by 
Snowy sunrise
January 11 After a long spell of relatively warm weather, January reasserted itself with cold wind, sleet and overnight lows in the teens. Abigail and I trimmed and delivered a load to the brush site this past week before the weather turned. Now the forecast is for afternoon highs in the sixties in the coming week so we should have another productive week grooming SA. We’re going to tackle the garden and flower bed cleanup.
Rebecca signed up to answer calls for an outfit called Be My Eyes that connects blind or low vision users who want assistance, with volunteers and companies across the world, through live video and AI. She fielded a call in November and another in December. She said there are millions of volunteers worldwide but far fewer users. With so many volunteers, by the time a volunteer responds to a user call often someone else has already fielded it. She’s pretty excited about answering two calls already.
Jill and Kaylee stopped overnight here on their way to getting Kaylee back to Lubbock for the start of the spring semester. They got here just in time for dinner and were gone when I got home from church. Short visit but still nice to have them.
January 18 Jekyll and Hyde It was that kind of week. Monday and Tuesday were pleasantly warm with lite wind. Our project for the week was cleaning out the garden. We made good progress those two days but lacked a little finishing. Wednesday was forecast to be cool and windy but we wanted to finish the garden so we dressed for the conditions and worked anyway. We did finish the garden and, since it wasn’t uncomfortable, we worked on the rock and agave area just east of the driveway down 2005 way.
Kari decided to give up on the Stonehenge bed next to her house. It was a maintenance problem with the grass always invading it and attempts to rig a watering system resulted in watering the grass and weeds around it, too. I wasn’t sorry to see it go since it required trimming around. Abigail had already removed all but one of the rocks around it and put them around one of the large chunks of flint in the aforementioned rock and agave area. After clearing out the dead agave there, we tackled the rock that was the last vestige of Mom’s Stonehenge. It was a big piece of dolomite about 20 inches wide by four feet long by 10 inches thick. I suppose Dad liberated it from somewhere out in the McBride area but how he moved it I can’t imagine. Abigail and I could barely handle it. It was too heavy to lift. We put a tarp under it and dragged it as far as the driveway. Then we put a 5-inch pipe under it and sort of rolled it across the driveway. From there we painfully scooted little by little to where we wanted it, which was next to the juniper tree there.
Thursday was a marvelous day weather wise. The temperature reached 70° with lite breezes. Then Friday the temperature dropped and the wind blew. It was about 40 ° when Kari and I went to the Symphony but with the breeze it was very disagreeable walking from the parking lot to the building. Saturday morning started out with more of the same. Then it puckered up and snowed. The sun came out in the afternoon and melted the snow, but we enjoyed a nice fire with our berries and cream.
It was cold and windy all day Friday and that carried over into the evening. It was 40°, but, owing to the wind, it was the coldest dang 40° any penguin would want. It was gratifying to settle into our cozy seats once in the symphony hall. The evening’s entertainment opened with Fanfare Americana, a work commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the Globe News Center. The composer was, and I presume still is, Gavin Higgins, born in Gloucestershire, England. The conductor promised the piece would fill the hall with music and, sure enough, it did, if you apply the term music loosely.
The symphony itself was Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in E major. It went on and on and no matter how long we slept, it was still going on when we woke up. Sandwiched in between was Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo performed by Jiji Kim. Miss Kim was worth more than the price of admission. The piece is among my collection, so I’ve listened to it often. It is among my favorites. Kim displayed a lot of personality, none of which detracted from her performance. Her technique was amazing and her sound, backed by the orchestra was sublime. I look forward to hearing her again someday.
Aw hell, winter finally arrived. I feel fortunate I’m not joining the brass monkeys singing soprano. Walking back and forth to dinner last Saturday, what with the north wind and the temperature around 9°, was a test of will. We got a little snow, maybe three to four inches, good for a quarter of an inch of moisture. It seems we are getting one cold front on the heels of the last one, which is keeping the temperatures low, just not as low as last weekend. Rebecca and I managed to finish the tree census on Wednesday, plus a couple of other small jobs. We’ll have to endure another month of cold, at least, but I sure hope we don’t get another spell like this last one.