Goodbye Florida Sunset..And Hello Winter

We must be crazy. This is what we left. A beautiful, warm, Golden Beach sunset.

And back in western New York, after a false dawn, a couple of vaguely mild days without a flake of snow on the ground, on Friday morning .... 

 This happened

All that snow on the hanging baskets - that was just overnight

They had warned in the weather forecast that the snow wouldn't be normal snow. It would be extremely heavy and wet and snow shovelling could be dangerous - might bring on heart attacks and so on. Well the trees were certainly bent out of shape.

 With all that weight. And huge branches came off the maple trees all morning.

And the arborvitae by the drive - the bits of them that survived the deer onslaught - were bent right over like triumphal; arches

Even our 4WD got stuck at the end of the drive, in all the heavy snow the plough dumped and I had to dig it out. They were right in the weather forecast.  Plus we had no electricity and no telephone.  I trudged up the hill to try and get a mobile phone signal. We hardly ever get one at the house but this sometimes works. Except not today.

The lane was pretty though.

Coming back, I noticed the variegated dogwood bush was squashed flat by the snow.

But this afternoon we looked out of the window and discovered a kind neighbour had come and ploughed the drive and disappeared before we could even thank him. That's western New Yorkers for you.