After the Storm

Two weekends of snow and ice in south central Virginia…according to my friends and neighbors who have lived here their whole lives, this is almost unheard of. The storm began on Friday and didn’t let up until yesterday afternoon. We ended up with freezing rain and sleet, snow, more rain and sleet, and then snow flurries….the total amount of snow was only about four inches, but it fell on top of about two inches of ice. That’s what we measure on our driveway, anyway. Another weekend watching Mass on EWTN – there’s no way I can get the car out and up the hill.

We lost power only for a few hours on Friday night. The electricity went off around 10:30. John called it in, and the recording at the power company said it was a problem at the substation. We breathed a sigh of relief. That’s easier for them to fix than if a line went down on a back road somewhere in the middle of an ice storm. Sure enough, around 1 a.m, the power came back on. I was never so glad to hear the hum of the furnace amidst the constant hiss of sleet against the window panes.

On Saturday, I worked in the morning, and then we curled up in front of the fireplace with our books. I have been rereading my favorite mystery author, Phil Rickman. I made a pot of French onion soup. It’s the first time I made it from scratch and it came out terrific. I felt inordinately pleased with myself. It was one of the recipes that intimidate me – it sounded much harder to make than it really was. I even had a set of those fancy onion soup crocks with the lids. A neighbor back in Huntington was throwing them out and John snagged them for me. So I made dinner as if we were at a fancy bistro and served it in the fancy crocks. It was so much fun! It was just what we needed on a cold, stormy winter’s night.

This morning I snapped these pictures of our typical walking route. Enjoy this tour of our winter wonderland, after the storm.

Remember my flower garden? Here’s what it looked like today…

Dawn peeking through the woods…

The vegetable garden, far to the right of the shed, all covered with over a foot of snow from last week’s storm…and then some from this weekend.

There were flocks and flocks of robins everywhere. They were hiding among the bushes and trees near the road.

The farm across the road at dawn…cattle eating big rolls of hay…

Back at our driveway…thank you to the county for plowing. A convoy of work trucks passed me heading towards Pamplin around 7 a.m. Thank you to the people who plowed, salted, sanded, fixed the electricity and kept us safe.

…and rounded the last turn of the driveway, heading east towards the house and a hot cup of coffee, my adventures over.