Pictures from the frozen north

Just to make rambling Jo-Anne feel better, here's some shots from the land where 45° is the high... in Fahrenheit.

How about we dress Scrappy for the weather?  If this looks like he enjoyed the hat/left it on his head, the illusion worked.

The duck pond is now the duck ice rink.

Not too cold for them on the river, though

And they've got the old pump house repaired, re-painted, and fenced.  See how long that prevents new graffiti...

Our hero

Remember those robins that supposedly disappeared for the winter?  Here's about 30 of 'em!

 

 

Today's walk was started off by my getting my foot stuck in the downed fence where we always go in by the big tree.  Lost a shoe, landed square on the stomach.  I was fine (after laying there for five minutes wondering how to tell Laurie I lost the baby), but learned a valuable lesson:  You can concuss your belly as well as your head.

Hawk casing the bunny field.

"The answer, my friends, is blowing through my ears..."

Geese fighting wind to stay in one place.

Ducks, too.

Scrappy joining the "not quite polar bear" club.

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I have to tell you my son's latest adventure, which he dubbed "the quarter story".  Seems he got home from work last night with his lady friend and promptly decided he needed to do laundry.  His complex has quarter machines in the basement.  He found he had to case his car for quarters, and had just enough to do the washing.  Needing coins for the dryer, he first tried the pop machine at the complex.  He put in 2 bills, hit the change lever, and got 20 dimes. Then, he and LF went to the nearest BP gas station for change.  "Can you give me change for $2?" he asked.  "We can't do that," says she at the counter.  "Why not?" says he.  "Because we don't go back to the bank until Tuesday!" She snips.  After cussing her out in his mind, he decides to go to Wal-Mart.  Now, here he explains that he drove out to the Wal-Mart on Maysville road (aproximately 5 miles and out of the way).  I asked him why he didn't just go to the Wal-mart just down from us at Coldwater road (3 1/2 miles and two turns from him.).  I mention this because it got me about a half-minute of the blankest "I'm an idiot" expression you ever saw.  Anyhow, he decided that he was probably going to get turned down by the cashiers and as it was closing on 1 AM, he went to a pop machine.  He put in his two bucks, hit the change return lever, and the machine gave him 2 dollars change gave him four Grape Crushes, priced at $1.25 each. So he got $3 dollars off 4 sodas he didn't want, and now had no change AND no bills.  He returned to the car with 4 pops and a LF who wondered what he was doing with them (to which he replied, "This is the worst night of my life!"). Next he had to travel to his bank ( a  further four miles) to use the ATM (perhaps because he was too cheap to pay the out-of-network fee at the Wal-Mart ATM, I neglected to ask or I might have gotten blank stare #2) and get more money, from whence he tried a station near there, now just 2.2 miles from home, whose cashier was happy to give him the quarters in exchange for a re-telling of the story.

My son- the best entertainment value I ever made.