It's cold, I mean really cold

Fire Pit is chilly

Managed to survive the norovirus and live, and managed to catch it again. Had to take my husband to the hospital for some out patient surgery last Friday and lo and behold, I have succumbed to the stuff again. Be gone virus!!!

Seems as though loads of folk are getting queasy, so I'm not alone although this is the first time I have had a stomach virus.

I broke ice on the pond this morning so that the birds could get to some water, and I also chopped veggies, apples and other miscellaneous titbits for them. The ground is extremely hard and I am sure the birds are not used to this weather any more than I am. A killing frost!!

Frozen cloche

Several weeks ago I managed to paint a painting that became a gift to Jeff Forsdick, my sister's lovely partner in crime and life. Jeff lives around the 8000' level in the middle of no where, well I suppose that's relative, it's quite isolated. Any way, we stayed with Jeff and Agnes in October along with another visitor. Jeff's place is wonderful, in fact pygmy bunnies live around his home, they are quite endangered, and was also another inspiration for a painting of bunnies and snow. So I finished the moose and the pygmy, and then thought about England, and my Dad which of course means Bluebells and his passing in May.  Which could have made me really low but then my sister at Christmas time went snow shoeing with Jeff looking for fox under the full moon at the Green River, and I thought I'd do a fox in bluebells.

All of this of course is making staying indoors less boring, which is good, but I must admit I can hardly wait for it to warm up to around 50 degrees so that I can go outside again and keep my blood flowing and my fingers don't turn white from the cold.

There's a wee moose loose in the hoose

Incognito

Bluebells & Fox

Ughhhhhhhh.

The knowledge that Scotland, Wales, England and the whole of Ireland are considerably warmer than California and have been for weeks is not comforting. The only bright thing is that Northern California is no longer suffering from years of drought and now that the drought is over and no one, I mean no one has used their irrigation systems in their gardens since last October is a small miracle. Amazing that the water companies have now raised their rates because we are not using water, how nonsensical is that?

But back to the weather, yet again we are looking forward to another three days of chilly, cloudy dreary weather. I'm surprised my tomatoes have survived with all the hail, snow (yes snow) and stuff. Our temperatures are 30 degrees lower than normal. On the bright side the weather folk are promising the middle of next week that we should see something in the 70's. I have hope. I can dream!

The other part of the ughhhhhh, is that I sold a few paintings, that's good. However, I asked my husband to help with mailing on one of those awful tornado days, and he did, he went to the Post Office and mailed the painting in a bubble wrap envelope. I know I should have done it myself. Needless to say, the envelope which was not one of those packages with the cardboard etc. to prevent bending, was shoved in through the letterbox, causing major creases in the painting. Ruined. The customer has requested I create another painting the same as she purchased. How does one recreate a watercolour painting? I offered to refund but no. I'm not sure I can. The paper is masked off and I am procrastinating by blogging. Tick tock, tick tock .....

The breezeway is going up finally from the garage to the house so we don't get wet, I bet when we finish so will the rain. The screen clothe I bought for the vegetables is working, the hail is prevented from damaging the crops. Which leads me now my theory if I hadn't bought the shade clothe and hadn't built the breezeway our weather would be normal, and I'd have tan lines on my toes from flip flops.

One upside to being confined indoors is that I get to read and research some things. For example an interesting article about using human urine on vegetables, not sure about this one but like I said an interesting concept. I am also wading (no pun intended seriously) through Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I have time on my hands as I mentioned.