Lake Effect...

It is snowing sideways tonight...nothing new about that sort of thing, it goes with the winter package, I rather like it when it seems threatening, the beauty of Lake Effect snow, it is fickle and drifts away, and sometimes it snows and sun shines at the same time, it's very pretty.

looking up, under the barn floor

Popeye's February Portrait

 I was trying to get a shot of the old seed pod, but it wasn't working out so well angle-wise...but the snow is certainly pretty!


A Portrait of Max, Nose and Paws - Stories to sniff and great rumors of travel, 2/11/2012

Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog’s paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumors of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog’s paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt.  It’s a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so’s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen - a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

After reading this passage one day quite a long time ago…I never saw a dog’s paws in the same way ever again. That’s the power of a good book. (That never made it into the movie.)

 Old Willy Big is well known for his dramatic sleeping positions...he's so cute. (Don't worry, the Piggy is okay.)