I am really sick of winter!

January blizzard - you can see some wisps of grass, but not any more!

The lane to the river - January blizzard

View to the greenhouse & dairy barn, January blizzard

Sleeping garden

February 9, 5" of new snow followed by the sun

February 9, new snow on garden and lane to river

What a year!  It is beautiful out, I will say that.  Every time the snow gets a little gray, Mother Nature dumps another few inches on us.  That is about its only redeeming quality.

It isn't so much that it is cold - it has actually been colder here one winter, with my trusty little weather station's screen going blank.  When I went to the manual to do some troubleshooting, I found that it quits at -22º.  Oh, my!  My neighbor claimed that our low was -26º on his old-fashioned nailed-to-the-barn-wall thermometer.  Now that's cold!  But we suffered for two days and then it was gone.  What is so bad is that there doesn't seem to be any end to it this winter.

On a Monday a few weeks ago, my low was -18.3º F.  And the high that day was -11.1º.  Yup, that was the HIGH!  And this time, while we did have one day in the following week that hit around 40º, it dived again, and two weeks later I had -18.8º F. on my weather station.  However, we did reach the balmy temperature of 2º that day.

Has that been the end of it?  No, indeed!  I had -7.7º the other day, and I am starting to look at a day when we don't dip below zero as tolerably pleasant.

The Farmers Market just seems to get colder and colder, as if the cold weather has soaked into its very bones, and there is no heating it up to a decent temperature no matter how hard the overhead heaters are churning.  No insulation in the walls, and people going in and out the doors continually.  My fingers and toes are numb by the time I leave each day.

But let's get back to the snow.  I have lived on this farm for nearly 12 years now.  In that period of time, I have been snowed in exactly twice and had to hire a snow plow to get down my half mile lane.  Being east of Lake Michigan, most of our snow here is lake effect snow.  I can plow through that stuff even when it is pretty deep with my little Prius.  (Gotta love my Prius -- it's a truck in greenhouse season and a snow plow in winter!)  So snow for the most part has not been an issue.  Then there is THIS winter, with its wet heavy snow measured in feet, not inches.  I have had to have the snow plow here four times in as many weeks!  Thank goodness the new 5" of snow I got last night is light and fluffy, or I would have to be calling for help again!

We haven't even played cards for three weeks, because Richard's lane is still packed full of snow.  The best I can hope for right now is that I will get to see my card playing friends tonight, and that the Weather Underground  is correct.  It does not have even one minus sign in front of the predicted highs and lows for the 10-day forecast.  We can only hope.