January bits and bobs

Today would have been my dad's birthday. He was born in 1895, yes, hard to believe, I know.  Long gone now, but I always remember him particularly on his birthday.

Snow recently, then the wind and the temps changed its shapes.  Here's a longish view of the patio

and then if you zero in, you see accidental snow art

preacher and congregation?  dictator and rally?  duck and ducklings?  more ideas?

then the last of the Granny Smith apples bought for the chutney went to make a very good apple crumble.  

 
I don't use brown sugar for this, never buy it, in fact, just add in molasses to the mixture. The flavor is better than just from brown sugar, when you mix molasses with white.

And one of the advantages of a frosty upper atmosphere is the evening sky, many colors, some of which are not detected by the camera. 

This is the time of year for sundogs, too, so I'm looking out for them. Witchhazel, too.  It flowers in January and I'm often on the lookout for it.  There was a wonderful stand of it at the local college before Sandy swept away all the plantings of the area it was in.  But we have one here, too, near the bus stop. So I swipe a couple of twigs to bring home and observe.

And I kept my New Year's resolution, and brought home a little bunch of flowers for the house.  Yellow, carnation-like, not sure of their name. Sent out my January mailbag today, too.  I stuck address slips on them, not because I want to guilt people into writing back, but because a couple of people have been puzzled about who was writing, and took a while to realize it was me, so I thought it would be better to let you know, rather than recognize my drunken spider hand and eventually decipher it in order to see who it is!

I knitted another pink pussyhat, this one for home consumption, on the day of the march.  You'll see.