Icy Pictures

The weekend before Christmas, we had an ice storm.Three days of ice pellets and freezing rain. For a week or two, ice and snow carefully coated everything, making our little prosaic world up here look like all the best pictures of idealized American winters. Fortunately for the trees and buildings, we have had some melt since then. Not before a few barns and lots of chimneys went down though. Despite the technical difficulties of ice on everything, it is beautiful. Especially when sunshine returns. A glittering world against a winter blue sky.

 Ice is magic. 

(As long as you don't have to drive or walk on it.)

Owen feeding cows

The lane behind the barn

Ice coat on an alder branch

Poor beasties!

They weren't too worried about it though. 

Owen was sorting cows/calves the morning it really started icing, so we went up to the corral to help. Standing in the freezing rain with little needles of ice hitting my face wasn't comfy, but I couldn't help relish in the thought of "This is what ranch wives do. I am pretty much a ranch wife." Unpleasant situations can always be livened up if you can make them somehow romantic. Like crying as a teenager--I always had to focus on crying or else I would think about how sad and heartbreaking it was that I was weeping and cheer myself right up. 

Icy barbed wire

Snowed in creek 

Some weed or other. I was amazed by the strength of these weed stems. I would have thought they would be lying on the ground. But they stood. A little crookedly, but they stood.

Look at the thickness of the ice! And still they didn't break. 

After the storm had passed, it was freezing cold and windy, but so brilliantly blue. As soon as I stepped outside, I could hear the branches in the wind. Clinking gently together like some gigantic wind chime. 

One side of the sky was blue, blue, blue. The other side had this dramatic gray cloud. 

Grainy snow with cat tracks

Isn't the blue amazing in these two pictures? No editing even. 

Snow sculpted on the silo

Lowering winter skies

The clothesline 

Sun in clouds

Mom and Dad got this little laughing squirrel from my great aunt when she went into a nursing home. It is next to the front door, laughing it's little stone head off at the cold.