Oh, Myrtle Mae, It's Cold!

It's so cold. When I left to meet friends at Zambaldi this afternoon the car thermometer said it was 19 in the garage. Not too too bad. When I got into the car to come home the thermometer said it was 4 degrees. Eesh. That's cold. And there was a breeze. The patio door was frozen shut when I tried to go out to top up the birdbath this morning so I left the drapes open and turned the furnace up a bit because there's a vent right in front of the patio door so I figured that would help. Something worked because I was able to get the door open a little while later to go pour a little water in. You can kind of see the top of the heater is exposed in this picture. It was cool when I pour the room temperature water in because the ice crackled and cracked when the "warm" water hit it. It didn't take long for the water I added to freeze but I saw a couple birds getting a drink right by the heater so I'll keep adding water.

Lots of birds today, too. First thing I was lucky to see the Red-bellied Woodpecker land on the round feeder and was fast enough to grab the camera before the rotation slowed down and it disappeared behind the feeder.

Then the Downy Woodpecker showed up to peck away at the rock-hard suet cakes. You know when the temp's in the single digits that stuff has got to be almost impossible to eat from. The squirrels have almost totally emptied the suet nuggets feeder. They fight over who gets to eat up there and no birds have a chance.

The Cardinal showed up too and even posed in the sunlight so I could see his regal redness. He shooed away a couple House Finches so that he had the feeder all to himself. The Mourning Doves make room quickly when he shows up.

When I threw my dirty clothes down the chute they didn't go far, a clear indication that I needed to do laundry. So I went down and sorted the chuteful of dirties and got started. The last load is in the dryer now and it's one I don't have to go down and hang up when it's done. I'll go down and take it out tomorrow. While I was waiting for the loads to wash and dry I drew gratitude journal pages for Friday, Saturday, and today but I'm only posting today's.

Today's flower was a Pincushion Protea. Once again it wasn't as hard to paint as I feared. I still press a little too hard on my brush when I'm trying to paint thin lines but I'm getting better. If I get really frustrated I reach for a smaller brush and keep going.

This morning while watching CBS Sunday Morning, I cast on a hat using both skeins of chunky baby alpaca holding two strands together. They're still not as thick as the super bulky I used for the last hat but it'll be a small kid's hat. Kids need hats too and they might as well have really soft ones.

I had a nice visit with B&TD at Zambaldi this afternoon. We caught up on what we're all up too and what my kids and grandkids are up to too. B&T are a couple we used to dive with and went to Bonaire with once or twice. None of us dive anymore but we agreed that we should have been in Bonaire this afternoon instead of freezing our butts off in Green Bay.

There's no mail tomorrow, is there? It's Martin Luther King Jr. day and I'm sure the banks and the post office are closed. Naturally I put a birthday card out to be mailed today and now it's going to be belated. Oh well, at least I managed to get it out before the day. It's the thought that counts, right?

I've got my critique group tomorrow morning. It's on Zoom so we don't have to go out in the even more freezing weather. It's only supposed to get to 2 degrees as a high tomorrow with a low of -15. On Tuesday the high is predicted to be zero. I'll be staying home.

--Barbara