brr.

My fingers and toes are cold. I just went out to feed the birds. It's still very cold -- it was well below 0F when DB went out to the bus this morning, and it was still only one-hand single digits above zero at 0900. There's three-eighths of an inch of hoarfrost on everything right now -- it's very pretty. The cardinals are especially pretty, standing out against the white rime on everything. If the sun was out, it'd be even prettier, but I suppose that might be asking too much.

There's just enough of a hard surface on the snow to make it hard for the dog -- she puts her paw down and it feels firm so she puts her weight on it...and breaks through into the softer stuff underneath. She didn't have that problem with the last storm -- the drifts were packed hard enough that it wasn't really soft underneath....

The house finches are beginning to show their summer colors, so we're nearing the end of winter. In other bird news, there was a northern flicker at the birdfeeder Monday morning.