Winter Wonderland

 A strange thing has happened this week:  Winter.
It's not anything that anyone above the Mason-Dixon line would call winter.  What we're calling the Arctic Storm (the name is Enzo) is what my brother in Boston would call an average Tuesday.

But Florida?  This is weird.

There had been predictions of the storm, but I thought it was the usual have-to-predict-the-worst thing.  It has snowed here before  - like in 1989.  Generally we get a bit of frost, or a scaling of ice in the bird bath.

To be precise - some people got snow, but I didn't.  I got sleet.  It started Tuesday evening.  I was entranced by the sound of it.  Snow is silent - the little flakes just drift down.  Sleet is rain - but it didn't sound quite like rain, because it's frozen.  It sounded exactly like what it was - tiny crystals hitting the leaves and ground.  And later that night, when I looked out, there was a dusting of crystals on the car.

I thought that would be about it, and that it would all melt by mid morning Wednesday.  But early Wednesday morning I looked out, and saw this.

I knew it would all go away as soon as the sun came up, so even before I had breakfast I suited up and went exploring.  It was obvious that I wouldn't be going in to work (actually Suzie texted the volunteers and told us to stay home) because this is my driveway and bridge.  Schools and state offices were closed, and people told to stay home if possible, because we don't have the means to deal with snow and ice on the roads.  I watched videos of bridges being sanded by people sitting on the tailgate of the trucks, throwing out the sand by hand.

Walking around was weird.  Because this was 2-3" of sleet, not snow, it was fairly solid and I was just walking on the surface of it (my attempts at making a snow angel failed for that reason).  Of course I had to go down to the stream.

The theme song from Narnia kept running through my head.

So much weirdness.  Palmettos in the snow.

My dragon in the snow.

I had to take it all in.  Such wonder would be short-lived.

Guess what?  Not so much.  Thursday it was all still there (so couldn't go in to work Thursday).  It was getting into the low 40s, which meant a bit of melt and refreeze, as the nighttime temps were hitting the low 20s.  All this would just become more solid and slippery - so I shoveled a path across my deck.  I also realized that I should take that thick layer of ice off of the car.  For some reason, I do not keep ice scrapers around (reference that the last snowfall here was 1989).  I thought it was enormously clever of me to think of using my pizza peel.  Worked like a champ.

And, as what happens with snow (or frozen sleet) it was starting to get a little mushy, so I was sinking into it instead of magically walking across the top.   Annoyances have started to creep in already.  The book club at the library that I was wanting to check out was meeting Thursday evening.  The main road was clear - but I couldn't get out to it.  My bridge is narrow, with no guardrails, and a pretty good drop to the ditch below.  And it was still covered in a couple of inches of ice.

Even more annoying was that after  2 1/2 months of various delays and postponements, I was finally going to get my crown work done on Friday morning.  But I still couldn't get the car safely out - so that's been rescheduled.

For all the working outside (I also had to make the rounds every evening and morning to put various pipes on to drip and then turn them off, in addition to the digging and scraping) I was wearing my waterproof work boots and wool socks.  But my right foot has some circulation issues (courtesy of the rattlesnake bite from years back).  Thursday night I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that my toes were really hurting - badly enough that I couldn't get back to sleep.  I kept feeling them - no cuts, and I didn't remember kicking anything.   I finally got up to take some Tylenol and look to see what the problem was.

Frostbite.  In Florida.

It's not bad - sort of the cold equivalent of a first-degree burn.  But very unexpected.

For some reason all of this has made me feel very lazy.  I'm like a Florida bear, having gone into torpor.  There are, of course, many things that I could do inside, but I just sort of sat around.  With company.

(Noko Marie was also with us, just in another chair).

I also fed badly for my chickens.  Logically, I know they can handle it.  Birds can fluff up, snuggle together, and if they get cold they tuck their heads under a wing so they're breathing warm air.  I put them in the coop at night, and I've blocked off the windows.  But in the mornings when I open the coop to feed them, instead of staying inside where it's marginally warmer they come dashing out and it doesn't seem to bother them a bit.  But softhearted me has been cooking them pans of hot oatmeal for breakfast so at least they can start the day with a little fire in their tummies (it seems to be working - they're laying eggs like crazy)

So that's our winter.  Tonight it will be in the 20s, but hopefully warm up enough tomorrow (it's supposed to get in the 50s) that I can shovel the ice off of the bridge.  Fingers crossed that I can get to my rescheduled dentist appointment on Monday.  Things will slide back to normal.

It's been strange and surrealistic and I've kind of loved it.