Once I learned there would be no school today–I am a teacher, I planned to blog something profound and thought provoking.  However, thirteen inches of snow takes a long time to shovel.  Before it became sufficiently light to hike out and feed Rosie, my horse, I took these photos.

It took no time for me to realize as soon as sufficient light arrived and it warmed up a bit, that I needed to start the shoveling process.  Since the patio in the photos receive little sun in winter, it would take weeks–a weeklong warming trend is on its way–and probably longer than the predicted warming trend to melt all this unless I started working on the shoveling process.  The profound blog forgotten, I put on tights under jeans, three layers on top plus a long coat, two pairs of gloves, wool socks over the tights, boots, and headed out.  Round one entailed my shoveling a path up the steps seen in a photo above and on to the barn to feed Rosie, returning to the patio and shoveling for about 1 and 1/2 hours.  At that point cold hands and feet necessitated my coming indoors to warm up.  In the meantime I took a few more photos.

Much to my dismay, this unusually wet and heavy snow broke off a large limb on the juniper tree by my blue, Santa Fe inspired, door.  When it warms up and the snow melts, I will have to saw it off and learn to live with the space it used to occupy.

Because I did not want this to happen to a couple of other trees close to the house, I later went around with a shovel, hitting them, trying to knock off snow.  Time for round two of shoveling–the rest of the patios.  The snow is beautiful, but after four hours of shoveling and vacuuming the whole house between shoveling rounds, I think perhaps I will collapse and profundity can wait for another day.  Later in the afternoon I took the photos below.  I am not a photographer; I teach high school seniors British literature.  However, a painter asked permission to paint the photo below.  I feel quite flattered.

Since my truck is in the barn above the house and my drive next to the garage is full of snow as seen in the photo below, it may be a week or so before I go anywhere in my little car.

During the last snow storm, a friend came over and took a photo of the aged juniper tree rising from the canyon floor almost to my patio.  After he took the photo, we noticed it looks like a bird.  Today as you can see from this photo, she is a snow goose.