ADAPTATION

Monday, 8:15 AM.  26 degrees F, wind W to NW, moderate with stronger gusts.  the barometer is still down, at 29.52 In.  The humidity is 93% The sky is completely overcast and there is considerable haze and snow in the atmosphere over the channel.  It is snowing lightly.
    The storm began about 4:00 PM yesterday.  I shoveled several inches then,  about four later in the evening.  We got another two or three early this morning, for a total so far of about eight or nine inches of rather wet snow.  The end of the driveway was plowed in heavily enough this morning that I had to use the Canadian snow pusher to clear it.
    The birds were at the feeders in the morning's  early light, including a female cardinal that looked a bit confused.  While I was clearing the driveway neighbor Gordy, who is in the boat business, shouted from across the street that he was thinking about cruising the Virgin Islands. 
    The pine trees are laden with wet snow, their long, horizontal branches bending low under the burden.  The Jack pine on the south side of the house, a favorite tree of mine, has the top branches broken, the stump of a large upright limb is shattered, white and sharp, like a fractured thigh bone.  It will take some judicious pruning to restore it to some degree of health and natural beauty. 
    One sees in storms such as this why conifers such as spruce and fir that are native to high elevations and far northern latitudes have developed a pyramidal or spire-like shape; they shed the snow more efficiently and are less prone to such damage.  Evolutionary adaptation is starkly evident this morning.