The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful

The good thing about a dripping faucet on a really cold night is that water won't freeze in the pipe and potentially cause it to burst.  That's happened before.  The bad thing is that a constant drip could, with our low-producing well, drain it dry.  That's happened before, too.  The pump runs on electricity, so dripping water equals a higher bill.  All that being said, with a slow drip it is possible on a freezing-cold night to end up with a beautiful crystal stalagmite such as I found yesterday morning.  It really surprised me as I am very careful, aware of all of the above, to turn faucets off tightly.  I can only think that perhaps a bit of ice was in the mechanism when I'd finished filling the chickens' waterers the night before.  With the weak warmth of the morning sun, I shut the faucet and stopped the leak.  The column of ice sure was pretty, though.

The day progressed to warm up to almost comfortable.  Camille and her dog Honey came over and we made a quick trip to the feed store; her truck was on the fritz.  Honey called shotgun, and was disappointed that she was relegated to the back seat.  After we dropped a couple of bales of orchard grass at Camille's place for Shadow, the mini-donkey, they came back so Honey and Bessie Anne could have a play date.  After a few rounds of "Chase Me," Bess preferred  to sit in the kitchen and listen to the grownups and Honey picked through the toy basket for anything left with a squeaker, which she pulled out and dispiritedly chomped.  "Weekie, weekie, weekie," punctuated our conversation.

The ground thawed enough during the day that I was able to scrape away enough dirt to open the gate to the chicken pen without a battle.  In the morning, I hadn't been able to squeeze in with the bucket to give the little girls a slurp of milk to start their day.

It's about thirty-four degrees this morning.  I think it's going to be a beautiful day.