Notes From Zone 4

I guess having the first snowfall of the year on November 9th really isn’t early. It feels like it, though, because we are so not ready for snow to fly. They’d been telling us were were going to get hammered here in the Monadnock region, four or five inches, which would have been a lot

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Winter showed up with a bang today. Blustery and cold, and it snowed hard for much of the morning. Brr. It didn’t take that long to shovel, though, so maybe it was only four inches or so. When we left to play bridge tonight, the car thermometer showed a cold eight degrees. I wonder if this will be the snow that sticks through the rest of the winter? Our new bird feeders have been doing quite the brisk business. We knew a storm was coming with all of the increased traffic out there. We think this little guy is either a hairy or a downy woodpecker. There have been three or four very similar guys hanging around lately. Isn’t he beautiful?

Yeah, yeah, we’re in zone 4, I know. But why did the first snow have to come so early? We’re not ready! We don’t have enough firewood cut. I haven’t finished all my late fall chores yet! The fish aren’t ready. I’m not ready. We’ve been watching the little wooly-bear caterpillars, who have been telling us that it’s going to be a cold and snowy winter. I just didn’t realize how quickly it was going to come. At least we got the bulbs in the ground. They had absolutely no time to do much, though. Can they even get started in three days? The ground won’t be frozen yet though underneath all of the snow. Right? Right. Don’t panic. This still might melt, and we still might get some more things done before we are snow covered for the rest of the winter.

I was as excited as the kids were last night, waiting for the snow to start. We were supposed to get eight to twelve inches, and the kids were hoping for a snow day, of course. We’ve had so little snow this year that the yard is barely snow covered, especially where the flock of

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