Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I know, it's the 4th day of the year, but that's still pretty new. It's not all scuffed up yet.

The first day of Christmas gave us a beautiful day in the 60s, and I went hiking in shorts. Today, the 11th day of Christmas, gave us this:

 The snow was unexpected, by me, anyway, because it was not in the forecast. It was supposed to be sunny all day. And cold. They were right about the cold, though it was warmer than forecast, too - the high was supposed to be 29ºF and it got up to 30ºF. Woo hoo. Still below freezing (and right now, as I write this in the wee small hours of the morning, we are in single digits. Fahrenheit). This, however, was our first snow, unless you count the flurries we had one day in October. We had quite a bit of sleet one day last week, but we didn't have snow until today.

 Anyway, we got just enough snow to cover the ground, and then most of it went away, even though the temperature didn't get above freezing. A little lingered in the mossy areas of the yard, though.

 The most interesting thing on this frigid day was the ice crystals that form from water in the soil freezing and building crystal towers. Short towers.

 The crystals pushed up the moss in a lot of places.

 Still, that December dandelion is progressing. But what would take a couple of days in the spring takes about a month or more in the winter, apparently.

And then, there's this:

It is not unprecedented for me to have daffodils sprouting in my yard in the first week of January, but usually they just barely break the surface, and then they are covered in snow, and remain hidden under there for about 2 months. I have never seen them up so high at this point in the winter. They were obviously confused by the warmest December on record. Fortunately for them, our current deep freeze is not expected to last long, just two days, but I am not sure how the rest of the winter is going to play out with these hapless flowers.

In case you are wondering, no, I didn't see any bugs today. I didn't expect to, though I did look for them in a cursory way. I didn't bother looking most of last week, either, because we were in the low 40s most of the time, and it was cloudy and gloomy all week, and the bugs prefer sunshine. I did see a fly on the front porch yesterday afternoon, but I was on my way out, and didn't want to get the camera just to take a picture of a fly. This is basically the time of year when this blog goes on hiatus. I'll do a post if I see something interesting, whether bug or otherwise, but for now, I'll just be dreaming of spring.