We get some winter

A first taste of winter has brushed our fragile palate in Flyover Country. I took the first warning seriously last night, and today watched the skies and the thermometer as we unpacked boxes and such.

Just before dusk we were rewarded.



Barbaloot's mum was skeptical about our moving here from Colorado. As she read our local paper, she harrumphed: "Eighty percent of your county's roads are unpaved. Maybe that's why you don't have a State income tax in Wyoming."

Well, Grandma, a good number of those roads are called alleys, which by design remain unpaved in Flyover country. The rest are traveled only by pickup trucks, which do not care whether they cross pavement or dirt. And I'm quite happy to pocket the dollar difference.

But this evening as I stepped out to the sidewalk to take the photograph above, I felt the same comfort in a snowy evening that I've felt back East, watching big fat flakes tumble among pine boughs. It's what I imagine it must feel like in Switzerland or some of those World War II movies where the fighting has moved to the mountains in Germany.

I like the image and the feeling, and I share it with my few devoted readers. Though in this case it is no pine bough but a very big silver maple.

OK, now back to unpacking.