years old, it's allowed), as I remembered I hadn't put in any sugar (add, add, add), I also realized that this slurry of dough was going to have to come out of the bowl and onto the countertop.

I put on my kitchen-expendable gloves I use for messy things and plunged in, adding flour and lifting and pushing the dough around.

Then the phone rang. I was tempted not to answer it, but if it were my husband, he'd wonder why I wasn't and what was wrong, so I pulled off one of the dough-filled gloves with my teeth, and answered. My mother-in-law. Told her what I was up to, answered the question (called her back with more details later), and got back to the mess.

The phone rang.

Now I can go days without the phone ringing at home. DAYS. But I answered, the information from a friend made me glad I did, and I finally got back to packing probably a bag and a half of flour into these 6 loaves.

I dug out the stew pot, put the mess in the oven with the oven light on, and cleaned it all up. Less than an hour later, it is threatening to overflow the pot and I stop it before the dough, now sticky but more compliant, spills over into the oven.

Longer story short, there are now three 1-1/2 lb loaves baking and three 2-pound loaves rising.

This stuff had better be good, but I now know why I abandoned this recipe in favor of the three-loaf buttermilk bread which is standard here. I could have made it twice and been eating it now.

Snow-printed

Still covered with snow although the streets are clear and the white is retreating from the yards at the edges. I think the icicles hanging from my roof have dripped away also.

Wildlife shows up in snow. We had a bluejay at the bird feeder. I thought cardinals were large until Mr. Jay hung precipitously on the perch and pecked at the sunflower seed. The squirrels visited too and no amount of thumping on the window glass would dissuade them to leave.

Snow gives us the opportunity to see just who is walking in the yard and to where. I can now trace the paths the outdoor cats take to get next door. Although why they were doing so when I offer food and outside shelter is quite beyond me. The people next door are tolerant; I am welcoming.

And writing of pawprints, our garage is a separate building, foursquare and with a steep roof. Rounding it are squirrel (at least I hope they're squirrel) prints. Up, down, around. Enough to make me smile, but not forgive the feeder raid.

Snow day!

It is snowing, snowing so hard it looks like rain coming down which just goes to prove we're not doing anything halfway around here. Last winter we had two huge (for us) snows of 6 inches plus. They each lasted a day and then blissfully melted away. We should be so lucky this time.

I don't think we will be. After the snow stops, it's supposed to get colder. And ice is the one thing we're really, really terrible with around here. Don't do ice well.

Our outdoor cats seem to be adjusting. The steady three have been up for lunch. I've been checking on them and found the alpha female, Duchess, not huddled in her towel-lined box but under the clothes dryer vent's warm air!

Now I know how she's survived. Savvy girl.

Snow Day!

While the mid-Atlantic states and off toward their west are socked in with two batches of snow, we in North Texas have just been having cold weather. If there was precipitation, it was rain. Today changed all that and in a hour we were covered with big fluffy flakes. Everyone is so happy about it. School is still in session, the roads are wet, not icy, and, the best thing--it's going away tomorrow!

We can be very easy to please because this is how we love our snow: here and gone! I doubt it's freezing outside now, just "hovering" about that point. Tomorrow's high should be in the 40s and Saturday's in the 50s. This suits me very well since I'm hosting a large romance author program at the library Saturday. Ice and snow accumulation would definitely put a damper on, i.e. cancel, that.

So I get to watch all the white come down and transform my world. I wonder where the outside cats are, but trust they're taking care of themselves. My indoor boys are sound asleep, blissfully unaware.

Me? I think I'll put some soup on for supper.

Texas snowfall

We rarely get the lovely, fluffy, big-flake kind of snowfalls seen in other parts of the country. We certainly don't get them in March! What we get when we get anything at all is ice. Sheets of ice. So, it was sorta' nice to have an all-night 6-inch snowfall which disappeared the next day when temps rose into the 50s.

Photographers abound in such circumstances and I'm no exception.

My neighbor's yard became a winter wonderland:

My sideyard looked like a white blanket:

There was no wind, so snow piled up on the chainlink fence:

But winter wonderland, white blanket, no wind or not, the temps hovered around 30 and soon the streets were slush: