Daily gifts

We had a record-breaking January dry spell that ended last night. Today looked like this (from the clinic in town):

Talk about monotone!

While the clear, cold weather was a wonderful mood-enhancer, we need rain to make the trees and shrubs and flowers and grass grow – to make this part of Oregon look like Oregon. And we need that moisture to fall as snow in the Cascades to feed rivers, lakes, and reservoirs throughout the summer. This week should help those needs, according to the forecast.

I hope it makes our grass grow; the ewes have pretty much eaten it all.

Frost so heavy it looked like snow; we turned around.

A view of Mt. Hood from the saddle.

As the weather started shifting, we awoke to fog and heavy frost in unusual places yesterday morning. 

By this morning . . . well, refer to the first photo in this post.

Besides recent scenic blessings, there have been other gifts as well. Last week a church friend surprised me with this lovely antique piano chair that I had admired at her house. It made a great staging piece for my nearly finished Advent snack scarf.

Unfortunately, I ran out of the yarn I was using for the bind-off. It was one of the holiday snacks, and I have nothing the same color in my extensive stash. So I asked the others who had participated in the holiday snack exchange if they would be willing to part with that snack if they still had it in fiber or yarn form. Someone was, and her singles arrived today. I quickly plied it up tonight, and may finish my scarf yet tonight, too.

Other daily gifts have shown up in my IG/FB posts, shown below.

"Almost 180° of  color this morning! A bit past its prime because my phone was dead, but still glorious."

"Chuckie, begging for attention (he got some.)"

"Our God is so creative!"

"My black beauty has filled out a lot since I got her!"

"The sarcococca is powerfully aromatic all around–and INSIDE–the house right now."

"Good night."

"I love our downtown!"

The big news of the week is that I met with an orthopedic surgeon on Thursday who is willing to replace both my knees in one big operation. He says I meet his requirements of age, health, and fitness for doing it, and sent me on for labs and an EKG immediately afterwards; I meet with an anesthesiologist to go over the results next week. I don't have a date for surgery yet; the surgeon said March or April. I'm going to vote for April or even May, as my mom thinks her move-in date is May 1 and mentioned she'd appreciate me driving her in her car from TX to NE. And I really need to get my flock of 15 sheared and skirted before then, too. Now if Rick would just find someone else to run his office and a place to move it to....

That's it for now from . . .