It's a Grand Day for Snow - or NOT!

Willow and Birch

This past weekend we've had our first major blast of snow here. Although we do get a lot of snow over the winter months, it usually doesn't start quite this early. October and November tend to be months where we get a "sprinkling" of snow; the kind of stuff that usually melts away pretty quickly, but the snow we just got was the kind you had to shovel, more than once, and then spread ice-melter (we don't use salt, cause it's bad for the environment and our city water systems) so you can walk without pulling a Three-Stooges move.

Shrugging myself in a winter coat that feels as though it weighs ten pounds, pulling on boots to my knees, grabbing a heavy knit cap, scarf and gloves or mitts ... is so not the highlight of my day.

I'd really prefer if the snow and sub-zero temperatures would hold off until sometime in January, when we are comfortably sitting in the warm sun and blue skies of our home in Florida.

I'm not a happy camper right now. I can handle a certain amount of cold weather (provided I'm bundled up like a polar bear), but I'd rather be warm year round. And I've come to hate the snow. Seriously hate it.

Oh sure, there is no denying that on a sunny day (even when bitterly cold) when the sun sparkles off fresh-fallen snow like a myriad of tiny diamonds, it's beautiful. Very pretty indeed, as long as it's viewed through a window with a fireplace blazing away filling the room with enough heat to make you sweat.

Celebrate Autumn with Landscapes

I already published some fall landscapes (around the middle of September), but I have a LOT of fall landscapes. I love the brilliant colours and just the glory of the view when the season changes. Every season has it's own beauty, and although I really hate the cold winter months, there are times when the beauty of a fresh snowfall cannot be ignored! I'll publish some of those as the season gets closer, but for now, it's still fall and the world here is still full of it's autumn clothing.

All it takes to lose that is a heavy rainfall and lots of wind, and that happen so quickly here. The fall has been so much drearier than usual - overcast skies for weeks on end, colder than normal temperatures and just a general misery that after a couple of steady weeks of that, you begin to feel a malaise that makes you wish it were over.

What you need at that point is just one day - only a single day of wonderful, brilliant sunshine, a camera, a car, and a good healthy walk around the country roads. Here, doing that is pretty easy since we're less than 5 minutes from all that delicious countryside. One of my favourite things to do in the fall is visit the wildlife sanctuary - here, it is mostly varieties of birds and fowl (like ducks, and swans), but if you're really lucky you can catch a snake warming itself on a rock in the late season sun, or a turtle that's yet to dig into the mud for the winter sleep.

Sometimes you'll find a hare or jackrabbit (hard to chase those), and lots of chipmunks and squirrels still gathering their winter stock.