This Cold Snap

There's been ice on the car several of these days, something I did not expect to see after leaving the Northwest. I've been wearing a hat and socks to bed. Zirpu has been wearing a long sleeved shirt under his Jacket of Many Pockets. The sun is out, but the air is cold, more Colorado than California.

A few days ago our neighbors asked us to take a bunch of lemons from their tree, and we picked all the oranges we could reach on ours. Having given some away already, we have two grocery sacks oranges and lemons under the counter. I guess we will be some of the few who have access to fresh vitamin C for the next few months... Yesterday it was announced that California citrus growers are going to lose about a billion dollars' worth of fruit (not to mention all the lost avocados, three weeks before the National Day of Guacamole) because of the freezing temperatures in the valleys.

I can't remember when it was, or where I was, but it must have been on one of my many I5 jogs between home and "home." There was an orange grove next to the highway in which the trees were covered in ice sticking out in all directions like bed-head hair. I realize now that the sheet ice must have been caused by the grower spraying the trees with water which subsequently froze, but at the time it was a strange sight and I could not come up with any kind of explanation. The image seems as if from a fairy tale, something you would see in Narnia.