something you don't see every day

it has been way too long since i blogged anything. i admit to finding less to expound about from the holler in winter, but that's no excuse.

this winter and subsequent spring have been banner seasons for the heading above, starting with a freak snowstorm in early march. as my paternal unit put it, you usually see headlines on weatherchannel.com that say, "major storm heading in south of cincinnati." in this case it was "the storm front is south and east of I-69" and was it ever! a wall of muffling white that stretched from cleveland, ohio to the southern reaches of tennessee, dumping its worst on us here in rural kentucky. twelve to fifteen inches, they said, and i scoffed. but the snow started to fall on friday morning. by the brief lull around 2:00 in the afternoon, a fluffy six inches was on the ground, soon to be coated by a thin layer of freezing rain. the snow picked up again that night, and by morning, darned if we didn't have the fifteen plus inches they'd threatened us with. and though it had effectively cancelled some plans, it was difficult to be grumpy watching two goofy dogs and a three year old try to manuver through snow up to their bellies and knees respectively. so we tried sledding and snow boarding down our hill, thankfully with minimal casualties. we tried snowballs, but they didn't pack. we built the requisite snow man, whom the dogs later killed. the munchkin looked out the window the next day, as the snow was already half-way melted, and said, "the snowman is dead!" the dogs had knocked him down. thus was our here-and-then-gone snow storm in the first week of march.

apparently the heavens hadn't unleashed enough precipitation on us. after last summer's drought, winter has been an irony of rain, continuing hale and hearty into spring. last week, after five straight days of rain, the river crested a foot short of flood stage on the side of town where the library sits. houses along the riverbank found themselves suddenly more like lake front property. i can only imagine looking out the back windows of those houses at the brown water that had swallowed half of their back yards and asking themselves, "do we pack up now, or will it go back down again." recede it did. leaving behind more debris than it took with it. and still april has been rainy and temperamental: good for my cistern, but giving the folks in town more than their fair share of headaches.

and speaking of headaches... tax season brought me to the library early on sunday morning to make use of the fast internet connection and turbotax online. as i drove, dread-filled and half-asleep, towards town something caught my eye atop a farm gate on three loop road. this is a small plot of land with the most spectacular assortment of animals. pygmy goats mill in with the horses, and some of the most amazingly plumed and tufted black and while chickens occasionally stray into the road from this house. but the most extravagant attraction this morning was what looked like a gate-post that had sprouted willow-like branches right out of its top in the dawn-light. i rubbernecked shamelessly, slowing down to observe this phenomenon, and found that it wasn't a post gone to seed, but rather a peacock sleeping with is head under one wing and his rainbowed plumes hanging down behind him. just as though he felt my scrutiny, his head came out from under wing to watch me drive past, and i could have sworn his expression said, "what? isn't this a perfectly normal place to sleep?"