Getting Warmer

Against all imagining it got warmer overnight rising up from 19 degrees yesterday afternoon to 32 degrees at 7 o'clock this morning. Through the day it warmed up all the way to 34 degrees. You can see that the birdbath glacier was receding by the time I went out to fill it up this morning and it was all thawed by lunchtime. But it started snow flurrying after dark so all the snow that melted today is being replaced. I don't think we're supposed to get an appreciable amount of snow but they were also talking about freezing rain or rain falling on frozen pavement. Not good.

The Christmas cactus flowers on the back side of the plant are now blooming. There's one bud that's not opening yet but the other two are in full flower. This is a banner year for this plant. Now if I could only figure out what I did different that made it bloom so much this year so I can do it again next year I'd be happy.

The Downy Woodpecker swooped in for a suet cakes snack and I'm sure it had a much easier time of it since it was warmer so the cake had to thaw a little bit. I was amused watching it because a Sparrow would land on the suet cake and the Woodpecker would lean toward it and try to shoo it away. It had to do that a few times before the Sparrows left it alone to eat in peace.

And I decided to have a do-over with one of the Art of Sketching videos to see if repetition helped. It did a little but I still can't manage to draw without copying his sketches. I despair of finishing the rest of the videos in this class. Actually I'm intimidated by them. I keep looking at the titles and thinking, no I can't do that.

I spent a lot of the afternoon reading, rereading, and making comments on the submissions for Monday's critique group Zoom. It was a pleasure to read such good writing. I mostly have nit-picky punctuation and grammar comments and then finish up with a few comments about the way the stories are progressing. It's fun.

I paid the property taxes today. Well, I mailed the check. It's always a bit of a wrench to write that big check and send it off but it didn't go up TOO much from last year so I'm content. And I didn't have to raid my savings account to pay it. Whew.

I spent the evening watching White Christmas on Amazon Prime. I do enjoy it. I tried to watch It Happened on 5th Avenue on the recommendation of KW but it wasn't free to watch and I wasn't in the mood to pay to rent it. Maybe I'll see if the library has it.

While I watched the movie and a 2-part Midsommer Murders, I knitted on the avocado Alpaca Warm One hat. I'm three rounds from being finished so I didn't take its picture. I'll do that tomorrow night when I've finished it.

--Barbara