Another American Adventure: last week

Saturday, March 2, 2013

last week

These are some photos from last week when the sun came out and the ice melted, then it snowed and everything froze again. Repeat. Today, every hour, the weather switches from sunshine to snow. John and I both were sick last week with coughs, fever, sinus problems etc. - we even went to the doctor together! We seem to be on the mend now.

This is the view of Pittsburgh from a top floor of the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Mercy Hospital) parking lot.

Budding on the ornamental trees of our apartment complex are coming along ...

... even though there is always a dusting of snow on our balcony.

Jubilee is learning to enjoy herself even though she can't see well and bumps into things, like trees and branches!

4 comments:

BarbaraMarch 2, 2013 at 9:52 AM
We still have more snow on the ground than you do. A slow-moving storm dumped a pile of some very wet Spring snow on us and every day an inch of snow falls and melts right away. The temperature hovers around freezing and I can anticipate full-blown Springtime in the not-to-distant future. We are hoping for sunshine on Wednesday. Liminal time.
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beth cioffolettiMarch 2, 2013 at 10:45 AM
Seems like we get about an inch every day too. Every time I look out the window there is some kind of flurrying going on. I hear there is a big storm coming mid-week next week, though. Oh boy. This is one year when I am getting tired of having to get so dressed up to just go outside!
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BarbaraMarch 2, 2013 at 2:56 PM
Almost nothing feels better to me than the day when I no longer have to wear boots. We had a flurry this afternoon which resembled tiny hailstones. Our parish priest just returned from a week or so off in Barbados, all tanned. We are a pasty lot here!
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beth cioffolettiMarch 3, 2013 at 11:40 AM
Oh, I know what you mean, Barbara. Just to wear sneakers again! My feel would feel so free. It has been snow flurrying here almost non-stop for a week, all under grey and gloomy skies. Pittsburgh gets very few sunny days during the winter. People look cold, hurrying from cars to stores. I turned up the thermostat this year. Must be getting old.
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.