Flower Seeds from Santa

My youngest daughter loves plants. She's the only 7 year-old I know who has a favorite tree (Tulip Poplar) or who can identify things like Sassafrass and Yarrow. She's careful to say "White Oak" rather than just oak and she knows what flowers we have planted in the yard along with whether or not they are said to attract butterflies and/or hummingbirds.

Her letter to Santa included this line.

I want flower seeds.


She was thrilled to find 3 packs of seeds in her stocking on Christmas morning.

December Snow

While it's not rare to get snow here, it's unusual enough to be fun. Mostly. Our county doesn't have a fleet of slag trucks so some of the rural roads may not get attention for a couple days. Friday, we got what forecasters like to call a 'wintery mix' that later became snow and then went back to ice. By the end of the day, we had 6 inches in our yard. Other people in the area reported up to a foot.

Friday was supposed to be a half day for the kids with dismissal at noon. School actually dismissed at 9:45am because the storm system moved in sooner than anticipated. Roads started getting nasty right away. One of the major roads between this county and a neighboring county was closed for several hours due to multiple accidents. I've heard that a car ended up in the creek on the rural road closest to our home but the driver was not seriously injured. It's not the first time that's happened as the creek is in a valley. It would be easy to start sliding on the hill on either side of the creek and just plunk your car in the water. When my husband and I went over that bridge around 8am on Friday, there was already ice on it. When school dismissed our daughters rode the bus to their grandma's house like always. As the day wore on, several co-workers left early so they could get home before the roads got too bad. I was at work until my husband picked me up and his company tends to frown on leaving early due to weather. Still, he left a bit early in order to pick me up when the decision was made to close the library at 4:15 instead of 6:00pm. What is normally a 20 minute trip took the better part of 2 hours. The girls and I ended up walking the last 1/4 mile up our private, gravel road after the car slid into a ditch. No injuries, no damage to the car so it wasn't a big deal but the car had to be parked at my mother in-law's, a mile away. My brother in-law brought T home in his SUV.

Saturday, the girls spent a bit of time sledding in the back yard. A neighbor scraped our road with his tractor. The roads were still bad enough that church was canceled today. I'm off work until Wednesday and will be staying home because that's what I normally do anyway. With the temperatures they're predicting I'm betting we still have snow on the ground Christmas morning. Normally, any snow we get melts within a few days.

Our front yard always looks so pretty with a blanket of snow