Oh! So pretty! I love snow. Only flurries due here in northern VA. :( Miss the winters of my childhood in PA-or even last year here with 56 inches! Loved that!!!

Mary,
That is just beautiful! I live in Alabama, and we very rarely get a snow here. Seven or eight inches of snow would stop everything and close schools. We get snow so very rarely, we don't have equipment to handle it: there are no snow plows, few people have snow shovels. No one shovels the snow, and it rarely lingers more than a day or so here.

Having said that, I must admit there are rare exceptions and those exceptions are cherished. Make a snow angel for me, and enjoy that beauty.

And especially Mary, thank you for sharing your lovely photos.

kay

The first snowfall is always so beautiful.... (We haven't had any yet). But it sure doesn't take long before subsequent snowfalls settle down to being just a PITA :-) I DO NOT like winter!

gorgeous!!

We got snow last evening too. It does look pretty. Of course we only got 1 inch but that's plenty to make it look nice. And the best part is that the blacktop was warm enough that the snow didn't stick on it. So it's clear but icy roads and beautiful snowy gardens.

It would be interesting if FloraUK checked in.... I'm an RHS member and read along on some of their garden forums. There's been some pictures of impressive accumulations of snow over there - I gather pretty much all of England has had an usual amount of snow for the past week or so. I wonder how much Flora has had.

Lovely pics Mary Lu! I especially like those 'snow caps' on the bird feeder and lights.

Stay warm, I think your temps are colder than ours!

Thanks everyone! Yes, it did get cold last night. It is still only 15 degrees out now. But the sun just came out and everything looks so pretty. We had a light dusting of snow again over night. But thankfully not enough to shovel! :-)

I am nice and toasty warm inside though as I have the pellet stove going and Christmas carols playing. Am thinking of doing some Christmas decorating this afternoon. Have a great Sunday!
{{gwi:677868}}

Brrrr Mary Lu!!! I love the look of snow but those temps sound frightful. The pellet stove looks so inviting and delighful...

Stay warm!

XX Becky

Snow LOOKS pretty, but man, I do not miss it at all. Your yard looks beautiful MaryLou, and I know that the snow insulates your beautiful garden, but I can surely do without it!
It is very cold this week. Luckily we had rain so the wet has insulated, but I did not mulch over the front yard garden. I hope everything manages OK. I planted a mixture of colorful leaf veggies, snap dragons and pansies out there and it was beginning to look beautiful.
Next door in the veggie garden I put tents over everything and then layed sheets over top of the vegetables (except for carrots and garlic). I hope we'll be OK.
It will be 20 two nights in a row here. Very cold for our little houses with wood siding and little insulation. Our front three rooms have no insulation at all except in the attic.

Hi woodyoak - nice of you to think of me. The weather where I am has been bizarre in the extreme. (I am in SW England, so not worst affected.) We are having incredibly cold temps (for us) at the moment. 2 elderly people in the North have died in their gardens and not being found in time. Last week we had some snow (about 2 inches) the earliest for over 20 years. (We have had many winters recently with no snow at all) Then on Friday I walked home over frozen snow at 5.00 pm in -5c (23f). By 9.00 it was pouring with rain, above freezing, and the snow had gone in an hour. Today we have had freezing fog -4 c and every twig and branch outlined in fantastic crystals. I don't remember weather like this so early, ever. Tonight it is supposed to go down to -11c in the countryside round here. The lowest for over 40 years. A 'normal' winter where I live has an above freezing average even in January, let alone November. Most years I take my glass of wine into the garden when I take a breather from cooking Christmas lunch. Some trees hadn't even lost their leaves when the frost came. I have Nerines and fuchsias out in the garden with their candy pink flowers frozen solid. The Oleander is looking sick but it came through last winter which was also exceptional. I am walking into work in my thermal long johns, usually reserved for winter hiking! Best wishes, Flora.

p.s. The link shows weather where I am. You might enjoy the accent on the weather forecast! (Click to play) It's a Bristol accent (West Country) and is supposed to be a contributor to the origins of American English, being similar to 17th century English.

Here is a link that might be useful: Weather where I am.

I'm with you GGG not to fond of snow, our snow is gone and the temps are above freezing at the moment, lots and lots of rain for next few days or so they say. I'm not complaining tho rather have the rain then snow. We've been told we're in for an unusually cold, snowy winter, hope they're wrong. It started too early and it will probably last too long. My Christmas wish is for an early spring and a decent summer.

Most years we hardly have any snow and our winters are mild not unlike the ones Flora usually gets. Right now I have a lot of black sodden foliage throughout the garden, my hydrangea at the bottom of the front steps looks grose but I'm leaving the mess until the spring hoping that leaving the blackened leaves on will still give a little protection.

Some lovely snow pictures guys, I love looking at them as long as they're taken in someone else's garden.

Annette

flora - thanks for the weather video and map. "a fox at the bird table" ! :)

flora - Consider yourself an honorary Canadian with that weather :-) We have not had 2" of snow here yet. But friends in London, Ontario (about a 90 minute drive west of here) have had 3 feet come down in the past two days, and it's still coming down....
Randy and Ed exchanged photos via e-mail yesterday:
From London (the tricycle is now completely buried I gather...):
{{gwi:186735}}

Tongue-in-cheek photo from here:
{{gwi:186734}}

I had Randy listen for me to the weather forecast link you provided (I am profoundly deaf so I can't tell what it sounds like...) Before he retired (in 2009), Randy worked for Cadbury here, so had a lot of contact with English collegues. He said the forecaster's accent just sounded English to him but that he's not good at picking up finer nuances of accents.

oh my, it does sound like quite a few of you are having unusual weather this year too.

Becky, trying my best to stay warm. Pellet stove has not been turned off! Running it 24/7 right now.

GGG, I hope you are staying warm. Guess I never thought about the fact that your home would not be insulated against the cold. Something up here we take somewhat for granted. We'll be headed your way in a few days, flying into Atlanta and driving to Columbus as we have a wedding there on Saturday. We were hoping for a break from the cold!

flora, it does sound like your weather is considerably colder than you are used to and so changeable. That is hard. I tried to hear the forecast, but for some reason it would not play for me. Could be that my computer is just too old....been avoiding spending the $$ to upgrade.

Annette, I am right there with you, hoping for a short winter and early spring followed by a decent summer. Hope your hydrangea and other plants survive the cold.

schoolhouse, wish I had been able to see/hear the video. I love British accents!

woodyoak, pictures speak a thousand words don't they? Loving the "tongue-in-cheek" one. Think it will be several months before we can consider shorts here!

Take care all and dress warmly if needed! Oh...and keep the snow shovels handy! :-)

Marylu, i love seeing your pictures! I was wondering about the wooden fence trellis . I have seen that in someone elses pics too and was considering wrapping my porch in trellis like that. Can you tell me if you did it yourself or had someone do it? Do you mind sharing pics of what it looks like in summer? I could use a dose of pretty pictures ! thanks!

Well it's my first snow of the year today. We've got over an inch and the snow is still falling heavily. The flakes are small but it is still fun to watch. I love it as a backdrop to my small christmas tree.

Boy it sure is winter! Last weekend we were part of that mid-west storm! Got freezing rain first and then 9" of snow. Now today we have gotten another 4-5" inches of the stuff! Isn't it time for winter to be over?

Guess we don't have to wonder if we'll have a white Christmas this year! Just wish mother nature would give us time to dig out and clean up from one storm before she sends another one our way!

lilyfinch, the trellis fence was built from scratch by my husband. Am on lunch so will post a summer picture of it this evening.

lilyfinch, I have posted pics often in the past and don't want to bore anyone, so will post only one here. But will post a link at the bottom to my web page. It documents (with pictures) our progress from the beginning as we built our gardens. There are multiple pictures of the fence in the beginning as well as through the years as the garden grew.
{{gwi:690518}}

Just looking at this picture really makes me long for spring/summer!

Here is a link that might be useful: Our garden web page

Thank you marylou! Ive seen your pics before but that fence just caught my eye as its something we were discussing for next spring.
that pic is a perfect pcture for today! I needed that splash of color. Off to browse your web page. :)

Well this isn't the first snow - it's our second dose. The weather is truly extraordinary here at the moment. We normally have very little snow and if we do it comes in January/February. Snow before Christmas is highly unusual.

View from my top landing this morning. The evergreen to the right of the shed is a bay tree. The one on the left is a holly (Ilex aquifolium) Sadly it's male and never has berries. The bare snowy tree is a weeping birch, Betula pendula 'Youngii'. The creeper up the house and around the window is Parthenocissus henryana.

{{gwi:316218}}

Hi flora! You folks are certainly having an unusual winter! We haven't had our first major snowfall here yet - there's just a light dusting on the ground but the roads are clear. Various areas not too far away have had several feet of snow and one place had hundreds of people stranded in their cars on a highway for about 24 hours! Snowplows couldn't even get to them and the police had to patrol the area in snowmobiles, only able to take the people in the worst emergency cases off the road. Our area seems to have had some sort of cosmic umbrella over it so far :-) We've got our fingers crossed that conditions won't be too dire when it's finally our turn...

I'm sure gardeners in the UK must be anticipating a lot of winterkill, especially in places on the west side of the country that grow some pretty semi-tropical stuff. Do you expect to lose a lot? Here, a heavy snowfall actually provides good winter protection since it adds an insulationg layer. Snowless winters are usually ones when a lot of winterkill happens, but that wouldn't be true when you're growing a lot of not-so-hardy plants.

I