Some winter mornings the chore routine is a brutally cold experience, something to be pushed through as quickly as possible.  But not today.  This morning everything was covered by a thick ice coating, transforming each object into a sparkling alternate of itself.  There was a little snow under the crust and as long as I stuck to untrodden paths there was enough traction to get around.  The only trouble the ice made was in weighing down the polywire fences into droopy catenaries, so I had to go along the fences and lift the saggy sections.