My sister catches the no-knead bread obsession.

But she's using an even simpler recipe, if that's possible. It takes about 96 hours but as I understand it you don't even have to get your hands sticky the way you do with the traditional (in quotes) Sullivan Street Bakery recipe.

Isn't he pretty?

Ahhhhhh! The first blooms. Crocuses and Lenten Rose.

The baby yuccas weathered the weather and the deer. But they look bedraggled.

Amazing lettuce. Planted in the late fall, been sitting all winter on a cold sunroom with northern exposure. I watered very infrequently.

The deer are back! Been so worried about them. I'll be cursing them soon.

I've been avoiding my blogs for a few weeks. Not sure why, other than some vague feelings of being a little too full of myself. I mean really: pictures of socks and deer and snow. Is that what my life is reduced to? Apparently. Do I care? I didn't think so. To be continued. Or not.

Randolph Rd--last week. Trucks hauling snow west. Today I was trying to see some beauty outside & it was tough. Old snow is ugly!

This was a fun read. About the words scientists, and others, use to define "invasive."

Sock No. 1 of Pair No. 2. I learned something new about the heel on this pair. But I still need to be more careful--too many mistakes.

My first pair of socks won me this poem from Mr. H.

Oh my happy feet, so pampered with fun
I note the weave so exquisitely done
The color just right, with irregular toe
Adds a smile for none to know
For the sock is unseen and Oh what a shame
For Pam's deft fingers the socks cannot name
The socks on my feet and covers my toes
And where my feet travel so the socks goes

Nice, huh?

NEXT year I'll stop enjoying snarkiness. Meanwhile, this book is a delicious read for a political junkie. How did Edwards fool so many for so long?

Snarky excerpt from the snarky book:
About Rielle Hunter
Feb 06: Regency Hotel, NYC. Everything about her screamed groupie. She looked like a hybrid of Stevie Nicks and Lucinda Williams, in an outfit more suitable for a Grateful Dead concert than an evening at the Regency. … She handed him [an Edwards’ handler] her business card. The inscription read, “Being Is Free: Rielle Hunter – Truth Seeker.”

A few months later, without warning, Hunter was back – in a big way.
[she was] a constant presence on the road with Edwards…[her behavior] was freaky, wildly inappropriate, and all too visible. She flirted outlandishly with every man she met. She spouted New Age babble, rambled on about astrology and reincarnation, and announced to people she had just met, “I’m a witch.” She told [Edwards] that he could be as great a leader as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Edwards swooned, of course. Gobbled up her every word like so much pop-psych popcorn. He spent hours talking to her, listening patiently to her ideas about the state of American democracy and her advice on media strategy. (She had intuitions about Chris Matthews.) He ate every meal with her, sat next to her on the plane and in the car, offered to wheel her bags through airports.”

A once mighty ornamental grass is now a bump. I miss the grasses blowing in the winter wind.

Did you catch Andy Borowitz's take on the Evan Bayh resignation? See link below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/scandal-evan-bayh-admits_b_463203.html

Niece Sarah, Big Sister Anabelle, and Newborn Norah Eve.

Notice how close Anabelle is hanging to Mom. Beautiful ladies one and all!

Skiing! And a weirdo setting on my camera.

My cross-country skiing was limited to (a) asking my husband where all the pieces were (they haven't been used in many years), (b) finding them, (c) getting them on, and (d) carefully, oh so carefully, heading down my little driveway--which does have a slope--into the street, up past a few houses and then back. THAT wore me out. But fun!

Check out the ethnicity question. "None"?? I thought about drawing a box & labeled it "Other" or "50% English-50%German."

An application for a course at Montgomery College. I'm assuming there's a very good reason for this question but I wish someone had thought through the choice of no ethnicity.

Done!

It would take a full page to summarize the mistakes I made. Starting with believing the salesperson who told me that I was buying enough yarn to make one pair of socks---hence the brown toe.

Pair No. 2 will be started tonight, while the extra 10-20 inches of snow is falling on the DC area. (Several friends hate me because I love the snow. Maybe if I give each one a pair of hand-made socks they'll forgive me.)

I admit it Your Honor. I waste time playing FV. It's fun. Should I be cleaning out a closet? Yes.

It's over! Look at that sky. 30+ inches.

It may look like a plow came down our street but it didn't. A neighbor with an SUV has been at work much of the day. Digging, blowing, driving his car back and forth, back and forth. He must have a Superbowl party he's determined to get to tomorrow.

Update 2/7/10: I was beginning to doubt my yardstick's accuracy but my son pointed out that the US Weather Service notes that MY neighborhood (Colesville) had the most snow fall of this storm:
"At 10 p.m. Eastern Time Saturday, a report from the U.S. National Weather Service pegged the snowfall in Colesville, Md., at 40 inches, more than a meter. The city of Howellsville, Va., saw 37 inches while Dulles Airport was blanketed with more than 32 inches."
From: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/northeast-digs-out-of-snow-more-is-in-store-2010-02-07?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for this link. (So snarky, just the thing I was supposed to give up in 2010.)

Top = Friday at about noon. Bottom = 24 hrs later.

Very light snow now, at about 4:30 PM Saturday. We've got well over 2 feet. Grateful that we still have power. Lots of folks without.

Welcome Norah Eve! Born today--just before this shot. With Anabelle, happy and relieved Mother Sarah, and George.

Dad, Kevin, must have taken the picture since it was just the four of them... and then suddenly Sarah was holding the fifth of them. Am I proud of my niece Sarah? You betcha!

Yikes. Let's hope they're overstating it for dramatic effect.

This morning at about 10.

Some people love the snow.

Anabelle and George at home in far, far, far Western Maryland. Looks like a very big boy coming down that hill. And those cheeks! (My grandniece and grandnephew.)

Sock update. It's going to have a blue stripe over the instep. Maybe a different color on the second sock.

Mid-day Saturday. Ornamental grasses are worth having for snow alone.

Yesterday, before the snows came, I found this lone snowdrop. In my mind, spring has begun.

Progress on sock.

Knitting socks.

I bought what I thought was a subdued yarn but now that sock No. 1 is beginning to take shape the color looks a bit too ... something. Not exactly zippy, not bright. Muddy. Dated. I hope not ugly.

The pond at sunset today.

Still mostly frozen over despite warmer weather all week. No sign of the otter today.

Moss loves this weather. That's about as green as it gets in this yard.

The terrible trio. What did we do as a society to deserve these guys?

On the back of my annual dues notice from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Seems like an appropriate message for the eve of M.L.King Day.

I love my new socks.

I didn't knit them myself (some anonymous knitter in Vermont did; or at least the tag said it was a Vermont knitter; I'm so cynical these days that I suspect an underpaid and overworked Chinese child made them) but I'm going to start a pair this winter. I've made socks before, with pretty hilarious results.

Death by Cinnamon Buns

Someone, I think it was Jen in Nyack, NY, got me thinking about my grandmother's cinnamon buns. Actually I was sort of obsessed for a few days. So I found this recipe and made it. BUT, I halved the recipe (6 cups of flower for 12 buns?! I don't think so) and then eliminated the milk and only used 1/2 cup butter total, instead of the recommended 1 1/2 cups. Turned out pretty good but not as good as my grandmother's. I'm sure she did use the full 1 1/2 cups of butter. She had that look about her.

I think I'll plant a lot more of this great plant. Evergreen and the deer simply won't eat it. Must taste really bad. Maybe poisonous?

Cotton Lavender is an evergreen perennial herb with aromatic strangely shaped silver leaves with that remind one of ocean coral. In midsummer it bears small yellow flowers like round buttons.
From: http://www.herbgarden.co.za/mountainherb/article_CottonLavender.htm

Hawk on my deck. He's watching me. Or she.

Otter in the pond! The beaver family is gone but this guy has been very active in the last few days.

He dives under, catches a fish, and then sits on the ice eating it. He's not nearly as shy as the beavers were. He's a mammal, of the weasel group, while the beavers were rodents. I wonder if he's living in their abandoned lodge? And I wonder if he is alone or has a wife--with buns in the oven possibly. At the rate he was pulling out fish today, there will be a lot of frustrated fisher people come spring. The pond is stocked with brown trout in April (May?) but most people seem to catch sunfish and a few other types I've forgotten. It's great living next door to a pond.