Living just north of Boston, between snow and sickness, we haven’t had one full week of school since before Christmas. Many Northeast families are paddling in the same boat. I hear and see creativity; I hear and see craziness.
On the second snow-day Tuesday in a row, I escaped to the spare room upstairs, dropped a screen-less window from the top, and took photos of the icicles melting. Then I took short walks through our winter wonderland; the snowy scenes were stunning. I clicked away day and night...
I had never photographed an icicle drip before snow storm Juno.
Rather than taking photos of this, a concerned homeowner probably would have been knocking these down or calling someone to break them up. Click. What ice dams are made of... drip, freeze, drip, freeze...
Liam's first leap from the top of the bank. He sunk in up to his waist. Then just sat there. Sitting in that deep snow is peaceful, surprisingly warm, absolutely surreal.
My depth perception is whacky. Here's what 55" tall kids look like playing on 60" snow banks.
(...During the Blizzard of 2012, the kids' independence reigned supreme.)
Sweet double drips.
Charmed by these enormous icicles... bigger around than my arm. I thought their power in motion would pull the edge of my shingles off... so I didn't knock them down.
A duet of drops.
Oh, the shimmer!
So sleek and shiny.
Rhododendron droop.
The magnolia's shadow.
Snowbanks galore -- this small one is on my kitchen window.
Why I leave my outdoor lights up beyond Christmas...
How did "meltdown" get such a bad reputation? Here's a triple meltdown!
We built our snowman after the first 7 inches of snow: it was great snow for building! Here he is covered with 40-plus inches of fluffy snow.
Our winter barn.
Since moving to the east coast, sand dunes at the beach have always felt familiar to me. I think this is why: Iowa's open fields and wide ditches drift like this. In the Northeast, we see more sand dunes of this shape than snow drifts.
Snow makes the outdoors glow. This was taken at 9:30 p.m. -- our fence, no flash.
One. Two. Three.
And the waltz continues... one, two, three, one, two, three...
Be prepared. Last year, a local Boy Scout marked fire hydrants throughout town as his Eagle Scout project. At the time the tall springy red and white poles seemed a bit extreme! We've kept our hydrant clear. With all this snow, firefighters are struggling to access hydrants when fighting house fires in the Boston area.
See the yellow handle? It's a decorated snow shovel with snowmen painted on the blade. I anchored it out front thinking I would mark inches on the handle to measure snow this winter...
Here's the same Rho --but a different season...
The very definition of hardy!!
(You may be ready for The Beach Cottage... but it's only February, and 2015 winter snow storm Marcus hasn't even touched us yet! Getting ready for 12" - 20+" of more snow!)