The forecast has snow for five of the next seven days and I am understanding the logic of having many different words for snow. I am repeatedly having to explain to Aidan that some snow is no good for snowballs and snowmen. We had a thaw day yesterday that turned the winter wonderland dirty and loosened the unbelievable icicles that were on almost every house. Last night we got just a sprinkling of icy snow which did a nice job of freshening things up and today it is cold and sunny and when Aidan and I came home from his playgroup today we crunched around outside quite a bit. It was so nice to be in the sunshine, even if we were all covered up. Aidan is the one who insisted on going out and I am glad he did, He walked all over for about an hour, sometimes just falling down intentionally and lying on the snow. He's sleeping now.

The path going up the hill leads to the compost pile. The snow drifts almost up to my knees in some places along that path. We wanted the pile away from the house in case of stink but maybe we needed a snow plan. The chicken coop is up there and I have been glad that there are no chickens in it. Steve and I were talking about what we would do if we had chickens up there in this weather. I have no idea how cold hardy they are. Steve said we'd just bring them inside the barn.

The icicles are pretty today but a couple of days ago they were mindblowing, reaching almost to the ground.

Our kitchen sink drain.

Here is a wide composite picture of the snow on the field next to the barn. I wanted to capture the web of footprints on it and I thought I could with the bright sun today but it didn't work out so well. There is another interesting thing here though - there are these depressions emerging in the snow, and in some places there is no snow at all, there is water and even when the temperature is 19 degrees with a windchill of 10, the water doesn't freeze. I never saw water down in this field before, it seems that with all of the precipitation, the groundwater is rising.