From My Kitchen Window – Snow from Last Year

Last winter we had some snow here in February.  It lasted more than a day which is very unusual here.  I managed to take some pictures of it from my kitchen window.  I just thought I’d share some with you. :-)

I love to watch snow fall when there is not strong wind with it.  It is so peaceful and restful.  But, I don’t enjoy dealing with slippery roads and long winters, so I’m just as glad to live where we don’t get much. :-)

Here is some of the accumulation on the ground.  Just the right amount. :-)

This picture was obviously not taken out the kitchen window. 

Snow is so beautiful!  Have you ever looked at it close up?  Next time it snows a fine snow where you live take a magnifying glass and dark piece of fabric (a coat, a blanket, a towel, etc.) outside.  (Note, don’t take something from the warmest part of the house or it will take a few minutes for it to cool off enough not to melt the flakes almost instantly.)  Lay the fabric out and allow it to collect some flakes, then look at them through the glass.  They are gorgeous even with out a magnifying glass.  I enjoy photographing them if I can. 

Job 38:22 Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,

(Note: In the context of the passage this is taken from it seems to me that the treasures of the snow and hail are storehouse type treasures.  This is an interesting thought to me.  God uses gold for street paving and treasures (stores up) snow and hail.  We humans sure don’t think like He does!  Isaiah 55:8-9)

That snow “storm” in February 2010 was a good excuse to make hot chocolate at my parents’ house.  My sister-in-law has a dandy machine for this that works really well.  She brought it up and made some for those of us who were home at the time.  You just add milk, chocolate chips and maybe a bit of sweetening depending on how dark your chocolate is.  Turn it on and in a short time you have yummy hot chocolate.

She still had melted snowflakes in her hair when I took this. :-)

From My Kitchen Window

I have one window in my kitchen.  It is opposite the sink and counter where I work, so I don’t get to look out of it while I’m working much.  But, I do get to see interesting things from that vantage point from time to time. 

Actually, there is a sort of window over the kitchen sink, but it opens into the living room now since some former owner of this place made a large living room/sun room addition (a room for which I’m very thankful).  The window where I can see outside was originally the dining area window, so it is a full length window, though not wide.

Not everyone has the unique experience of having a peacock peeking in their kitchen window.  It was a bit startling at first, but he is really harmless, though apparently quite curious.

This bird is a stray that showed up at our neighbor’s house at some point.  She doesn’t know where he came from, though there are some other “wild” peacocks in the area.  She calls him “Petey”.

I think Petey first got interested in hanging around outside the kitchen window when I had birdseed in the feeder out there.  He seemed to think that it was for him. :-)  It *was* the perfect height!  (That is my parents’ grill on the left.  It was later moved to their deck.)

I haven’t seen him for some time now, but he was a regular visitor around here for quite a while.  He wandered with the neighbor’s guinea fowl, and seemed to think that he should show off for the females sometimes and that he was responsible to look out for the flock.

A female pea fowl – a peahen – showed up here this last spring, and sometime after that Petey stopped hanging around so much, although he was very interested in her at first.  She raised a brood of chicks (Petey’s??) under our bedroom window – and after hatching all 6 eggs managed to lose the whole lot within a day or so.  (There are a lot of small animal predators around this area, including feral cats.)

Here is Petey with the peahen as seen from my kitchen window.  (I have tried to refrain from naming her as I don’t want to get too attached to her!  I’m too sentimental to be getting attached to a stray peahen that doesn’t know who she belongs to!)

There has been another peacock around sometimes too, but he is not as friendly, or as nosey, as Petey! :-)