I know that all you snowbirds roosting in Florida and Alabama and Mexico want to see how winter is going up here. This is your lucky day. The weekend inspired a flurry of emails from the photographers in the neighborhood.
Katherine wrote: brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! It’s cold. With a high of 16 today, and it’s already 15.6, I doubt if the extra 4 tenths of a degree will feel all THAT much warmer. The dog still loves her walks. It takes 15-20 minutes to get ready to go out for me. All the while she looks at me as if to say “I thought you said we were going out…”
Yes, I thought. That comports exactly with my experience. Then Andi Laidlaw weighed in. Andi is a woman of few words. Subject line, yesterday Spume in front of our place, and image:
It pinned my ears back in wonder and amazement. I turned part of it into that snazzy new TLV banner. I sent Andi an email thanking her and added: I can’t believe you had a minute’s worth of sunshine yesterday. I moved around inside a cloud of blowing snow. Back came: It was exactly one minute of sunshine! My fingers were freezing down there in that huge wind; it almost blew me over. I can believe it. It was fierce out there.
For my own contribution . . . I contemplated the steps up to the Writing Studio and Bait Shop with despair.
I can hear you giggling all the way up here. Cut that out!
Torch Lake Views 
P.j. grath
January 17, 2011
No snowbird this year but a fellow–what should we call ourselves? There’s a challenge. Is there a term for birds that stay all winter? I was wondering about your cool new banner, and here was my answer.
Gerry
January 17, 2011
Chickadees.
katherine
January 17, 2011
WOW!!!!!!!! Andi!! Cool photo!!!!! Enough exclamation points
Gerry, before I looked at what you said in response to the question “what should we call ourselves?” I thought ‘Chickadees’ so, you know what they say about Great Minds…
Gerry
January 17, 2011
Prob’ly something in the water. And Andi rocks! But then so do you.
Fee
January 17, 2011
I was thinking Robins (http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/robin.htm) but I forgot they’re native to this wee island! They’re tough enough to survive (although a little help doesn’t go amiss) and the sight of them never fails to cheer me up.
Love the picture, by the way.
Gerry
January 17, 2011
I will tell you a secret. The robin lives in Michigan, too, but at least in northern Michigan, it is a snowbird! A little adverse weather and it’s off to the Bahamas or wherever it spends the winter, and we don’t see it again until the spring. It is the State Bird, which I think is a disgrace, but there you go. Mind you, I like robins. The sight of them cheers me up, too, largely because that means we are past the worst of it. But for steadfast comraderie and a cheerful disposition, give me the chickadee. (Or the tiny Scottish woman in her highheeled boots, but that’s another post entirely!)
Anna
January 17, 2011
LOL What a delightful post to read! You wrote: “It pinned my ears back in wonder and amazement.” I haven’t heard that expression “pinned my ears back” in years and I love it. Beautiful photos, as I love the cold feel in the first, and the vibrant colors and wild spray in the 2nd, and the long snowy steps up in the 3rd.
Gerry
January 17, 2011
Glad you liked the photos, Anna. Something on TLV a long time ago made PJ Grath write that her ears were pinned back and I adopted it. I like it.
Nye
January 17, 2011
Brrrr, it does look extremely cold. The last photo looks so peaceful, the snow so white and fluffy. I see it’s still snowing there.
Gerry
January 18, 2011
It snowed and it snowed. It’s stopped now, for the moment, but there are still piles and piles of fluffy snow out there. The Cowboy is chewing the iceballs off his toes.
Karma
January 18, 2011
No giggling from Massachusetts! We are still buried in last week’s 18″ and today school is cancelled again due to a few more inches of snow with freezing rain on top.
Andi’s wave is stunning!
Gerry
January 18, 2011
The power and the glory, that’s what I say.
kanniduba
January 18, 2011
The bitter cold I could live without I will admit, but I’m not yet sick of the wonder and beauty of this winter. Never have I seen such huge billowy snowflakes as I have this season…stunning!
Gerry
January 18, 2011
I love those big billowy snowflakes, too! My theory is this. The northern soul does not mind the cold so much, if it is allowed to have fat flakes falling from a deep indigo sky. We live for those nights when we can walk the dogs through such a snowfall, our boots squeaking in the cold, our breath smoking.
What makes us nuts is endless gray days of sleet and slush and frozen well lines. But we can accept the tradeoff if we’ve had those big, billowy snowflakes . . .
flandrumhill
January 19, 2011
Andi’s photo pinned my ears back in wonder and amazement too. Wow!
Those stairs look daunting. Pretty with that icing of snow, but daunting nonetheless.
Gerry
January 20, 2011
They daunt the heck out of me, Amy-Lynn. They make me wish I had, as Mrs. Uhdd says, “a paw on each corner.”