Snow Has Fallen, Lights are Up

But first, a couple pictures of the western sky just a day or two before the snow fell.

For a little while there, I thought we were going to have a repeat of last year - where we get a bit of snow in November, it melts, and then we get nothing but frost until the following January.  (I still am thinking we might have a pretty mild winter - seeing as a robin stayed here until November 2; there were still ducks in a local pond on November 17 and I saw swans fly over that same day; and I heard geese honking somewhere nearby on November 20.)
  But early in the morning of November 21st, it started snowing.

It was still snowing on the 22nd.  The bird in the following picture is a northern flicker (a kind of woodpecker), and he's supposed to have migrated by now as well, but he's still sticking around.

And by early afternoon of the 23rd, we had over 6 inches of snow.  (It kept snowing even after I measured that, so we probably have seven or more inches by now.)

Chickadee staring straight at me

On the evening of the 23rd, I went outside to take some pictures of our Christmas lights.  I got a few decent photos of the lights (and of a nearby little spruce tree covered with snow) before my fingers started to get too cold and I went back inside.

It stopped snowing sometime between the 23rd and the 24th, and on the 24th there was all manner of woodpeckers coming to our bird feeders.  All these

pictures are captioned with the names of the birds.  Note the size differences between all the woodpeckers.

Female Pileated woodpecker

Female Pileated woodpecker on the log feeder; magpie in the center; Northern Flicker sitting above the magpie

Male Hairy woodpecker on the log feeder; Northern Flicker sitting on the left

Northern Flicker finally gets his turn on the log feeder, and a chickadee is sitting on the feeder above and to the right of the log feeder

Downy woodpecker on the feeder with a chickadee waiting its turn

The sunrise this morning (November 25th) was pretty:

And then later that morning, my sister and I went out to check on the status of the pond.  It's nicely frozen now - I slowly and carefully made my way across, listening for any cracks or other sounds of the ice shifting, but I didn't hear a sound.  I didn't even hear any cracks when I jumped up and down in the middle of the ice, so it's definitely safe for skating now!  The only problem is that there's about four to six inches of snow on the ice, and although the ice will hold our weight now, I'm not sure it will hold the weight of the tractor yet, so we would have to shovel it off.  I would not have a problem with that - except that the wind today was bitterly cold and I didn't really want to be out shovelling in that!
  But whenever we get a chance to clear the ice, it's going to be nice.  The surface is beautifully smooth already.