A male cardinal was fluffed up in the cold and the ice...A plant coated in ice looked lile some sort of cut glass creation...Berries on ice...the photograph was taken Thursday night, Feb. 24...Guessing the bird on the branch in the midst of all the icicles was a hawk...it was pretty far away, though...

Crocuses...wintry weather...gardening...

Please read this...

The Journey Through Life during the past week or so was highlighted by all sorts of interesting things... but mainly the weather... again... seems like that’s been a weekly thing for a while.

Crocuses finally started to bloom in our front yard last week. We had about a half dozen plants in bloom with bright yellow flowers...and then the ice came...

All of the flowers were coated in ice. The plants, and the flowers, seemed to do OK, though...especially in the sunshine and temperatures around 60 degrees early this week.

The ice accompanied a winter storm which swept through our part of the world last week. The National Weather Service office in Paducah began alerting us about the potential for wintry weather early last week...

The weather service issued a winter storm warning for last Wednesday and Thursday. The forecast was calling for a fascinating concoction of “moderate to heavy mixed precipitation...mainly freezing rain and some sleet.”

Well, if you happened to look out your window last Wednesday and Thursday, you know that the forecast turned out to be correct...and then some... Yup...we even had some lightning and thunder on Thursday. The end result was a bit of a frozen mess. I even got to figure out how to get into a frozen car...again. 

However, when the sun finally made a return appearance by Saturday, the world around us took on a rather spectacular appearance.

The Other Half and her other half went on a ride early last Saturday afternoon. We motored along Skyline Drive in the direction of metropolitan Alto Pass...to see what we could see...

We made a stop at Cliff View Park in Alto Pass to see the sights...as did a number of other folks. If you’ve never been to that little park in Alto Pass, it’s well worth a visit. 

One word sums up what we saw during our Saturday afternoon adventure: Wow. We said that several times. 

While we were out and about, yours truly took lots of photographs, well, because that’s what I do. For the most part, the photos really did not do justice to the beauty we saw. 

In the midst of the ice and sleet and snow and cold, The Other Half continues to get ready for the 2022 gardening season. She has all sorts of plants growing in various places in our house...on our front porch...and in her greenhouse in the backyard.

She’s even trying to convince yours truly that I should start cultivating a green thumb. That is probably much easier said than done. As I think has been mentioned in this space before, I like cactuses. They don’t need a lot of care, which I am very good at...and they have sharp, pointy things, too...

Since I like peppers, The Other Half has convinced me to try to start my own plants. With her kind and very, very patient help, I mixed up some potting soil and compost over the weekend (well, I think that’s the stuff I mixed up). Then, I dropped some pepper plant seeds in the mix. Can’t tell you how many, though. 

We are now eagerly waiting for the seeds to germinate. They either will...or they won’t... Seems that pepper plants aren’t exactly the easiest things to start from seeds. We’ll see how the novice Johnny Pepperseed does... Stay tuned...

One more thing as we finish up... hope you got to see the segment about local newspapers on “60 Minutes” last Sunday night... 

The Gazette-Democrat

112 Lafayette St.
Anna, Illinois 62906
Office Number: (618) 833-2158
Email: news@annanews.com

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