Happy New Year to you, too, Melissa! Beautiful snow, though having no power for 2 days sucks; that happened once to us when we still lived up at our old house. No real snow here in town, but the higher hills are sprinkled with white,but lots of rain...

Happy New Years Melissa!

Love the snow! However hate the damage it brings. I didn't know it could break rebar! Learn something new everyday.

Happy New Year, Melissa! I hope the snow heralds the arrival of a year of bountiful growth and healing rain.

Happy New Year! Your snow is gorgeous. We are grey and drizzly here.

Looks beautiful, Melissa, but sorry about the power loss and damages.

Thanks, everybody!

Bart, is that you? I've been wondering about the name. How is gardening going in the plague year?

Alana, the rebar doesn't break, but it bends out of shape. I've never seen this before, probably because most of our rebar pergolas postdate the period when it snowed abundantly. This illustrates the importance of proper design, to minimize these types of problems.

It snowed all yesterday and was still snowing last night when DD went to bed. A section of the pergola on the paved terrace came down, the one with the 20' long 'Mme. Alfred Carrière' on it. I'll see what the world looks like when it gets light. The forecast is for rain all day today and temperatures rising into the forties. Thank goodness, but what a mess it's going to be. Still, it will be nice to see the ground again.

Thanks, Jeri. The snow is good, and all the moisture. I hope you folks in California get rain and coolness: it sounds like they're needed.

It looks beautiful, but what a pain about your pergola! I hope the damage isn't too bad. Good luck with the thaw and repairs!

Yep, Melissa, it's me, Eileen, aka "bart" of old. My new forum name is dumb,but I was hoping that it would help old forum friends to recognize me,and it does seem to work.

I'm getting a lot done in my garden. After being out of commission for so long, there's SO much to do. Actually I can't precisely remember my own time-line, but my hip problem had been going on and getting steadily worse for at least the past six years (probably more), so that slowed me down. During this time, the Great Badger Invasion occured, and for at least 2 years I spent most of my time working on re-inforcing my fence in a way to help keep them out,not to mention trying to repair damage. I'm still working on the repairing: before the Invasion, I had carefully, and with great effort, mulched a large part of my garden, and dragged large stones into the paths to act as stepping stones. The badgers wreaked havoc with that ;not only did they completely destroy my mulch- they are incredibly , incredibly strong, and displaced those big, heavy stones completely, as if they had sort of just "tossed them around"! Infuriating and hateful, but also darn impressive. So now I'm trying to re-instate order amongst my stones ,along with everything else...

Melissa - Happy New Year, and happy snow (at least it is moisture). Having the power off is a drag, though. We get our power turned off once in a while in hot weather by the power utility on purpose, to try and avoid their equipment starting a wild fire (which it has done over & over). Your reason for no power is much better!

It is raining here right now, just a little. We have had 3 "storms" in a row in the last 6 days, but each one has not even wet the driveway under the trees - less than .1 inch each. However, they claim that on Monday, Wed, and Fri of next week we will get real rain storms (that is the "normal" winter pattern here, or at least it used to be - rain 2 or 3 times each week). We will see what really happens, but the garden is happy now to just get a bit.

Jackie

Wow, Bart, you are one brave woman. I'll have to suck it up down here.

Thank you for this uplifting thread and pictures. Despite the huge problems it must have been so beautiful and peaceful for Christmas.

Beautiful snow photos! A kerosene heater would save you trouble from shoveling all that snow. Being living in a snow country and have snow storms, power outages all the time, we have generators, kerosene heaters ready to go. Kerosene heaters aren’t expensive, they are about $100-200 at Home Depot. It might be cheaper at Italian hardware stores. It’s easy to use and provides more heat than a fireplace.

Again, good to hear all the comments, and thanks to all for writing. Jackie, I hope you've been getting rain. Bart, good to know it IS you. You had so many health problems over such a long period: have you returned to a state of overall good health? I think we're about the same age (early-mid sixties) and I know that when I develop problems now I have this worry they'll be with me forever, probably worsening; but then I do get over things. I've had difficulties with my joints, but at the moment am moving pretty freely and comfortably. Life does continue.

I have badgers in the garden, too, and know how they dig, and how ferocious they are. I remember our dog's encounter with one, and how he dripped blood slowly on the living room floor for hours afterward.

Vaporvac, well, Christmas Day was pleasant, if quiet, but the power went out that night and then again two nights later, which rather blotted out a good portion of our holidays. In fact, we're planning on keeping our Christmas lights on through Sunday (after Epiphany, the official end of the holiday season) just so we can enjoy a reasonable span of festive feeling before returning to January. We feel the greater need for light and color as there's been very little sun for over a month now, with the steadily gray, sodden weather forecast to continue for days; and with the melting snow we have to wade a stream--the path--to get to the woodpile and our car. Unsurpassed dreariness, in short, though I may take a walk today. Forecasts of more snow have been coming and going.

Summersrhythm, I don't know whether people heat with kerosene in Italy. Also there would be the problem of where to put a tank: we had to stand on our heads to find a place for the tank for the LP gas we use to heat our water and power the stovetop. This is an Italian kind of problem: we have very little yard. We would still need to dig out the car and be able to get to it, though that doesn't need as much digging (to get to the car) as hauling wood in the wheelbarrow does.

Sorry to hear about the damage and power!

Very happy you're getting your precipitation though; here in the Great Lakes, we're running a snow deficit of something around 30 inches.

It was a hot, dry summer, and it's been a mild, surprisingly dry winter compared to normal years.

I'm hoping our snows and rains come; at least the Great Lakes are at record high levels presently.

Best wishes and stay warm!

Steven

Steven

Thanks, Steven! I hope you get your precipitation! Living in what feels like a refrigerator for the last couple of weeks hasn't been pleasant, but not getting needed water is the worst of all. We got another four inches of snow a couple of days ago, and more is forecast for Sunday; but after that the forecast is actually for SUN. About time. I hope your winter weather goes well; and after winter comes spring: I'm looking forward to it. Though just to see bare ground would be great.

Best wishes to you, too.

Melissa

"Not getting the needed water is the worst of all"-SO TRUE!!! I keep on reminding myself of this ,to help myself be patient with the rain and snow. On our side of the Appennines,there hasn't been as much snow I think as there has been on Melissa's, but I haven't been able to go out to my land for the past week-rain and rain-mixed -with -snow every day. Today wasn't supposed to rain, but it did,and in any case the hills surrounding town are white with snow,so even if the paved road is clear, the unpaved portion that leads to our land will be a mess, and going out there might well prove to be risky, exhausting,and totally pointless. Tommorrow is iffy,and then over the weekend we may get a real snow,so I'm stuck at home. Trying to decide when to take down the Christmas tree-it's so cheery,but it's supposed to be bad luck to leave decorations up after the holidays. However, today is the Orthodox Christmas,so technically speaking, the holidays are not yet over...

Oooh, pretty! But with your hills, perhaps you get snowbound, which is not so good.

In any case, I wish you a happy New Year, with just the right amount of water. In fact I wish that for us all.

Looking up John Prine on Wikipedia, I found a folksinger who died recently of Covid; I am very sorry. But I would, never, never, ever keep up Christmas decorations of any sort up all year-let alone my tree, which is a live one, and which i always hope will survive for next year. They would not be special any more if you kept them up all year; they'd be so sad and depressing...

Not for John Prine. He thought one should have Christmas every day.

Alaska, too, kept lights up for months and months. Of course one would never keep a live tree in the house for any length of time. John had quite the quirky sense of humor.

So pleasant to see this conversation continuing. I second Rosefolly's wishes for adequate water for us all. German author Heinrich Boell wrote a story titled 'Christmas Every Day'. It's been some decades since I read it, but as I recall, the idea didn't work out well; still, our Christmas lights will be up through this Sunday! It has been so gray! The sun is then forecast to come out, thank goodness, and I HOPE it melts most of the snow, which is still present in abundance.

Good luck getting out to your land, bart. I'm hopeful, with the current precipitation, that water supplies won't be a problem this summer. Sheila, hello! Paula, our chief problem is getting the car out of our parking space and onto the pavement a few yards away, as the pavement is plowed but the gravel-and-dirt (mud) parking area isn't. We had a major digging out session several days ago, since when we've been able to exit and re-enter. Paved roads are no problem: they're promptly plowed after snow and are salted. (My brother was surprised about the salting, as it damages vehicles, but, in fact, I've never seen salt damage on cars here, and there are decades-old vehicles in circulation. A mystery.)

P.S. Italy is still in strict quarantine until January 15. This means we're not supposed to leave our property except for necessary errands like grocery shopping. So that's another reason to want the snow gone from the garden, so I can fool around there instead. However, like many Italians we're suffering from quarantine fatigue. On Epiphany DD and I went for a walk, clean forgetting that we were supposed to stay home (I remembered when we were a couple of miles from the car). There were a good many other people out walking or cycling too. It was breaking the rules, not a good thing, but at least the chance of catching the infection in the open air was very low. Everybody kept a good distance away from anyone who wasn't in their group.

I like lighted birch trees. Most of people use them as Christmas trees, I light them up throughout the year. I love the tiny branch lights mixed with candelabras, chandelier. Together they create a relaxed atmosphere for my breakfast table......., :-)

We were allowed to walk around during quarantine. I saw a lot of people out on a bike path, it was pretty crowded! Everyone was out! :-) Hopefully your snow melts away soon.

Summer that is so pretty but my cats would DEVASTATE those little lights. They are very bad seeds.

Thanks oursteelers. Cats would take them down in no time. Lol I have no pets at this moment, waiting for a poodle puppy in the spring. I missed having a fur kid. The breeder wasn’t sure if she’d have a litter until next month, her friends will have a litter this month, I might get one from there. Can’t wait.

Quarantines have been very different from place to place. During our winter-spring quarantine people were supposed to stay in their apartments or houses+yards and not leave them except for essential errands, buying groceries or medicines, for example, or walking one's dog once a day. The quarantine was widely observed (and enforced), and it stopped the epidemic through the summer, as you can see from a survey of illness rates over time in Italy in 2020. Then fall came, people returned to work and school, and the epidemic roared back to life. There's fatigue this time around, but people do to a considerable extent respect the regulations, wearing masks, maintaining a distance in stores, and disinfecting their hands often, for example. Too many people have died in this country from Coronavirus, and, Italy being densely populated, everybody knows it.

For LIGHT, I just want some sunshine!! The sun is forecast finally to emerge tomorrow and be visible at least part of the time, which, in spite of the cold, should melt a good deal of the snow. With much of our garden on a steep, southwest-facing slope, we should see the bare ground emerge sooner than in most places, and yet most of our garden is still under snow. When DD and I went for a short drive and walk on Wednesday, most of the land we saw still looked like a Christmas card.

I got out yesterday to have a look around, and the breakage is impressive, possibly worse than after December 2017's spectacular ice storm. Twenty inches of snow all at once will do a deal of damage. I may get out today and start sawing down damaged branches. Unlike the Italian cypresses, the Leyland cypresses seem to have come through fairly well, but there is one large limb on one of our two good-sized trees that split and needs to come down.