Feels Like Actual Winter

 Our past two winters were very mild for our area.  I heard many people say "I wish it would just get cold and stay cold" because the freeze/thaw cycle turns driveways into skating rinks.  Just when you get things plowed and packed down and manageable, it would all melt into a sheet of ice and then disappear completely and we would have to start all over again.

It is kind of difficult at this point to determine how much snow we got during this last cold snap.  When it started, the ground was still wet and warm and many layers melted slowly into the mud before the ground firmed up.  You have to look at a hard, cold surface to determine how much snow you actually got.  And a lot of that has either compacted or blown off.  I would say we got about a foot.

This is a good time to walk around and see how the deer protection is holding up.   I usually do this during the January Thaw, but when I looked out the window this morning I saw so many tracks I decided I'd better walk around and check things out.

Grids placed over the whiskey barrels protect the evergreen Heuchera

I was watching a gardening show on PBS once and the Southerner landscaping "expert" stated that white tail deer don't eat grass...  Its true that the bulk of their diet is "browse" or leafy ends of woody stemmed plants on the edges of wooded areas, but our white tails eat lawn grass all year 'round.  They have been hitting the lawns hard this week trying to fill their empty stomachs.

The weather is cold and they are HUNGRY.  The ground under any oak tree in the area has been ravaged as they search for nuts.  Every night they make the rounds and check to see if our evergreen shrubs are still fenced today....

Darn it... no False Cypress snack tonight.  Maybe tomorrow night?
We'll check back.

They check all over the landscape, including this Heuchera, which gets nibbled at the edges.

They tromped all over this Itoh Peony, freeing it from its igloo of snow, probably wanting to walk through and being stopped by the strategically placed section of hog panel. Foiled again!  Then they trip over all of the wire cloches protecting the Primrose from the rabbits.

It sure would be nice to eat a fresh, green, Primrose salad...

This morning it was officially somewhere between 10F and 13F depending on which weather service you consulted.  Because we are at a higher elevation , we are "warmer" at 17 degrees.

We are in for several more weeks of cold temperatures, but thankfully we are enjoying some sun.  November and December are always the cloudiest months of our year while January and February can often be clear and bright.  A little sunshine goes a long way.