williamson county snow day

NEWSFLASH: school opening delayed for 2 hours

But you can't even play in this stuff!

Scenes from my backyard (and front, to be fair) II

Embalmed leaves

If anybody can help me identify what the name of this tree is I will buy you a virtual drink. I can't remember what the leaves look like since they have all fallen off, but what stands out for me is the bark. At first I thought it was covered with fungus, but now I realize that that is how it's supposed to be (I hope to God it is, for the sake of the tree!). It is covered in what looks like stacks of misshapen coins. Normally I would look this up myself, but my field guide to trees mildewed while sitting in storage here and it smelled too bad to save, and I have yet to buy another one (one more innocent victim of the move, including many daddy long-legs that made the trip down in boxes).

A pseudo-graveyard, but the only thing really dead here is my will to want to walk through this area in the summertime, down by the creek, where vines of poison ivy cover the ground

Sweetgum balls, which give the tree an interesting profile in the winter. And that is about all the good I can say about them!

Holly and berries. I never realized that this evergreen tree didn't like growing in the North. It seems so northern!

One of the few Tennessee snowmen in existence today. Two minutes after building him he was already beginning to lean backwards.

The aforementioned stream. During the summer it was pretty dry and you could see most of the creek bed. My next-door neighbor has an irrigation pump thingy that sucks up the water for his grass, and I have a theory that he was contributing to our drought. I was going to take some of the stones from the bottom for my garden path in order to give it a natural look, but I had to wait for the autumn to arrive so that the poison ivy would die off. Go figure. It is now a slippery, deep, rushing river. I guess that's what husbands are for--to risk their lives for the sake of the beauty of the house.

what is it about frozen water that is so nostalgic?

It is snowing all around Nashville tonight! AOL news described it as "Rare Snowfall Blankets South." Now I feel like Tennessee is home, or at least my home away from home.

I have every intention of playing in the snow with my kids in the morning before it all melts away. In Tennessee, you cannot count on keeping something like this around for more than a half day, so you need to act quickly.

I'm just so thankful that I have children to share it with. During my college days in Illinois, I used to take my sled to a small hill tucked away within the forest preserve, where I wouldn't easily be spotted by passing cars, and traipse up and down until either my legs gave out or my toes went numb. My oldest daughter was in early elementary school at the time, and she still doesn't know about my winter excursions. It is one of my silly secrets.

I'm wondering what I will do when my two youngest are grown. I very well cannot go out into my front yard and make snow angels alone. I guess that gives me one good reason to look forward to becoming a grandmother someday.

central Indiana sunset on the fly

Driving home from our short weekend trip to Illinois, I caught the end of the day just in time to snap these photos. Rolled the passenger window down--kids screaming in the back "we're cold!"--had to balance the camera on the door at 70 m.p.h. without losing it--hands going numb--kids still yelling for me to hurry up. Pity the life of an amateur photographer's family.

Christkindlmarket in Chicago 2008

The Daley Plaza, looking down Washington Boulevard

Horse and carriage on Washington Blvd.

At sunset, the millions of white lights adorning the trees in Daley Plaza begin to appear

One of the many food stands--this one sold flaky strudel filled with hot fruit or cheese. Danke schon--bitte!

Enjoying some warm gluhwein

Despite all the delicious food around the market, the pigeons are more interested in staying warm!

Wheelchairs and strollers--a good way to cut through the crowds

Everyone is dressed for the occasion--with temperatures in the teens and low 20's--and no one is complaining about the cold (except us "Tennesseans")!

the beauty of brown

We drove to Illinois today on what is henceforth to be called the "Annual Christmas Pilgrimage to the Frozen Homeland." The green melted away quickly as we proceeded north up through the central part of the state, from plentiful cedar trees lining I-65 to Japanese honeysuckle in its last throes of life clinging to fences.

Skeletons of goldenrods, pampas grass and other common prairie plants, dried leaves suspended on oak trees, remnants of cornstalks and soybean fields, piles of branches collected from summer storms, reeds and solitary shrubs in the median strips, a pine split in half--all contrasted with the occasional man-made brown of local attraction signs along the highway.

This was the aspect of the trip to Illinois that I had dreaded: the drive up north, to slowly watch the landscape become more dried and barren. Miles of nothing but houses, farms and graineries jutting up from brown. Worried that I might come to realize that I was glad to be living away from it, far away south, nestled in Tennessee.

For the first time, after all the years of living in Illinois, I noticed the tones of winter outside of the spectrum of snow colors (white, of course, but we mustn't forget yellow and black). Olive green, silver, and all the shades of brown that you can find in a stand of trees and in the fields lining the highway--coffee bean, burnt sienna, amber, chestnut, tan, rust, chocolate, sepia, auburn. I have never been deferent to brown, but moving away from Illinois has given me a third eye to be able to see beauty in a landscape that I once dismissed as ugly.

It must be possible to love two places and call them home, and have people agree that you belong to both of them and they belong to you. To admit that you love one and still not betray the other.