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For once, instead of a bunch of promises and hype the weather guys hit the nail on the head! They were telling us for a couple of days that it would snow right here in Blanco County and even how much we’d get. We got it! It snowed a bunch at our place out in the country, in fact most of the morning we couldn’t see across the river for the blowing snow. Pat loves to say how big the snow flakes were, he says some, rather many of them were as big as Ritz crackers and that man knows his crackers.

I have heard the old wives tale that a ‘buttermilk sky’ meant snow was on its way and after hearing the weather guys predicting it I sort of had a hope that it really might happen and sure enough it was to be on the same day as predicted. Some people call impending weather change a Mackerel sky because the clouds resemble the scales on this fish. I like buttermilk sky; I think it sounds more southern don’t you. I wonder if the people ‘down east’ even know about buttermilk, especially buttermilk and cornbread.

Once during the night, I looked out the window to see if it had snowed but didn’t see anything and then when I woke up about 8 AM the first thing I did was to look out and still I didn’t see anything until Pat hollered, "Come look at the snow!" I said, "you are kidding me, I just looked and there is NO snow", but there was. We had a pretty good cover at 8 AM and by noon there was a snow blanket all over our place. It was exciting to see such a heavy snowfall and to have it last so long. At our place there was snow on the ground for a few days.

There were parents all over the county scrambling to get their kids picked up as school decided to close not long after it opened. I am on the Emergency Call list at Hope School for the Hacker twins, Katie and Maddy and I got a call but I wasn’t at home when they tried to reach me and by time I did get their call I think the third or fourth person Carrie called had already picked up the girls. Now that would have been fun to have the girls for their first real snow, well maybe for awhile it would have been.

Pat and I had a hard time staying inside preferring to stay on the porch and watch the snow drifting and then we made two trips to town once for mail and the second time for some groceries in case the snow day became two snow days. I always like to cook when the weather gets different so today I made shrimp gumbo but we won’t eat it for a day or two as you should never cook and eat gumbo the same day, it just isn’t done, it needs to be refrigerated for 24 hours or at least that’s how I do it.

We think this snow here in Johnson City was the biggest we’ve seen since we moved here 25 years ago but there was one bigger about 1982 or so, I think it was at Thanksgiving. I didn’t make a snowman but I saw lots of kids making them and it looked like fun but it also looked cold.

Did you notice all the birds flying around and jumping in the snow looking for a place where the snow had melted. They were really hungry I guess and were not any more used to their feeding ground being covered than the cows were.

I noticed that my bluebonnets out back were a few inches in snow but still looked perky and I don’t think the cold bothered them that much. My backyard is almost a mat of solid bluebonnets and we haven’t seen that many in years and years.

I guess I should have tried my Granddaddy’s recipe for Snow Ice but I thought of it too late, the snow was melting by the time it came to mind. I have heard of a lot of people who made snow ice when they were kids but I bet it wouldn’t have tasted as good as when I was 8 or 10 and when Granddaddy made it.

Snow makes even ugly things look pretty and it covers up cattle deposits too. It was so much fun to look at the footprints in the snow that the different birds and animals make. Part of our morning fun is Yappy Hour with our dogs and this snow morning was no different. I put on the dogs sweaters (which is hard) and set them out for their first look at the unfamiliar white stuff. Prissy is the dog that doesn’t like to get her feet wet so she carefully put one paw out to test the stuff and quickly made the decision to do her ‘business’ on the porch which is par for the course for inclement weather.

Just to get even with Prissy for soiling my porch I found her tennis ball which she loves to fetch and tossed it right into a big snowdrift in the yard. She took off running to get the ball and as her front feet touched the cold white stuff she braked quickly as her front paws hit the snow causing the whole rest of her body and her back feet to rise up as she twisted away. The ball could stay there half buried in the snow forever as far as she was concerned she would not be fetching on this snow day.

The cows out here were a bit ‘snowed’ as to what was falling from the sky and covering the bit of grass they were used to chewing on. I was totally surprised that all of our cows and one bull plus the calves had huddled together in the barn where they not only kept dry but waited for Pat to throw out some hay. I really didn’t think cows were that smart.

All in all Pat and I enjoyed the few inches of snow we had and I took pictures as did so many people and some even made it to the weather guys at KXAN in Austin and were happily displayed as the forecasters said, "If we say its going to snow, you can take it to the bank!" Well sometimes you can and this time it was true. Let it snow, let it snow and let it do it one more time please.