60 degrees F and snow on the ground! All's ship shape around and in the house. A few notes: there is now a 'check back door 17' note on the alarm panel. I couldn't see why, the doors were all securely closed and locked. But now we have to 'bypass' both the '19 window' and '17 door' before the house alarm can be set. Another dead mouse in the toilet (EWWWW!!), I disposed of it in the old well.
I talked to Rene last week. He came by to plow after the last storm and got terribly stuck in the ditch on the uphill side of the bridge; he finally had to call Nino who pulled him out with his backhoe! (combination of mud, snow and deep ditch) By today, the upper part of the drive was still covered (he hadn't been back) and looks like several snow mobiles and ATV's have driven up the road. The road is very muddy - Rene suggested adding some gravel maybe. (We parked at the Grassy Lane.) There were snowshoe tracks down to the brook where I took these pictures, but no tracks near the house - no deer tracks either, although when I talked to Rene, he said he'd seen lots of does and fauns when he went hunting. The oil had been delivered in late January before all the snow, thank goodness.  Bob and I took advantage of the nice weather to walk up the road a bit and then down to the brook. Here are some pictures:

 The slide and 'sword factory' wall

 The swimming pool and the dam: about a foot drop: good work dam builders!

 The house as we came up the hill from the brook into the old field

And, sorry to say, 'Paul's spruce tree' fell on its own sometime this winter.