Winter Wake-up

The jackhammer's clat-clat-clat-clat came from down the street, a strange sound here in the country where we're more used to the plop-plop-plop of falling cow patties. Out the window we saw the approaching squad of commune workers clad in fluorescent orange jumpsuits. Using a pneumatic hammer from the back of a truck, they were pounding snow poles in the ground on either side of our little lane. Before long we'll need these poles as guides through the snow so we don't end up inadvertently driving through the pasture or somebody's livingroom.

We had first seen the red tippy-top of these poles a couple winters ago when we came to visit our future home in knee-deep snow. Then, last spring after we moved in, I saw the whole pole for the first time. They're about 1.4  meters high, the raw wood painted red on top. What's weird for this Hawai'i boy is that the poles are like the tsunami warning poles found along roads in low-lying areas all around the Islands.

So yesterday's pole placement was a wake-up call: winter is here.

And sure enough, last night, with typical Swiss efficiency, our first snow fell. I took Loki, our cat who was born and raised in Hawai'i, out for his introduction to the white stuff. The flakes floating to the ground where nearly as big as the yellow leaves that have been falling the last few weeks. I made the obligatory snowball and threw it at Loki's feet. He acted unimpressed, but that's so like him.

We'll send pix when he makes his first snow angel.