The world is covered in ice! 

I stepped outside to the sound of a thick rattling. Not a sweet musical pitch, more a deep thudding sound.

I tried to take a step forward and found myself without footing. I held tightly to my walking stick /ski poles they stopped me from taking a tumble.  Uriah was walking gingerly; he couldn’t get a foothold on the ice.  I decided, staying next to the door would be the safest place.

 It was ten o’clock in the morning. The temperature was over the freezing point.  Yet everywhere I looked my world was covered in a thick shiny ice…

This weather had started early yesterday.

By nine last night, when I took Uriah out for his last walk, I found the driveway coated with a ruff, white edged ice. At that time I was able to get a foothold, and take Uriah for a short walk.

As I walked out of the garage, I turned to the right, and chambered up the slight incline using my ski poles and Uriah, as a support.

The snow looked like butter crème frosting!  While the night before it resembled powdered sugar. I crunched though the top ice layer, and walked towards the vegetable garden and Uriah’s kennel.

Before I came outdoors, I had turned on the outside light above the garage door. That lit up the driveway and set a glow around the house.  

Once in the yard, I turned and faced the house.  On the northeast side of the roof I watched as water, illuminated as silver sheen, ran down the roof and over flowed from the frozen gutters. From there, it traveled down the light pole.  The water never made it to the ground.  It froze solid in mid-run, and coated the pole, and the light in clear ice.  

 The deck was an ice rink, thick as twenty coats of varnish. The frozen clothes line was still stretched above the lower deck and connected to the upper side rails. I had forgotten to take in the aluminum pole I used to raise up those lines. That pole was more than covered in ice. It looked like it was dipped over and over like a giant clear candle, its center a soft fuzzy grey.

The grill that sat on a square pattern of pavers was sealed and enclosed in ice.

I was outside only ten minutes. During that time it snowed big flat flakes.  Then changed to an ice storm of painful pellets, and then changed into cold rain, only to start all over again, with the snow.

This morning, I stood outside the garage door and worried about the trees!  Then the electrical lines!  If the winds picked up, before the temperatures rose enough to melt the ice, I will have broken tree limbs and no heat.

Suddenly, the grey skies opened and it rained. Hard!  Only for a minute and then stopped.   

Uriah, oblivious!  Happily drank up some of the rainwater.  Carefully picking his way around the ice, he walked over to me.  Without sitting on his hindquarters, he waited for me to open the door. He had enough of this wet, icy world!  

I laughed as he waddled inside. He will forget and ask to be let out. That should happen in about an hour…