Another sunrise

I'd take photos of something other than sunrises if I was home during more daylight hours.  I guess the time of the year has come for me to take all the week's photos for Roundtop Ruminations over the weekends again. As you can likely tell by my photos this week, I resist doing that for as long as I can.

A little snow still remains on Roundtop Mtn. This morning it is a bit patchy.  I had ice in the chicken water and ice on the front deck that didn't freeze dry overnight.  Roundtop ran its snowmaking guns last night.  They aren't really making snow for skiing yet. The weekend's forecast for warm weather will prevent them from that.  But they did run the guns and check the water lines to make sure all is in readiness.  If December's temperatures are normal, they should be snowmaking for real sometime around the middle of the month.

I am slowly, perhaps too slowly, settling into my winter-time mode around the cabin.  I haven't yet gotten used to bringing in the chickens' water overnight. I switch the water containers in the morning and bring inside the water container frozen from overnight so that it melts during the day.  Last night I forgot and had to pour hot water on the waterer to melt the ice and replace the water.

I am doing better about bringing the bird seed in overnight so that I'm not awakened at 3 a.m. by the raccoon raiding it.  Actually, it's not usually the raccoon that wakes me;  it's Baby Dog's frantic barking when the raccoon is on the back deck. In any event, being awakened in the middle of the night gets old fast, so it doesn't take long even for an old brain like mine to remember to bring the seed inside at night.

Even as little snow as fell the other night is enough to look for tracks around the cabin. A rabbit that I haven't seen for a while has hopped all around the cabin.  Deer tracks follow my tire tracks up the driveway before heading off into the woods. Bird tracks alight near where the snow is especially patchy.  I assume they have more luck finding food in those bare patches than looking in or under the snow.  The little birds just come to my feeders. They are waiting well before dawn for me to return the feeders to the outside.  I carry it out before I or the dogs have eaten.  In near darkness, the birds are already waiting, perched on the tree limbs and the deck railing..