Baby, it's cold outside!

Holy schnikes it's cold! We've had several weeks of repeated arctic weather blasts where the wind chill makes it bone-numbingly cold. I need to clean up the yard where the dog has littered the few bare spots in the snow with her poop-sicles, but even if the temperatures spike into the 30s, the wind chill makes it feel like it's just in the teens. I don't function very well in prolonged, cold temperatures, so I haven't been going outside that much except when necessary. Frankly I just want to burrow into the couch and hibernate until this is all past us. This self-imposed confinement, along with the post-holiday let down, is starting to ferment into cabin fever. I'm entering that long, dark stretch of the year where I long for home-grown vegetables, fresh air in the house, and the chance to play in the garden. The seed companies are sending out their catalogues and I find myself drooling over the enticing pictures of fresh produce, pretty flowers, and oh-so-lush green foliage. It's just plant porn, and I force myself away from it by cleaning out closets and packing up our belongings for the move to the new house. Thankfully the move is distracting me from the frigid, bare landscape currently devoid of any color other than white and brown. It's awfully depressing if I let myself look out the window too much.

So I leave you with a picture of flowering crab apple taken last spring on the Virginia Tech campus. It's a shot of fresh pink and green, and it makes me feel warmer just looking at it. Enjoy!