The beauty of Winter........

We have a lot of crows in our area and for some reason they seemed to be gathering on our street. I found out from Susan T. (who I teach Primary with and she also lives 2 houses down from me) that her neighbor (some old man) thinks that the crows are hungry and started putting out seed and things in his yard and on the street for them to eat. Because you know that crows can't possibly find food on their own.....

So since about November when I would come home from work there would be huge flocks of crows all over the street. Well all this feeding has made them brave and they are venturing into all our yards to see what they can find to eat.

I went out one afternoon and there were at least a dozen crows in my driveway. It kinda freaked me out having them all there staring evilly at me. I kept thinking of the movie "The Birds".

So every time it snows they take refuge in my trees in my front yard. I hear them cawing, so I take my camera out to see if I can snap some pictures of them. Especially when they are just in the yard. It would make a neat picture of the black crows on the white snow. But every time I try they fly away.

Last Saturday (Jan 23rd) it snowed all day and like usual the crows started gathering in my trees. This time I snuck out my front door (which is sheltered by my roof that comes low and I have a hedge in front of it) and I managed to get a couple pictures of some of the crows in my tree. This was all I was able to get before they became camera shy and flew away.

The next day (Sunday) was clear and beautiful. I love it the day after a good snow storm. The sun comes out and the sky is sooooo blue and everything is so bright. It was so pretty I of course had to take a picture. This is the view from my driveway looking at Carol H.'s house.

Yesterday I awoke to the sound of snow blowers and 4 wheelers. When I looked out the window we had gotten somewhere between 6 and 8 inches of new snow. It was so pretty. Everything was covered in white. This is looking down my driveway towards the Udy's house across the street. There is about 2 feet of snow at the end on the drive where where the plows have been by and they weren't done yet.
I know I've said this before but I live in the best neighborhood and ward. I have shoveled snow for as long a I can remember, but when I moved into this ward and neighborhood 16 years ago there were neighbors willing to plow my driveway. Udy's across the street have a full sized Bronco with a blade on the front and when they are done with their humongous driveways (they have 2) they will come and do my drive in two sweeps. Then I have several neighbors with 4-wheelers so lately I have not had to shovel much at all.

This is a picture of Caleb H. (Carol's son) on their 4 wheeler clearing my driveway Sunday morning.Last night my friend Juli came over to catch up on things. We ended up talking till 11pm. That is always what happens when we get together. You might think that 11pm is not that late but Juli has to commute to Preston (Idaho) where she teaches 3rd grade. So she needed to get her sleep and so we had to cut our gab session short.

I received another piece of music from Dale J. to test. He is trying to get all his compositions down on paper this year. It is fun and challenging to work with him. He is doing his Christmas songs first, which gives me an excuse to play them even though it's not Christmas time.

I am reading the book "Skinhead Confessions: From Hate to Hope" by TJ Leyden and M. Bridget Cook. It is the true story of TJ Leyden, one of the most wanted and powerful leaders of the Skinheads, and how his life turned around. It is really good.