Monday, December 9, 2013

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...


Last week an icy arctic-type weather system plodded across the state of Texas leaving many of us iced in for several days. After school activities on Thursday were cancelled and many districts across the area closed schools well in advance. Much to my surprise, ours was one of them. Normally, FWISD waits until the very last minute to decide. Which I get. Kids need to be in school.

Even DH/boss man deemed the office closed on Friday and instructed clients and employees that work would be done remotely. I don't think that has ever happened. But I wasn't complaining. I was certainly glad to have a three day weekend so soon after my nine day vacation. DD was supposed to be at work some 20 miles or so miles away by 5AM on Friday. Yeah, that didn't happen either. Though she drives a large pickup truck, affectionately call The Tank, she took a test drive around the block and had no traction at all and decided she wasn't chancing it.

Thankfully, we never lost power and our dead tree remained standing. I braved the cold temps to take some pictures of our house, yard and car...

Poor birdies trying to eat up the last of the bird seed. I did refill the feeders and threw squirrel corn all over the ground. Not only do the squirrels eat the corn, but so do the mourning doves, blue jays, and grackles.


 When not completely weighted down by ice, this bush thing stands taller than the roof line.


 Icicles hanging off the front porch roof.

Frosted pine branches--so pretty.

Once I refilled the bird feeders, I enjoyed watching all the birds come and go.

We had the usual bird varieties in addition to the woodpecker I rarely get a chance to photograph.





I've often thought about installing a wood burning stove somewhere in this house. As I mentioned earlier, our power never went out, thankfully. I was a little worried about it though because we'd had several outages just prior to the Thanksgiving break. And even though Texas doesn't experience such bad weather very often, it can still get cold, and a warm fire would just be a good thing to have available.

If you were affected by the bad weather, did you get to enjoy it?



5 comments:

Regina Richards said...

All great pictures, but especially loved the icicles.

Chill N said...

Don't cardinals look extra bright against the white! This cold weather is getting old fast :-)

Nancy C

Unknown said...

We finally left the house today--we'd been iced in since Friday, but today it melted enough for me to get the car out of the garage. I'm glad you didn't lose power!

Jen FitzGerald said...

Thanks, Regina. I liked that one too.

Nancy, I was thinking how the cold really brings out their color! So beautiful.

Glad you were finally able to escape, Lara!

mtnchild said...

I love winter and a good snowfall, but when the temps go way down under "0" I get quite a bit nervous ... frozen pipes. Yup, we had them ... took 2 days to thaw out. My friend is still without water and has a pump problem.
Love you