Frost on the Door

Last night was a wild one. The winds were howling around the house, and were blowing very strangely, in fact. We keep the chicken coop door propped just the smallest bit with a milk crate--enough for them to go in and out, but mostly closed so that rain can't come in and the hay doesn't blow around, and so drafts are kept to a minimum. (If we had normal chickens we would close them in the coop every night, but they roost most of the time in bushes, so we just leave it accessible all the time in case they decide to grow a brain and go in!) The point of telling you this is that while Matt and I were watching TV last night, we kept hearing a thumping noise in the yard, clearly related to the wind. We discovered it was the door to the coop! So imagine this door, open at maybe a 25 or 30 degree angle pointed at the ground, somehow being blown open in the wind--and not just once, but over and over again!

All night the wind rattled around the house. The awnings over the west facing windows (which are rolled tight during these months both for the winds and so we can get every bit of light possible!) were rattling and creaking, the wind moaned, the door thumped. It was something like 10 degrees with under zero wind chills. A nice night to snuggle!

But this morning--our back door was completely sheeted in frost. The very thick frost, not the kind that melts at a touch of sun, but the kind that you'd have to really scrape at to get off. The kind with swirly fairy designs in it. The kids were mesmerized...but it was so cold I had to remind them that we needed to shut the wooden door to keep out the drafts! It was so pretty, though.

--Jen