When I left home, the sun was up and shining. We'd had two or three inches of snow a couple of days before, but all of that had fallen after rain that soaked everything and made the mantle of snow stick to every kind of tree limb, like hoar frost. Trust me, those were beautiful days, although you'll have to take my word for it because I didn't venture out with a camera. Most of the world hereabouts did.

On Sunday afternoon, I left for the pond in sunshine, but mistiness crept in from the west and swept over what had been an open sky. Overcast descended, albeit gently, not fearfully. The shrouded sun offered its own colors.

The path I take around the pond leads away about halfway through and then descends down a path toward the river, a path I cut myself in order to get to the edge. I hate to admit it, but by the time I've got a mile in, I'm ready to sit, and I do, right there at the river's edge, where, Sunday, I sat once more and looked across the river at this scene, still some blue sky but considerable cloudiness on the way. 

That's the Floyd River, named for the only member of the Corps of Discovery who didn't make the whole trip. He died of some internal problems at the point on the old map where Lewis and Clark couldn't help but note two rivers flowing into the Missouri. In 1804, there was no Sioux City, but that's where all of this flows. They named this one, the smallest, after the sargeant they buried in the hills above the Missouri.

Here we are, last December, same place, just a bit more sunlight and an inch or two more of snow. 

It wasn't the best day to try out the new phone's camera, but if you messed around a bit, there were some possibilities--like this

and this

or something even more mysterious--

So anyway, what began in sunlight, ended in a shroud that's been with us ever since--the Sabbath until Thursday. If the weatherman is right, today we'll get more snow, high of 27. 

A friend who's in-the-know on such things claims that the dirt work people working on a new gas station just outside of town are saying that six feet into this wonderful Loess soil all around us, the ground is dusty enough to break in your hands. That's a serious sub-soil moisture problem. In the last two weeks, we've had some sweet moisture, ice and snow. "Beauty," right now at least, as here has less to do with light than it does with rain and snow. 

We'd like more of this, Lord, more of this.