ENOUGH WITH THE SNOW ALREADY

It 

  Above--natural bling.

 Below--Nature's Munchian scream happened all by itself.

Enough is enough. When DC area drivers of snow ploughs stop working and  offices of the United States Post Offices  due to hazardous conditions it is time to turn of the celestial snow machine. Does anyone know how to do that? If so, consider raising the temp and slowing down the 50 mph window while you are at it. We have been  marooned since Thursday and there is no end of this relentless winter in sight. In fact, the forecast--I am starting to hate that word--calls for more snow on Sunday. 

It is comforting to hear that the National Guard is out helping DC area residents. Here at Little Macondo, we tough it out. My excellent neighbor Traci made a foray into Maryland a couple of days ago in her SUV--I hereby swear never to make  disparaging about humangous cars--and brought  back food for our dog and cats. We the bipeds have no shortage of good nomms. We have fresh maple cashew biscotti, bucatini rigati, fresh salad and baguettes. Our good friend Pyotr shoveled our driveway, brought in firewood-Morsolino, our wood stove is insatiable.  We have books, Robert Hicks's A SEPARATE COUNTRY, for example. Good stuff.  We will get through this.

SNOW STORM BULLETINS

Eerily beautiful  Nanking cherry branches.

 Sugar maple tree dazzles the eye.

The snow plow has yet to appear in our neighborhood. That is not surprising. We do not have the snow removal equipment for this kind of precipitation. And just as I type this,  I hear tits scraping sound of the  plow as it  labors past our house.  Shortly thereafter we have a brief  power outage. This inspires us to break out the emergency candle, oil lamps, tea lights.  

"Guard your snow shovel," counsels a friend. Good advice. There seem to be no snow shovels left at Lowe's Wal-Mart and general stores in our area. Crikey!  Occasionally, hooligans steal wood and snow shovels in our fair village .I am not worried.   The attack cats will deal with  thieves, should they show up. As a last resort we can unleash the Great Dane, but I doubt that it will be necessary . Purloiners of wood usually come in the dead of night to load their ill-gotten logs onto their cars. I'd like to see them drive through six inches of this wet stuff. More than one foolhardy driver has failed to negotiate our driveway in  good weather. Six inches of snow make  it  impassible. Goody. 

Hmm...not so goody that I seem to have  the flu. Oh well, I suppose I will be helicoptered out to the hospital if need be. For the mo, the family plies me with hot tea and soup. If neither cures  the cough, fever  and achy break feeling, being cared for helps the morale.

Local papers have photos of empty shelf after empty shelf in our supermarkets. What a bonanza for Safeway and Hell Mart. We stocked up early. The infanta baked bread today using a modified recipe from the King Arthur Flour site. Delish.

DC airports are closed, I hear. Apparently MARC commuter trains will not be running though a freight train just went by. More anon.