Winter is here

This morning we woke to the first snow of the year. It was just a dusting but it stuck to the roads, which means that the very cold weather of the past few days had started to freeze the ground.

The picture above shows the view up Scott Street near the tracks. The rail crews never did come back and fix this crossing properly, though they may have intended to because there is still a pile of ties near the road. You can see the Rainbow cleaners on Walnut, which has a for-sale or for-lease by owner sign on the corner.

I pulled the last beets and carrots from the garden over the weekend. I suppose you could still have something in the garden, but not much. Speaking of gardens, when I had a garden plot by the farm at St. Joes a few years ago, the deer herd was a serious nuisance because the deer kept eating my plants. That fall and winter I sometimes saw about twenty in the fields west of Sparling. (I kept trying to take pictures but the camera I had then did not have enough zoom to show more than dots.) Over the weekend I heard that this herd has been considerably thinned through hunting, which explains why I have not seen it for the past year.