Snow Comes to Steepmeadow

Princess Poppyseed Watson enjoys reclining on the mantlepiece on cold winter days. She will probably be sitting up there regularly until June. We received about six inches of snow over this Thanksgiving weekend. 

I was waiting for the strawberry plants to die back to brown. They were still green when the flakes began falling, so I did not get a chance to cut them back this year. I did bury them in straw before the snow came too hard. Hopefully they will be alright in the spring.

I had forgotten what a pain in the neck the electric snowblower is to handle. Perhaps in windless conditions it would be easy. There are almost never windless conditions in Minnesota. There's always snow flying into your glasses, drifting over to the neighbors' clean driveway or blowing onto parts of it that you already cleaned. With a large driveway, the blower is really a necessity. It could be done with a shovel, but we are not spring chickens.

Everything just gets harder in the winter. I discovered this morning when I took the new (to me) van out that even with three-peaks rated all-weather tires, it handles like a cow in the snow.

There's a little indicator in the lower left-hand corner of my screen that reads "Temps to plummet..." Looking forward to it.

Dreams of summer vacations and ideas about the crop rotations for next year are dancing in my head.