Blizzard Topped With More Snow

Within a week, my gardens went from bare and brown to buried under more than two feet of snow. My snowshoes and I are reacquainted and have made numerous loops of the woods, down to the goose Palace and the pond and back up to the house. I can also report that the bottle tree is doing an excellent job of capturing evil spirits as they meander down the driveway. Or do evil spirits slither? In any case, my debris pile now has an insulating snow roof and there are tracks everywhere indicating the feeders are being visited by a wide variety of critters. Several seed catalogs have arrived and January 2015 is hours away from done. This feels like "winter progress."

New Year's Day

I had no true plans for my own holiday supper but was well pleased to see this doe visit with her fawn for their meal. They surprised me and I surprised them as I was clearing the last of the blow-down from the backwoods walkway. I dropped my tools and went indoors so they could dine in peace. All paths are now navigable, the forecast holds no snow cover for plants. Sawing dead limbs and tossing brush will have to content me for a while. I read the following on Garden Rant and liked the words enough to repeat them. It's a good gardening thought for 2015 - shaking hands with the divine.

http://gardenrant.com/2014/12/trees-in-memorium.html

"I hope the New Year brings the opportunity to garden with joy. And even if things will be planted in memorium, I hope we can all take comfort in the fact that we are gardening in collaboration with something grand, and every time we put something in the ground and wait for its transformation, we are shaking hands with the divine."