Winter is finally here

Well, its been an incredibly mild winter here in Connecticut so far - absolutely no snow to speak of until this week, when we finally got a couple of fluffy inches. Its really pretty out, and cold too, but when the wind isn't blowing and the sun is out it's very energizing.

I've noticed something interesting about the rhododendrons when it gets cold - you can tell how cold it is by looking at their leaves. When it gets really cold, they curl up tightly into little cylinders - you can see what I mean in the second picture in this post. Today it was about 15 degrees F, and you can see how they are curling. When its even colder they curl up almost all the way. I am thinking of doing the experiment to measure the diameter of the curl versus temperature, to see if this is at all predictive. Hmmm. Like I don't have enough to do.



Even though it hasn't been that cold and snowy, we are getting a lot of use out of our fireplaces and especially the Vermont Castings woodstove I had put into our bedroom when we remodeled a few years ago. For a long time, it just sat there and was a convenient place to pile laundry, but this year we've started using it and it is soooo nice to sit there and knit in front of the cozy warm stove or especially to fall asleep with flickering firelight and then the glow of embers. I got the smallest model they make, and still if I have the doors closed and operate it as a woodstove (and not a fireplace), I can get the bedroom up to 80 degrees in the dead of winter.

Anyway, it's kind of nice to have winter this week -