Back After a Week

I had to be away for a week.  I stayed with a family member that needed some surgery.  While I was gone I did not get anything done on my painted box project, but I did some more work in the Zentangle workbook.  I haven't taken any pictures of that yet.

I do have pictures of snow.  I drove up twice between snowstorms.  There was a lot of snow.  The local paper said it was the worst snow storm they had had in many years.  I guess most of the East Coast was snowed under.  In fact, from Texas to Maine we are having a series of storms that just won't quit.  No sooner than you dig out from one and the next one comes along.  We did not have as much snow here in Virginia as they have had in the Northeast, but it really is a lot of snow for here. 

I took a few pictures from the porch of the house.  On the way home I stopped at a scenic overlook and snapped a few pictures as well.  I used the camera in my tablet to take the pictures as I did not have my regular camera with me. At the overlook, the glare was so bright on the screen that I could not really see what I was taking a picture of, so I just had to point and shoot and hope I got a picture of something.  I wish that I better photos.  It really was amazing to see the whole valley and both mountain ranges covered with snow.  I doubt that my local readers will find snow pictures all that amusing at the moment, being as we are all pretty fed up with snow, but maybe we will enjoy them later.

We were fortunate that the day of surgery came after the snow storm.  The roads were well cleared and did not have trouble getting to and from the hospital.   It was a sit on the edge of your seat adventure watching the weather day by day hoping that we would actually be able to get to the hospital or wondering whether the surgery would be rescheduled to bad weather.  Fortune smile on us in this case. 

During the snow storm it was snowing so hard that the mountains disappeared.  All you could see was snow and fog.  It was very eerie to have the mountains disappear and reappear before your eyes.  The little house on the left at about the center of the third picture had some pretty chairs on their porch that were painted a Caribbean Blue.  There were also some decorative red flags on the porch.  They were just about the only pops of color on a landscape of white snow and dark trees.   It was very quiet except for the sound of snow sliding off the roof.  It was too cold to be outside for long.  Once in a while you would hear the sounds of children shouting excitedly while they were sledding on the hill.  However, it was so cold that even the attraction of sledding could not keep people outside for more than a few minutes.


The drive home was really beautiful.  There are many farms in the area and the rolling hills are all covered with snow for as far as you could see.  There was heavy snow in the mountains as well.  You could see the snow through the trees.  Some areas had pine trees, but most of the area is deciduous trees and there were no leaves to prevent you from seeing the snow on the ground.  It was very much a great view of bare trees and snow on the mountains.

 Today we are having another weather event.  It started this morning as freezing rain.  It is supposed to switch over to snow this afternoon, then go back to freezing rain.  Sometime overnight the temperature is supposed to rise to just above freezing and then we will just have rain.  At least we hope that is what is going to happen.  It is sleeting heavily at the moment.  Snow is supposed to come again on Thursday as well.  I think in between now and then we are going to have some warmer temperatures and rain showers.  At this point I would gladly have it rain.  I hope that it will melt away some of the snow.

Now that I am home again I plan to start back to work on my painted box.  I would like to complete it in the next week or so.  There is a lot of detail work to paint that many floral patterns on the box.  I think I have one more side to paint on the lid.  I have not started painting on the carcase of the box yet other than to paint a border on each side.  I am looking forward to completing this project.  The hand painted leaves and vines are not hard to paint.  Once I learned to relax and not worry so much about having everything exactly right, it started to come out better.  It does not have to be perfect.  It is the nature of this box that it is a simple pattern.