La Donna (Mother Nature) E Mobile

The cardinal is looking disgruntled. Small wonder -- he's sitting in a crab apple tree, surrounding by swelling pink buds, and the rain is turning to snow.

The slide show follows some of the weather fickle Mother Nature brought us Sunday and Monday. 

 

Light on a Grey Day

Rainy January days like yesterday are why I bring forsythia inside so it will bloom early. 

And in spite of the brilliance of the cardinals outside, the leftover Christmas lights add a welcome sparkle.

The Best Water in the World -- repost

When I was doing this post yesterday, we were in the midst of drizzle and fog, melting snow and mud.  Not a good day for pictures -- but I consoled myself with the thought of all the lovely moisture replenishing our water table so that our springs and branches will continue to flow and give life to the land.  Here's a re-post from February of  '08. Waste not, want not.

We're proud of our water, here in the mountains. "The best water in the world" we call it. A man may live in a tumble-down shack but if he has a spring above his house, he can dig down to the place where the water runs over bare rock, dam up a small pool, and pipe the water from the pool to a reservoir (which could be anything from a wooden barrel to a cast concrete box) and thence to his house. Gravity water, cold and clear and free.

Clifford, who with his wife Louise owned the farm we live on, told us how during the Depression he went to Detroit in search of a job. "And I woulda made good money too but I couldn't drink the water. Just got on the bus and come back the next day."

I grew up drinking the city water in Tampa and always assumed that was how water should taste. But after I'd lived in the mountains half a year, drinking the water from our own spring -- I was spoiled. Totally and completely. When I returned to Tampa for a visit, the water tasted so much like chlorine that I found myself using bottled water even to brush my teeth.

Our little spring puts out a tiny stream, the size of a pencil, but (so far, knock-on-wood) it's never slackened. It was adequate for our needs till our older boy went to college and began coming home for spring or fall break with five or six friends. The little spring just couldn't keep up with all the showering and laundry and flushing. So we had a well dug.

We planned to use the well water for the laundry and bathrooms and to have another pipe to supply the kitchen from the spring. My husband, the resident DIY plumber, was resigned to a long, unpleasant session in the cramped crawl space under the house, tackling this complicated reworking of our plumbing. Then we tasted the well water - and lo and behold, it tasted just the same as the spring!

The best water in the world!

Mackeral Sky

Mackerel sky, mackerel sky,
Never long wet, never long dry. 

That's what we had Friday morning -- a sky filled with rows of cirrocumulus or small altocumulus clouds, named for its resemblance to a mackeral's skin and usually indicating a change of weather.

The temperatures climbed into the forties, icicles were hurtling to thhe ground, and the sun shone all day. But the sky and the online weather forecast are predicting more snow on the way.

And on the north side, which includes our driveway, the snow hasn't melted. And it's not even winter yet.

The Rains Came...

On Sunday night the clouds began to roll in from the west...

Monday morning's sunrise was hidden in the mist...

And for two days we were cloud-cloaked, enjoying the gentle rains....

 Till on Tuesday afternoon the clouds gathered themselves up and began to move away.

Very little of Autumn's glory remains, save a few bright torches burning on the mountainside.

 

Misty Autumn

Yesterday dawned damp and misty -- a change from the bright days we'd been having. But moisture is always welcome, especially in the fall when the danger of forest fires is greatest.

The autumn color is more subdued in the mist -- but still quite lovely.

Days like this set me to thinking of The Hobbit for some reason --  of tramps through misty woods with the heavenly smell of the damp earth and the fallen leaves underfoot, and a return to a cozy fire and a mug of tea with the aroma of frying bacon and mushrooms in the air.

I do like weather -- most kinds of it.

 The cows are enjoying it too.

 

Remember. . . ?

Remember

December?

The air 

 Benumbed, biting, bitter. 

The wind

Blasting, bleak, boreal.

Each breath  

Chill,  crisp, cutting.

The earth

Frigid,  frosty, frozen.

The water

Gelid, glacial .. . . hyperborean.

 

Each day

Icy, inclement, intense.

And the weather report --

Nipping, numbing, penetrating, piercing,

Shivery, sleety, snappy, snowy, stinging. . .

Wintry.

Remember

December.

La Donna e Mobile

Monday's sunrise was a warning.

 "It's like living in Mordor," my husband said, as we watched the black clouds, like malevolent birds, blotting out the sky above us.

After all that irrational exuberance back on the weekend -- crocuses, daffodils, Spring, tra la -- Mother Nature dope-slapped us on Monday.

Rain turned to sleet; sleet turned to snow.

A good day for bird-watching . . .

Or watching Miss Susie Hutchins bird-watching...

But. . .
By mid afternoon on Tuesday, the snow was gone, the sun was out. . .

And Maggie and Dan decided to enjoy this pleasant side of Mother Nature . . . 
who, being feminine, is fickle.

Update - Drip, Drip, Drop!

Drip

Drip

Drop!

(Biggify this last picture to see the impact crater of the drop!)

Stalactites and Sundogs

As the temperatures soared into the forties and I drove toward Asheville, I saw any number of frozen waterfalls and stalactite-like ice formations on the rocks of the roadside. But then I spotted this beauty and had to stop and get a picture.

I'm guessing it was over twenty feet tall.

As I was returning, in the western sky I spotted a sun dog to the right of the sun and I had to pull off and try to capture it. Further on, where there was an unobstructed view, I could see sun dogs on either side of the sun -- but couldn't capture them and the sun on one shot.

Sun dogs are reflections on one or both sides of the sun, always at the same distance as the sun from the horizon. The ones I saw today were fairly vague -- click on the link for pictures that make it look as it there were three suns in the sky.

Wouldn't that be an omen!