Snow Day

All dressed up and ready to go,
I went outside into falling snow.
Four inches deep it must be,
And nasty roads that I can see.
Drive in this? Of course I can,
Though an enjoyable day was my plan.
As I started to clean my truck off,
I looked around and began to scoff.
"Give your head a shake, girl." I said,
"Go back inside, go back to bed!"
So back inside I then did go,
Inside out of all that snow.
Now fully clothed, with tea in hand,
On bed with laptop I sit... not stand.
There are places I must go late afternoon,
And am hoping the snow will stop falling soon.

Alice Gypsy-Girl Price
February 16, 2012.

Vegan Recipe

Carrot Rice Casserole

2 C rice, cooked
2 C carrots, finely grated
1/2 C bread crumbs
1/2 C onions, chopped
1/3 C peanut butter
2 C water
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp thyme

Dissolve peanut butter into water. Mix all ingredients together. Bake in an oiled 2 quart casserole dish, covered, at 350 for 45 minutes.

This is a recipe from my favorite Vegan Cookbook (Of These Ye May Freely Eat). I cooked the rice (brown Bazmati); grated the carrots and put them in water in the fridge; toasted some bread and made my bread crumbs in the blender; dissolved the peanut butter in half the water the night before. The rest was done in the morning. I went to a pot luck lunch, took the casserole there and put it in the oven so it was fresh baked and hot for lunch. Everyone liked it a lot and most went back for seconds. There are no leftovers of this one. I will be making this again soon.

Weather Change

About a week ago our weather went from warm and sunny to foggy then temperatures below freezing which caused a lot of hoar frost to form all over everything. for several days we had such a beautiful though very white world here. Now we have returned to the plus side of temperatures. Today we had a high of 6°C and that is the forecast for tomorrow's temperatures too, with a bit of sunshine thrown it. My yard is getting very muddy with the melting of the little snow we had and all the ice that built up over the winter. It is early for winter to be over, but a girl can hope.

Scents

It seems that so many people these days are allergic or overly sensitive to scents. Everywhere you go women's perfume, women's cologne, and likely even mens cologne is forbidden to be worn.... and then you meet the odd woman who is absolutely drenched in strong smelling perfume. (gag, gag, cough). I still really enjoy the scent of a man wearing cologne, or even being near a woman with perfume, so long as it is not ever done. Everything in moderation! I also love the scents of flowers, of leather, of horses, of fresh cut hay drying in the fields, and of course, fresh baking or dinner on the stove. Yes, I love smelling lots of things, some very unusual things included.

Hoar Frost 2

I was looking at the Environment Canada Weatheroffice on the internet. We still are having fog all day around my place, though other parts of this area have gotten sunshine over the last day or two, or so I heard at the store today. The forecast I read is for warmer temperatures starting tomorrow, a possiblity of a wee bit of sun tomorrow though clouds for the rest of the week, and possible rain and snow all this coming week. Not my favorite weather, but it is February. Just 3 weeks and it will be March, thank God.

Here are some more photos of the hoar frost from my Adventures in Wonderland 2 days ago.

Movies

Something I've been doing a lot of lately is downloading movies off the internet. This is not quite the same as dvd duplication, though I could burn the movies to DVDs. So far I have just been saving them to my computer, then moving them to my external hard drive to free up space on this laptop. Eventually, I will get the necessary cords to hook up my older laptop to my 51" Plasma TV and watch the movies on that. I think that will be so much nicer than watching them on a 15" computer screen. Also, I plan to hook the TV up to a surround sound theater thing that a friend of mine said he has and I can use. I just have to wait until he gets back from working in Alberta.

Hoar Frost

The other day, with nice warm weather and sunshine, we got some fog in the evening. You see, the city I live in is built on 3 lakes and I live just across the highway from one of those lakes, then in the hills behind my place is a small lake, the 4th lake we have here. With all this water, it's not surprising we get a lot of fog at times. That night, with all the fog, the temperatures suddenly dropped and everything froze. This resulted in the dampness of the fog forming into hoar frost on trees, blades of grass, weeds, wires or all kinds, etc etc. Here are a few photos of the hoar frost.

Frost on the leg of a wire tomato cage that is laying in the yard.

The wire fence covered in frost is the north west corner of my property, the tree is on the neighbor's land.

This is the north east corner of my place, the highway and neighbor to the east.

A more distant shot from the top of my driveway looking towards the north east corner.

Looking up the driveway, you see the fence between me and the neighbor to the north. The trees are mostly on their land.

I love the beauty of hoar frost on everything... and I think it would be so much more beautiful if the fog finally went away and we had clear blue sky with the white frosted trees and such. Maybe tomorrow.