December 1

.

First snow!

I don't think I have the right equipment to take good pics of snowflakes.

If you sort of squint, you can see a couple of individual flakes. Almost.

Oak leaf, with snow.

A very tight crop from the lower right corner.  You can see some snowflakes here.

Tantalizing!  To get this much, but to see how much more was there to be gotten.......  Ah well.



Rock, with weed stems and dead leaves.  In the snow.

And because it's our house, you knew there would be some of these.

Snow is excellent, but here is the truly exciting news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First, the backstory...........................

When we first bought the house, we had a Maverick and a Chevette.  They both went into the (nominally two-car) garage, no problem.

When we had a baby, we discovered that putting a baby into a car seat in the back seat of either a Maverick or a Chevette was no fun at all.

We bought a minivan, and sold the Maverick and the Chevette.  The minivan fit nicely in the garage, but there was no way we could fit another car in there, too.  Which was ok; we had only a minivan for many years.

Eventually, the first minivan got old, and we gave it to the battered-women's shelter and got another minivan.

We managed just fine with one vehicle, from the time our daughter was a baby.  Until she went to high school.  The high school is 1.5 miles from our house.  Not a bad walk, but if you need to swim after school, get home and eat, and go back to school for choir practice, you just can't manage all that travel on foot.

I bought a friend's father's Sundance for kid-ferrying.  But it was a tin can, and it had a stick shift.  

When our daughter was driver's ed age, we sold the Sundance and bought a Taurus.  The Taurus was an excellent kid car.  Big-ish.  Sturdy.  That Taurus took the kid where she needed to go (sparing the 'rents those nasty 5:30 am before-school-swim-practice trips).  After she went off to college, I used it to take the leukemia dog to the vet (to the vet, to the vet, to the vet, to the vet) for his chemo, his checkups after his chemo, etc......

Eventually enough parts fell apart that we donated it to the community college's automotive program.

By this time, the second minivan was getting elderly.  We bought a Versa, and demoted the minivan to park on the street (where the Sundance and the Taurus had parked).

The minivan no longer got much use, and rust set in with a vengeance.  Not visible rust, but insidious frame rust.........  As I mentioned, I took her to the mechanic to get some advice, and I understood that advice to be that she really wasn't safe to drive.  Alas.  She followed the Taurus to the community college.

We got another Versa, and then had the flash of an idea.

Now that we had two small cars, and no minivan, maybe we could fit them both into the garage!

It was harder than we'd hoped.  In addition to getting rid of some junk, we had to remove a shelf along one side (which was intended to be there for the ages -- getting it down was an ordeal).

But!

Here is the result!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two cars in the garage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the first time since 1988!!!!

Before we had measurable snow to scrape!!!!!!!

Hooray.

Ok, back to our regularly-scheduled day.



Across-the-street-neighbors' landscaping.  In the snow.

The view out my office window.  Yes, the white specks are snow.  We had flurries all day, but the total accumulation was a bit more than a dusting, but not enough to think about measuring.

.