Middle of the Week.....Cold!

The downey woodpecker treats me to some new views of him while he feeds. The crescent red top notch is a great accent to his black and white striped body.  I can’t tell for sure but I think he still has lots of suet yet to work on for a while.  Our squirrel was trying to eat from the cage but he didn’t succeed.

We did have a normal sunrise this morning with a cold clear sky.  Barney went out with my help to face the very cold morning. It was -22 degrees F. this morning and it did take my breath away when I went outside.  I read later on the new stations that one should not talk out loud while out there because that cold really overwhelms the lungs. I am grateful that the winds have died down.  All schools are closed, the post office is shut down, and driving anywhere is unedviabale.

The tracks in the snow shows that heavy traffic of birds, one squirrel, and one rabbit. It looks like I need to make a quick run to that feeder again to keep the seeds pile going.

The trail from the blue spruce to the feeder is traveled by both the rabbit and the squirrel. The sprig of an herb sticks up from the snow at the bottom right side of the photo. The birds do a good job of scattering seed below the feeders but I still try to toss some down to help out the rabbit.

I saw many gees fly over the past few months but I never had the camera with me. This photo is showing you two batches of geese flying in the distance.  The roof sections almost seem like mountains sticking up in the foreground. The zoom is at its greatest and I did get the shots of them.  I didn’t think I had documented them. The subtle clouds are showing  oh so slightly.

More clouds late afternoon yesterday were picking up the setting sun’s rays.  It was sort of pink in the west but I couldn’t get out there to photograph it. When I am shut in I realize that I am very limited in seeing out three directions of our house.

I took so many blurry shots of the house finch.  I can’t take shots of the birds while sitting at the far end of the dinning room table looking though the sliding glass window. I guess I need to start shining closer to the sliding door.  So this is my one good shot of the house finch with its red feathers on his head.

Being housebound does limit the things I can do.  I cut a mat yesterday for a photo that a minister friend had given us.  It was a photo of a large painting that hangs in Kansas City Art Museum.  The painting itself is huge and was painted by Fredrick Edwin Church in 1870.  It is a grand view of Jerusalem.  It is said that when he finished this large work that a gallery opened up one room and showed the one painting only.  The think now is that we need to find a gold frame for the painting/photo and then I can finish assembling it. I will share the finished work when it is done.  You who are internet wizards can look it up ahead of time.  I found the painting on sale at Wayfair. I have another frame job to do of a print we bought years ago at Duluth Minnesota. It is a scene painted at Crooked Lake in Minnesota.  I will also share a visual of that when I get closer to that completion.  The print is unusual as I can’t seem to find it on any place of the internet for sale.  I wanted to see what it was worth now.

It is just too cold to feel safe.  Our house pops and cracks as the coldness is greater than ever recorded in history.  Wood gets cold and shrinks in new houses.   One can hear that as the connect surfaces slide. I added a porch on an old house a few years back and the first winter we would would hear loud popping sounds in colder weather.  When my dad built a house on the farm in 1959, he used salvaged two by furs from two old house to create the wall studs.  The rest of the wood was new.  We spent many a winter hearing the wood pieces meld together. I did read on a net article that our houses have never ever been challenged to withstand this degree of coldness, so our furnaced will have to be cranked up from the normal settings.  I do notice when the furnace reaches its temp and the het goes off, instantly the windows are putting out cold air more readily than if it was at a 32 degree temp.

Everyone take care.  I see a lot of my blogger friends are staying close to home today.  The map of the vortex is covenant a lot of stated.  Do be careful and thanks for stopping by today.