It's Really Not Spring!

Ha!! Now I'm so not laughing about what I said in the previous post! Remember the bit about critters thinking it's spring and crawling out of their shelters? Well.....would someone please tell the local skunk population it's really not spring yet? Before the sun even came up this morning, I was awake. You know those sleepy moments of early morning, when the brain starts to awaken, but the body still wants to sleep, so you drift back and forth between sleeping and waking? Well...I had a hard time doing that this morning, once I was awake enough to identify what I was smelling, I simply could not go back to sleep! I even tried smearing some lovely Peony scented lotion on my hands and sleeping with my hands near my face! But it was simply not enough! I had to get up, go light a candle and start some coffee. Driving home from an Expo last night, I think there was a dead skunk either on the side of the road or the middle of the road every mile or so...almost like mile markers I tell ya! Pew! We had a bad outbreak of severe weather the night I started the last entry. This morning the weatherman said it was the worst outbreak of tornadoes in state history, So far, they have confirmed 18 touchdowns that night, (at least one registering in at EF3! ) in the wee hours of February 6th. It was a rough ride for many. We came through without even a downed branch or overturned yard item, but many folks were not so lucky.
Here is a very bad image of our tv screen just as the storm was passing over.
There are many reasons the image is so bad. First, the station was not coming in well at all, sometimes it even went off; second, we were watching off the rabbit ears and not cable or anything; third, I was trying to hold the dog on the leash while taking the photo, just in case we had to go to the basement in a hurry (yes...I would have taken the camera bag too!). It was nearly 1:30 am, and the kids were looking at me like I'm nuts to be taking a picture of the tv under such conditions. They also seemed a bit annoyed that we had to wake them up. But the disaster sirens were blowing, and the police scanner had a report of someone calling in saying the back of their house had blown off! We really didn't want them sleeping upstairs until things cleared up!

The sun is up now, and winter is trying to return (but with little success, so far) with some lower temperatures. We spotted some birds in the tree near our homemade bird feeder this morning, but so far haven't actually seen a bird eating from it. I know they are visiting it, though...I can see the shells on the ground below it. Can you see the cardinal hiding in this picture??? There was a pair of mourning doves out there too, but I couldn't get a good shot of them.