In some churches, such as the Anglican, Lutheran and Catholic churches, today is the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. The pictures often show them standing in water during the baptism but it would be an extremely short service and a definitely a chilly one if it occurred in January in Wisconsin. And a baptism by immersion would definitely take your breath away, assuming you find a river with open water.
A Chilly January Stream
It seems like when the temperature finally gets above zero, then it snows like this morning. And the wind is blowing the snow sideways as well as making it hard for the birds to land on the feeders except for the feeder which the gray squirrel as commandeered (who is now a white squirrel with all the snow gathering on his back since he has been squatting for a while as I gave up chasing him off after the fourteen time).
But since it still below freezing, the bears should at least be hibernating yet so maybe the birds will be able to use this feeder since the squirrel hasn’t climbed the pole yet. This feeder disappeared last spring when the bear broke the pole and ran off with the feeder. It took a while before I found it behind a brush pile in the woods and the bear must have eaten a lot of seeds that day since he left some big brown piles on my lawn!
Snowy Bird Cafe
Now that the Twelve Days of Christmas is over, I am ready for spring! The moon was out bright last night and would have been a perfect night to go walking except for one tiny fact that the wind chill was in the warning range and frost bite could occur in less than ten minutes. And I figured with my luck, I would trip on a limb under the snow and would freeze to death taking a walk through the woods. But then it isn’t much better walking in the cold sunshine as the temperatures haven’t improved much. There are some critters tracks in the snow but I won’t be adding my tracks today through the woods.
Update : Just after the sun set this evening, three deer came walking up through the trees in this area. They were bouncing and running around so I they don’t mind the cold as much as I do.
Cold Sunshine Walk
“On the Twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me Twelve Drummers Drumming.” Twelve drummers banging on drums inside my house would be too much of a racket, as even one would be too noisy. It wouldn’t be a sound which would attract me to my true love, even though a tom turkey will drum in the spring to attract hens. He will drum a two note “pffffft, duuuuuuuummmmmm” forced deep from his chest either softly or loudly depending on the location of the hens. On another very chilly morning, the gobbler won’t be drumming for girls for springtime romance but could be calling the hens to see if they knitted a sweater for him. A present of twelve turkey drummers does have an advantage over a gift of twelve musicians since you could shoot the turkey and have a drumstick!
Twelve Turkeys Drumming
“On the Seventh Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Seven Swans A-Swimming.” The recent frigid and upcoming arctic temperature, the swans won’t find much open water to go swimming and might freeze in the ice if they don’t keep moving.
Seven Swans A-Freezing
“On the First day of Christmas my true love sent to me a Partridge in a Pear Tree.”
Well the song lyrics just don’t work for me since I don’t have a true love, the coyote ate the partridge and it has to be a very hardy pear tree to survive in my area and it would be a bare tree this time of year.
Bare Tree
When I was in grade school, it was our job to cut the Christmas from our planting of pine trees for a windbreak the first day school let out fro Christmas break. But since it was a windbreak, we could only take a tree where the trees were too thick so that meant a ‘Charlie Brown’ type of tree, which was usually flat on one side. The Charlie Brown tree did work well in a small room since the flat side could be pushed tight to the wall. One problem with the tree was that it would always grow after we cut it by the time we got to the house door!
This leaning tree might have fit into the Charlie Brown category since the deer rubbed off several rows of branches, although the gap is covered with the heavy snow laden branches, but since the tree was on the end of the row, it would have been safe from being a Christmas tree.
No clear, sunny sky for this Christmas Eve Day but then I suppose that means it won’t be real cold tonight for Santa’s reindeer but if Santa can bring the sun for our present, I think a lot of people would be happy.
Christmas Eve Tree
Rain yesterday, snow today. I guess Old Man Winter has returned but I still prefer the softly flowing waterfalls to the big falling snowflakes.
Streaking Snowflakes
According to the calendar, winter has officially started, but Old Man Winter doesn’t know he is doing since for a while this morning it was raining, or actually freezing rain, but now it is snowing again. And snowing means another cloudy day which is about the fifteen day straight day of no sun – I am starting to wonder if it still exists.
Start of Winter
When traveling around the countryside, you often see similar barns in an area either in the foundation or shape or style. And a few miles away, another pocket of barn style will appear, including this style of having the extra pattern at the ends of the barn. The upper half does stand out farther than the lower boards so I don’t know if they just lapped the upper boards or if they are thicker boards on the top half. Most of the barn in this style have the half moon window at the peak and the other other windows but some have a more flowing curve pattern to make then different from their neighbors. Sometimes you don’t notice the extra pattern when the barn wall is painted the same color instead of the two-tone pattern.
Decorative Barn Wall
