Last weeks cold spell gave us some spectacular sunrises!

Getting up and out to make pictures was another thing though because not only is sunrise quite early around 7.30 am but it was also colder than a witch's tit (I've been waiting for an opportunity to say that) with night temperatures hoovering around 20F!

                     

Some other exciting news this week: look who's officially an old fart now (65) and eligible for medicare:

                                         

He'd requested cinnamon rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner so I made a few .. or twelve!

                                      

     

          No calories in these .. 😂

Just kiddin' about dinner (only half kidding to be honest) but there were, also per request, BBQ ribs, his favorite birthday-dinner since he was a little kid!

Although this was somewhat of a major birthday we didn't 'do' anything special that day, mainly due to the fact that we'd had an ice-storm coming through the day before which left us with a thick layer of very, very slippery ice everywhere!

It's hard to see but that's all ice in the pic above, even the car was covered ..

Needles to say we didn't go anywhere!

I did venture out to feed my birds but I had to be creative getting to the feeders and not end up in the pond.
I ended up using two towels, changing from one to stand on and one to lay in front of me, thus making my way slowly forward .. and back.

At least they were grateful. Among the regular flock of Black-eyed Juncos and common Sparrows I know have some House Finches and a Fox-sparrow ..

   

                               
And although sugar-water doesn't freeze as fast as plain water, with these extremely low temperatures I had to freeze-proof the Hummingbird feeder somehow or I had to go out and defrost it every couple of hours.
As usual Googling gave me several options. I went for the easiest one which suggested somehow attaching some hand warmers to the feeder and covering it with something to insulate.

  

I actually used a spare water bowl that came with my feeder station, lined it with aluminum foil and bubble-wrap, inserted the hand-warmers (or in my case toe warmers) and strapped the feeder on top with some bungee-cords.
And it worked, it didn't freeze all day!

                                            

What helped a little as well was that the sun came out for a couple of hours each day although the overall air-temperature still didn't rise above 24F most days!

After a couple of freezing nights, and days, we had a little ice on the ponds but not enough to skate .. not that I have any skates anymore.

        


At least we did have a little winter this year. I take it!

Unfortunately the weather forecast is showing lots of rain in the near future again and soon all that beautiful white will be history.
Yesterday afternoon the clouds were already rolling in ..

Since it was too cold to go out for much longer than about half an hour or so I only took a few short walks to take some pictures each day but spend most of the day inside where our heaters did a great job keeping us warm and toasty.

Besides lots of reading, spinning and knitting, fixing all kinds of comfort food and (spiked) hot chocolates, I finished this cute and colorful puzzle.
Much easier than the previous one!

                                               

Not really appropriate for 'the season' but it will be spring again, sometime ... but hopefully not too soon.

I'd love a little more winter (famous last words)!