Frosty New Year

2011 came in cold and frosty here. January is perhaps the month I like least. Festivities are over and the climb of the sun back north seems not to have begun. We wake in darkness and it's dark again by 4:30. Sometimes the sky hardly seems to lighten all day.When the high temperature for the day is hovering around 0ºC, there's no hope of working outside; inside, we need the lights on.

Still, when the skies are clear, it always means an overnight frost, and that does lovely things to familiar objects. Our metal rooster, forlorn in the backyard, gets a fine white outline.

Later, the rising sun turns frost on the roof directly into steam, which drifts past my window as I work.