We woke up to more snow this morning. It isn't snowing heavily, but everything is kind of "shades of gray." It's quite a bit warmer - reading 30 degrees outside my window right now. We should have a nearly perfect, picturesque Christmas as far as sparkling snow and gently falling snow flakes are concerned.

As I looked out my kitchen window a few minutes ago it occurred to me that had I strung lights on my clump of birch trees next to the driveway as usual, I wouldn't be able to see them! The trees are on a slope and it's hard to get the lights very high in the branches without a ladder, so I've strung them on the branches I could reach and that's been fine until at least mid-January most years. This year it would have been lost effort. (See picture at upper right).

While I was taking that picture, I noticed how still the flag is. It is a beautiful splash of color in the otherwise gray landscape, so I snapped a shot of that, too. There's a path around the deck between the snowbanks that we keep for the gas man when he needs to fill the tank on the other end of the house. If we keep getting snow every day we may need to resort to tunnels. Using the snow blower is an advantage in that it gets the snow away from the house - mostly. But a lot goes into that corner over my flower beds. Not only the snow from the driveway, but also from the deck when we shovel it off. I don't expect to see my flower gardens again until about Memorial Day.