Hail Spring!

Not!  The weather is so strange this year.  It snowed all day yesterday, and clearly most of the night.  This morning I went out and filled the bird feeders.  It isn't terribly cold out, and this snow is heavy and wet.  It's very hard on the trees and shrubs.  If you'll notice in lower middle part of this image, just to the left of center, one of our flowering plum trees--the largest one we had--has broken off in the snow.  Bummer.  There is another one further down the driveway that has broken off as well.

I'm always amused at how different everyday objects appear when covered in a layer of freshly fallen snow. This is the fencing around our dogwood tree--to protect it from nibbling deer.  (Deer love dogwood even more than they love tulips.)

Our bird bath skating rink.  In case you're wondering, our bird bath is hooked up to a mister that sprays a fine mist over the surface of the water.  The birds never used it until we hooked up the mister, and then they couldn't get enough of it.  The woman at the bird store informed us that birds must be able to hear and see movement on water to know what it is.

Here is our deck railing.  The air has been very still for it to pile up on the narrow railing like this.

This is the trellis for our clematis.  The clematis is mere sticks right now.

Sidewalk lighting with icicles!

Yard art.  Rather ironic piece of art under the circumstances, don't you think?

Bird feeders and squirrel guard.  By the way, the squirrels have figured out that they can bypass the squirrel guard by simply standing below the bird feeders and jumping like Superman.  They can leap tall bird feeders in a single bound.

It is pretty, I'll give it that.  It would be prettier in December, however.  In March, it's just plain maddening.

This Japanese Maple tree lost a big trunk/limb from the weight of the snow a few winters ago.  We thought it might die after such a huge part of it split off and fell to the ground, but it has done fine and grown taller since then.

Is there anything more hopeful than daffodils poking through the snow?  They are trying to bloom with all their might.

Sigh.  Oh well.  I'll say this about Portlanders:  We are never happy with the weather.  If we're not complaining about the rain, we're complaining about it being too hot.  Or too dry.  Or too cold.  It is a rare day--no matter what--when we aren't complaining about the weather being too much of something.  If we weren't complaining about the weather, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.

Did you notice?  There are no cat tracks.  None.  Zip.  You won't catch any self-respecting cat tromping through the snow.  No way.