This did not turn out as I'd anticipated.

This was going to be a post about snowshoes and snow-covered hemlocks and cute dogs in high-vis jackets.

Here's the cute dog in his high-vis jacket (a must for a dog with an unhealthy love of snowmobiles and their riders):

This is just before Sue from FedEx drove up with a package for me. Yay, a package!

I'll just toss it up on the porch and head back into the woods....

And that's when this post took a decidedly different turn. When a cute dog in a high-vis jacket grabbed the package (a manuscript for a jacket copy writing assignment from Random House) and did this:

And the name of this book? Couldn't make it up if I tried.

Mid-Winter. Blurgh.

Ahhh, mid-February. How I hate you so.

This is about the time when I become slightly unhinged. There won't be leaves on the trees for another 3 months. And there's only so much white one brain can handle in any given day. And right now, the view in every direction is white. So I latched on to the White Flower Farm catalog pretty hard when it arrived last week. Here are my "in my dreams!" picks:

A black iris!! Now that's cool. And a potential band name, if I go back in time to 1998.

This "Dawn and Dusk" duo: Clematis and climbing roses. So English country sweet! I don't deserve such a pretty floral display.

Flowering Quince: siiiiiigggghhhh.

Smokebush: there's something about this that reminds me of Elaine dancing on Seinfeld. In a good way.

A man-eating Hosta! Does it come with a large stick for measuring?

And the flower of my dreams, Hellebores. Thank you, Martha Stewart, for yet another flower obsession.

All photos via White Flower Farm

Blog it Forward

Born of a mess of late-night tweets, Victoria of sfgirlbybay has put together a very cool "blog mash-up;" a connected stream of bloggers posting on a single subject. The first topic will be simple: what inspires us?

Come join in, I think it will be a really lovely, convivial thing to participate in. You can read all about it and sign up here. Ez from Creature Comforts created this sweet badge for us.