Before and After: The Fall and Winter Garden

Hello!  Remember in yesterday's post when I talked about our first winter storm of the season arriving before Thanksgiving?  Well, it's here.  It seemed only a few days ago it was a beautiful fall day and I was walking out of the post office of our small town and I saw this view:

 I thought it was so lovely, all the mix of fall color with that gorgeous brilliant blue sky behind the trees.  I loved the lawns and pavement littered with the leaves.  Of course, I had to stop and take a picture.

Then every time I walked down my sun room steps I was greeted with this beautiful view:  What a masterpiece.  I have no idea what the name of this bush is, but as far as bushes go, this one is a winner. It's covered in thorns, the only thing I don't like about it.  But in the spring it has lovely yellow flowers, then in the fall it turns this beautiful rusty red, and all winter long it has bright red berries.  So it really has four seasons of interest, which is not that usual as far as bushes are concerned.  Most are usually just green with a very short bloom season.

 But then mother nature decided to drop this on us:

 It wasn't as bad as originally projected.  They thought we would get 10 to 14 inches of snow, and even though a lot of areas did, my neck of the woods got less than 5 inches.  But, it's still too early.  I know I live in Northern Wisconsin, but we never see this much snow before Thanksgiving.  There have been many, many winters where we didn't even have snow for Christmas.  And we are also experiencing arctic cold temperatures.  Our average right now should be 40 degrees, and it's more than 20 degrees colder than that.

Snow.  Beautiful to look at through a picture window, but miserable to live with.  Of course, there were school closings and delays, car accidents, cars in ditches, etc., etc., etc., the usual Wisconsin winter weather crap.  Yes, I said 'crap'.  Because, it's just too early for this.  We had such a hard, never-ending winter last year, with record low temperatures that never seemed to end, and snow so deep we were running out of places to put it.  To get it back so soon, after such a brief, cool summer, just seems heartless.  I know, I know, I need to move.  New Mexico is really looking good to me right now.

Have a great day, and if you live in a warm state, count your blessings!

Amy