Paradise ponders, exceptional clarity edition...

Paradise ponders, exceptional clarity edition...  Well, when I last wrote I thought we'd gotten five or six inches of snow – turns out we got more like six to eight inches, and in some places even more.  You can see how much we got on the table (on our balcony) at right.  Since the snow piles I'd plowed off from our last storm still hadn't melted, I had some challenges figuring out where to put all the new snow I plowed off.  I ended up pushing the old piles further out onto our lawn in a bunch of places.  It took me almost three hours to finish working with the snow blower, snow plow, and snow shovel.  I we pretty cold by the time I got done – thank goodness for the “hotties” that kept my hands warm!

After I finished, Debbie and I went for a drive to Hardware Ranch to see what the canyon looked like after this snowfall  It was, as we expected, extraordinarily beautiful – as we keep saying to each other, we live in a postcard.  We spotted quite a few deer, all at a good distance from the road.  The elk were being fed when we got to Hardware Ranch, and there were several horse-drawn carts full of kids amongst them.

On the way back we had a pleasant surprise.  We spotted a large hawk flying overhead, easily visible to us through the Model X's overhead glass.  It was big enough that we thought it might be a bald eagle, but we could only see it in silhouette, so we weren't sure.  Then we watched it swoop in next to a bluff high overhead, and I spotted it's tail: a white band.  What was it?  So we got the binoculars out and tried spotting it.  We were looking right through the windshield overhead, and in our other vehicles this would mean a greatly distorted image because of the glass' curvature.  Not so in the Model X – we were able to see very clearly, even with the binoculars.  I suspect this is an accidental result of the fact that the Model X's windshield doesn't have a compound curvature, or at least not much of one, whereas our other vehicles have pronounced compound curves in the windshield.  Whatever the reason, not only do we have outstanding visibility in the Model X, we also have the ability to use the binoculars from inside.  Woo hoo!  A very nice surprise for a couple of wildlife gawkers, that is...

One of our favorite winter sights around here is the is the red stems of a plant we haven't identified, contrasted with the white snow.  This plant can be found near any stream in the area, and when it's not wintertime its a favorite browse of moose and deer.  In the winter, it's bright red stems delight us, especially when festooned with snow, as they were yesterday.

And speaking of snow, check out our current forecast (at right, click to embiggen).  We're in for a whole lot of this stuff!  We could end up with close to three feet on the ground, and I'm going to be even more challenged to find a place to put all the snow I plow off.  Yikes!