Winter is here, and...

the great blizzard of 2010 is blowing as I type at 6AM.  It is very windy and snow blowing everywhere as it was all night.  Not pleasant at all.  Our low humidity makes snow that resembles talcum powder and it will not stick together. *see below.  So with the wind it'll blow everywhere.  Our kitchen door porch and garage door have about 8" of snow but the patio at the back door has very little.  When daylight comes I will be able to see better and snap a photo or two.  We are at the very western edge of this storm event and have not been hammered like those east of us.  Photo is Canuck watching the snow out the LR window.

The snow blower is ready.  I'm not sure I am.
Just removed the snow from the driveway.  We had a 2' drift that really worked my 8hp snowblower.  The snow is uncharacteristically wet and heavy making it harder to blow any distance so I had to move it twice in some areas.  We could make snowballs, very unusual. It must have gotten warmer that the 28ºF that we had at 6AM some time last night.  I am tired now, that was a lot of effort for this senior citizen.  I hope this snow is not what we can expect for the rest of this winter.

What you cannot see is the force of the wind whipping the flag...

We are having a chili and cornbread day and that is what Pat is going to do for supper !  She has become very adept at creating various soups from scratch and I enjoy them very much.  We have leftover veggie soup for dinner (lunch).

Here comes Winter...

The little red circle is where Crosby is.  IIt is activly raining now, we are getting a good soaking.  t looks like our first snow of the year is on the way.  We like to have snow on Thanksgiving.  That fits with the traditional view of the holiday.

We, the family in Crosby, have not made the plans for the holiday.  We try to share Thanksgiving together and let Christmas be celebrated separately.  We do get together to share gifts and visit on Christmas though.

Pat is in the kitchen making home made Vegetable soup using a beef broth base.  We'll have the soup for supper with corn bread.  Mmmm good!

I believe I have everything done for the winter preparation.  I hope so anyway.

What a week!

My trusty Mac Laptop circa 2006 had a hard drive failure while I was running the backup!  Needless to say both the hard drive in the laptop and the external drive for the backup were corrupted.  I purchased a new drive on line for the laptop and installed it.  Then began trying to salvage all my software programs and documents to restore the new drive. It has taken most of every day this last week of steady work to get much of my stuff restored.  I still have a bunch to go but all the really important stuff seems to be in its proper place now.

 

Winter should be upon us by all rights.. not here yet!  We are busy having very pleasant days and nights are above freezing.  Our first winter we had snow on this date and it was still with us in April.  I put the mower away for the winter and had to get it back out to mow again.  I even had the snowblower serviced and ready for work!  Almost everything is ready for the winter.  I have a hose caddy in the backyard that needs storing and some miscellaneous small stuff to do.  That is the kind of stuff you race around doing when the weather man says "snow tomorrow".

More stuff since the last...

A very pleasant Sunday morning in North Dakota!

While we were on our semi-annual jaunt to Indiana, Pat had a couple of quilts entered in a Quilt show in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada and she did very well, even brought home some money.  Good show, eh?

You can click in the quilt image to see detail. 

That makes her renown internationally doesn't it?  She does do long arm quilting for folks in Canada and gives classes there too.  Her quilting business is by word of mouth and she is kept very busy by her clientele.  I really am proud of her.
Did I tell you that Pat is now an Alderwoman on the Crosby city council?  She won the election by a comfortable margin.  She has been very active on the Zoning and Building commission and became known by the electorate as someone who spoke her mind.  Are they in for it!

My hearing problem is still with me.  There are times that I think that I have some hearing improvement but it is so small that I think it is wishful thinking on my part.  The Niagara Falls in my left ear affects the hearing that I do have.  If I could get rid of that roar things would be better.  It is doubtful I'll loose the noise as it is "nerve generated" inside my head.  I will see my 'local' Dr. next month to set up an appointment with a local audiologist who will retest me to see if any improvement can be detected.  If not, we will talk of a hearing aid.  If I do, we will delay the hearing aid and wait another 3 months for a retest and then get the hearing aid based on that testing.

So far we have had a very mild autumn this year.  We have had a couple of nights where the thermometer touched 32ºF, no more.  It was just enough to give the tomato plants terminal frost bite.  Needless to say we are really enjoying the tropical conditions. LOL!

The farmers here have had a very disappointing wheat harvest this year.  Many are simply mowing the fields and not harvesting.  Many though had bins full of last years grain and will not suffer too badly this year.

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