Scenes from winter in Paradise...

Scenes from winter in Paradise...  By request, at right is my snow plowing rig: my Kubota B26 with a 400 lb. weight on the back and the hydraulic tilt blade in front.  I had it out again this morning, scraping off the two new inches that fell last night.  The forecast for last night? Zero inches.  It's still snowing intermittently this morning; it won't surprise me a bit if I need to go out again later today.

After I get back from my visit to the dentist. :(  Just a routine cleaning, but still ... not my favorite activity.

I took this yesterday to give you an idea just how much snow we got.  That trash can has the salt we use to keep our sidewalk and porch free of ice.  It sits under the stand of pine trees in our front yard – and it still accumulated that much snow!

When I went out this morning to fill our bird feeders, several species went right on feeding despite my presence: chickadees, juncos, house finches, and goldfinches.  I take that as a sign of hunger.  Our nearby honey locust had a swarm of birds perching in it: magpies, pigeons, grackles, and about a dozen red-winged blackbirds.  As soon as I left the area of the feeders, those red-winged blackbirds flew down in a group and started browsing on the cracked corn I'd scattered, as well as picking through the sunflower seeds smaller birds had pulled out of the feeders.  I sure hope they're ok through this snow and cold – they look very much out of place.

Yesterday afternoon we took a drive up Blacksmith Fork Canyon to Hardware Ranch.  For me, the scenes of snow-on-rock were quite beautiful (below).  But darned near everything on that drive was beautiful: the stream, the contrast of red osier dogwood against the snow, the snow in the trees, and the broad vistas of snowy mountains.  Up near Hardware Ranch we saw several groups of deer, including one with about 40 members.  We also saw a few isolated deer, most likely bucks who have lost their antlers.  At Hardware Ranch itself there were hundreds of elk, picking through the night's snowfall to get to the hay beneath...