Nov 20th, There's White Stuff on the Ground

The weather guessers predicted rain for last night and/or today - I woke up to snow. Wasn't much of a snow, just enough to knock out the television reception for a few hours and to leave patches here and there and my deck and the roads icy. It was maybe 33 degrees and the snow still falling when I got up this morning. It quit about 9am and the sun came out about noon. More of that white stuff is expected tonight thru Sunday night at my elevation. Looks like good baking and soup-making weather. Not much chance you'll find me playing slip-n-slide out there once it starts. I'll just hunker down until it's deep enough to walk in.

Apparently I had a critter try to cross the bridge over my pond last night. I found the large geranium plant that sits on the center of the bridge in the pond this morning. The pond has a pergola over it and we didn't have winds (it's a heavy planter, would have had to be extreme winds to move it). I had planned to bring it up onto the front porch today to protect it from the cold & snow but instead I found myself out in robe & slippers in falling snow pulling it from what I'm sure it thought was a watery grave and dragging it up onto the porch before I even had my coffee.

From what I've seen this past week, I'm thinking I may have a small bear hanging around. Monday morning I found one trash barrel pulled out from the carport and part way down the drive. The lid had a hole in the center and had been worked off the container. There was some trash strewn but there was nothing it wanted so it was easy to clean up. The other container was dragged to the other end of my property and behind the storage shed. And it was the heavy one!! I've had dogs & raccoons get into the trash but this wasn't their M.O. so I'm thinking not dogs or rac's; that leaves pooh bear. I put the containers in the shed for the night since the next day was trash day, closed the doors, crossed my fingers and hoped the shed would still have doors in the morning. Tuesday morning everything was as I left it, so I put the containers at the end of the drive for the trash dude and haven't put anything else out this week. I'm hoping that whatever my visitor was, it got discouraged and has moved on to somewhere that serves a better buffet. I bought a new container that's marked "critter proof", Knowing that my critters can't read, I'm not inclined to hold my breath.

Guess I'll make a quick run to the grocery store for some flour, butter, and milk before the skies let loose again. Everyone have a wonderful weekend; that's my plan!