Scary Cold Winter Silence

I should be ashamed of myself. And I am. I haven't been writing a thing for such a long time. Well, there are changes in life and adjusting to them apparently takes some time. Nothing bad has happened though, it has all been positive.

One of the new things is that I actually went back to school. No, I'm not a drop out, but I have been unemployed and a stay at home mother for quite a long time now, and where I live doesn't really offer too many job opportunities on my own field. So I started studying something else instead. I'm quite busy nowadays.

But WINTER. First it looked like there's not going to be any of that. It kept raining through Christmas and the temperatures were above zero°. And then came January. First it got only mildly colder, threw  some snow (very little though) and then suddenly the temperature dropped to -20 C°.

Today it's -25 C° (apparently that's -13 F°) and there's barely any snow at all! What this mess is that there's no snow to protect all the sensitive plants. :-(

This is a very depressing image of the Rhododendrons I

planted in summer. If this was a "normal" winter, they would be

totally covered in snow and not a leaf would be visible. But as

you can see, there's barely enough snow to cover the ground.

Many of my more "exotic" (anything that grows well in Southern Sweden is considered exotic to me) survived surprisingly well last winter - thanks to the thick snow cover! I was happy to find out in spring that my magnolias were actually alive! And even the one that had dead branches, started to grow new shoots from the ground as the summer went on.

This winter gives me headache! I'm so afraid to see what will be left after winter. Anyone else having the same experience?