The beauty of a blizzard...

School cancellations, trips to the supermarket for last minute non-perishables in case of power outages, batteries for flashlights, and the list goes on. If you are one of those who escaped any of the possible downsides of this storm (flooding along the coast, downed trees, loss of electricity, etc.), it's much easier to appreciate the beauty of these storms.

(courtesy of picMonkey.com)

This was the view from our dining room window yesterday, showing the ivy that climbs our brick chimney and the new gate and fence hubby installed over the summer. I love the snow piled atop the arbor.

This is our dining room window this morning. I had to take the arbor photo from the upper panes on the right side of the window where there was no snow piled up.

Through the top of the left panes, the deck is visible. A brave Sammy Squirrel and Mr. Bluejay are waiting for me to toss out some peanuts...

...while a little junco waits patiently for me to brush the snow from the screen feeder 

so he can get at the seed.

This was the view from the family room slider. 

The snow was piled up to the first grid on the door section. 

The drifting snow was practically up to the patio table, and the chairs are barely visible at all.

It's going to be a while before we're eating out here, I'm afraid.

A bit later I tossed out peanuts for my friends, with most landing on the table.

The "gnome home" is also filled with snow, its window also covered with snow.

Oh, good. Sammy found one of the peanuts I tossed out for him. 

Now we'll take a peek out front and see how the snowy landscape has changed our view.

Here's a view looking down the street. I insisted that hubby, in his sixties, agree to having someone plow the end of the driveway for this 2+ feet of snow. He agreed, so we arranged to have that done. This photo was taken pre-plowing.

A while later, you can see that the end of the driveway has been cleared. They did a great job. But now we need to shovel a path from the house to the driveway and then unearth the vehicles. It's hard to see from this angle, but the snow is almost covering up our mailboxes.

Okay, this is better. From the front door you can see the mailboxes, barely visible above the snow. There's usually at least a 2' clearance between the bottom of our flag and the ground. But now, when not being blown by the high winds, the snowman flag rests on top of the snow.

And there it goes again, blowing in the wind...

This was our mini snowstorm of January 16th, just a few weeks ago. Even though there was snow on the ground, the mailboxes were still well above the snow and the flag had plenty of space below it.

I hope those of you who don't live in New England or snowy regions enjoyed these photos.

I hope those of you who do live here, but winter in Florida, are smiling, as you're reminded of 

why you made that choice.

I hope those of you who love to ski, snowboard, and snowmobile have a blast.

I hope those of you who don't (me included) have an early spring!

Donna