Well today I wasn’t alone while I trekked outside on Day #3 of this Deep Freeze saga. After bundling up, I decided I felt a little like a farmer pulling on his heavy clothes to leave the warm farmhouse and traipse through the snowy fields to the cold barn to tend to his livestock. I stepped out the side door to find a bright blue sky and a brilliant sun shining down. Mr. Sun seemed to mock me as I trudged to the garage and around the house doing my daily cold-weather “chores” as he sure didn’t provide any warmth. Amazingly, after all these gray days, or gazing at flurries or white-outs, I actually saw my shadow and now I know how good Phil feels when he sees his shadow on Groundhog Day. I took a gander at that big orb in the sky and if you looked up, not down, you could almost pretend it was a beautiful Spring or Fall Day – that is, until out of the corner of your eye you glimpsed the plumes billowing out of neighborhood chimneys or furnace PVC pipes. I scanned the nearby trees since I heard several warblers and a bird or two twittering nearby, yet I saw nary a one. Once again I cursed the advent of the rats to the neighborhood in 2008 and 2010 that caused me to remove the bird feeders and birdbaths. The temps may have moderated some, but I still felt badly that I could not scatter some bread to sustain my fine-feathered friends in this bitter cold. The bird calls continued throughout the duration of my time outside and their sweet songs were truly like a breath of Spring air plunked down in the middle of this Winter that we are all so weary of. The birdsong made me remember my pals at the Park and I wondered how they are faring in these extreme cold temps and brutal wind chill. Well, enough of looking up and dreaming of Spring because it is not coming anytime soon. The reality of this Winter, notwithstanding the tweeting birds and shining sun, is that the neighbors’ Christmas decorations are nearly covered in snow and the street is far from being bare to the concrete, but now appears to be drivable thanks to the snow plow’s visit. Just like at your house, here the snow is mounded up high and the forecast for Saturday is rain and 43 degrees so where will all that liquid go? Yikes! Every weekend it seems a different weather pattern shows up … each worse than its predecessor. Hurrah, the garbage men showed up this morning, some 48 hours tardy … well, it wasn’t as if the garbage was going to smell funky, that’s for sure. One of my garbage bags is at large, probably missing under the hardened piles of snow and it will no doubt turn up this weekend after the rain. Across the street from my house is an unoccupied rental home. Since the home’s original owners passed away and the house was sold in 2010, it has had many tenants. They stay a few months, then leave and the house is vacant once again. The heat must be set very low inside as there are some monstrous and lethal-looking icicles. I knocked off a few of my own, albeit just tiny ones, with a quick tap of the broom handle and then I dealt with the still, ice-encrusted furnace PVC pipe. The buggy started right up and so I closed the garage door, looked up to the sky and bade farewell to the Three Tenors who had entertained me from their perch in some tree. As I rounded the corner of the house, a chubby squirrel ran the length of the chain link fence as he came charging toward me in search of a friendly human with a handout. But, I had nothing to offer and shook my head “no” to reinforce that I had no treats.