frost painted our lower field white at night, replacing also my last garden flowers with blooms of ice. snowfall keeps getting postponed but it's just as well, i still have to find the snow shovel buried deep in the shed. as long as it stays below zero, i'm happy, though.
it's a few days and a fortnight until the winter solstice. the sun isn't climbing very high these days. above is the highest it got at noon today. it's all fiery treetops and dramatic shadows lately. and sunglasses. it may seem counterintuitive but that low glare is blinding.
in the morning i leaped out of bed and into the living room thinking there was a party of mice in the bowl of nuts i'd forgotten on the side table, but the source of noise was in fact a very embarrassed looking vole who had become my first catch in the humane traps. (so they do work after all!)
i released the vole onto our upper field and told it not to come back, ever, and to tell all the other ones to stay away, too. i'm fair that way. but there's still poison baits to use if things get out of hand.
