Minnesota Winter Dawn

This winter season here in southern Minnesota has been unusually warm, punctuated by only a couple of super cold spells and not very much snow.  We figure nature is trying to make up for last year's brutal winter.  Today is the last day of a short cold snap that started Friday.  This morning the temp was 6F (-14C) at 7:00am.  It has warmed up to 13F (-11C); we'll make up to the 20s before the day is done.  Oddly, we have very little snow on the ground because most of what we did have melted during the warm weather at the beginning of February.  Below are some views of a beautiful dawn from the front of our house taken Jan. 31 when there was still snow on the ground.






As lovely as that dawn was, this dragonfly is what we would prefer to see when look out the front door.

Dragonfly on dead hibiscus stem, South Englishtown, Toledo District, Belize.

We are now one step closer to that reality; Dennis has officially declared his date of retirement - November 30, 2012.  I added a retirement countdown widget to the blog.  As of today, he has 291 days to go ...