PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

white christmas or transparently clear christmas, you be the judge

2004-12-25 - 9:36 a.m.

© 2004 by Elaine Radford

How to Lie with Photographs:

Looks like snow in the picture but it is actually the clear ice pellets

Talk about hilarious. The Northern Mockingbird in charge of yard and suet feeder is sitting on the fence. He fluffed and made as if to attempt to bathe -- after all, the whisper of the falling sleet sounds like rain -- but he couldn't get wet and he became frustrated. Now he is just sitting there with random ice pellets bouncing off his back. If a Mockingbird's entire posture could communicate anything, this one is saying, Some days it just don't pay to get up in the morning.

Some white stuff is starting to accumulate now. All excited, DH and I went out for a closer look. But it is just a pile-up of little clear round balls. No actual snowflakes. Up close, they're clear, but from a distance they give an impression of a light coating of white.

Not what I had in mind for a white Christmas.

The Mockingbird has given up on the shower now and returned to feasting on the suet.

Yesterday I grated two cups of carrots from my garden to make carrot cake. Timmy gave me the Christmas gift of actually eating the carrot stick I gave him. However, when I followed up by handing him a walnut, he figured I'd taken things too far, and he flung the walnut down. He doesn't want me to get spoiled by his attentions.

In the evening, I brought in all the conures for the next couple of days. Yes, I know how cold it gets in the Andes of Bolivia and, yes, I know that the birds have easily weathered colder weather before. But, heck, they're older now, and I guess I just feel like pampering them. I can always use the excuse of Christmas.

For Christmas eve dinner we had pot roast followed up by the carrot cake in question. Afterward we had the first fire of the season.

This morning I distributed the Christmas presents. Cookie got the same gift he got two years ago, and he almost knocked me over running over to start playing with it. The conures got their millet sprays and an opportunity to complain about being brought indoors around the Christmas tree. What fun.

Click here to return to the Peachfront Conure Files.

DH gave me some Swarovski crystal parrots that sparkle with rainbows. I put them on some round glass mirrors in the lighted cabinet where they can play with the light.

I have a perfect white blossom on one of my Christmas cactus. Yes! A Christmas cactus has actually bloomed on Christmas.

around 12:30

There are actual snow flakes coming down with the sleet now -- quite of few of them. So far, they aren't sticking. But I took the photo of the ice pellets collected in the heart of my sago palm, and they sure look like snow in the photo, don't they?

The thing I forget is how silently the snow falls, but it's hard to ignore when the ice pellets/sleet made so much noise yesterday and earlier this morning.

Holy hell, even as I typed this update, the snow really started drifting down. Too bad the ground is too warm to hold it.

You never know what day, what year, it will be the last time in human history that it snows on this spot. It could be today. It could be a hundred years from now. It could be today.

© 2004 by Roger Williams

Snow falls in Mandeville -- The Real Thing

Whoo hoo. I just ran outside and got snowflakes falling on my black velvet Christmas sweater. No sleet now, no little hard balls of ice pellet, it's all the soft stuff.

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