This and That #3 – 2014

It’s mid-winter and we just don’t get out and about as much.  Even though East Tennessee is still much prettier than the flat prairies of Illinois in the winter, it's been gray a lot lately and this has been a cold winter as well… The good news is that our winter here is much shorter than what we used to suffer through in the Chicago area…

So…staying close to home for now, here are a few miscellaneous photos from this laid back time of the year.

I’d previously shown a photo of J.D., the cat who rules our house, keeping warm under his blanket on the bonus room ottoman.  Here’s another photo of J.D. in his cocoon under one of my mother’s wall hangings.

J.D. also has his own room…where he stays at night.  He has toys, a pair of Laurie’s sandals that he’s in love with and a small stuffed sock monkey that he cuddles.  He also has food, water, a cat tree…and this cold weather electric heater.  He does love staying warm.  On sunny days, when he’s not bugging us for a lap, a snack or to be petted, he follows the sun as it shines through the windows…

 Yup…another turkey photo!  We have a huge flock of neighborhood turkeys.  They are so big and so interesting to watch.  They also tear up our mulch beds worse than all of the skunks, possums and squirrels put together…

Another breakfast…another bowl of Laurie’s chili with added cheese!  The chili gets better as it ages in the refrigerator!  The juice is my favorite combination of ‘lite’ cranberry and regular orange juice.

This was the first significant snow fall that we’ve had in about 3 years!  This view is from our guest bedroom looking down into the backyard toward the woods on the south side of the house.

 

This was the view of the lake from the guest bedroom the day after the snowstorm.  Blue skies and blue water…pretty but it was cold!

This photo is looking up the street in front of our house… Again the blue skies dazzled!  

Our trash pick-up didn’t happen as scheduled… As you probably saw in the post-storm news from Atlanta, the south just shuts down when there is any measureable snow!  We had between 2.5 and 3 inches of snow… Many of our local school districts are out or almost out of snow days.

On the second morning after the storm, we had hoarfrost everywhere.  As captured in this photo of Laurie’s, it was beautiful!

Hoar frost refers to the white ice crystals, loosely deposited on the ground or exposed objects that form on cold clear nights, when heat is lost into the open sky causing objects to become colder than the surrounding air.  There are different kinds of hoar frost… This type is ‘air hoar frost’…which is a deposit of hoar frost on objects above the surface, such as tree branches, plant stems, wires, etc.

This is a photo of the woods on one side of our home.  The trees and bushes were covered with hoar frost for miles around… By about 11 am it was gone but when it melted, it fell like snow.

The name ‘hoar’ comes from an Old English adjective for showing signs of old age, and it’s used in reference to the frost which makes trees and bushes look like white hair.  It may also have association with hawthorn when covered in its characteristic white spring blossoms.

This is our home in the woods following the snow storm.  What a beautiful day!  On the third day after the storm, almost all of the snow was gone and the temperatures were back in the 50s!  As I wrote this posting for the blog, its 48 degrees here and its 20 degrees back in Chicago…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave