A Heavy Wet Snow

We finally had a significant snow fall overnight last night.  I measured about 7 inches in our lane.  Here is the snow looking toward the garden gate.

It was a wet heavy snow that stuck to the trees.  Here the snow lingers on some of my fruit trees.  The temperature rose a little above freezing so the snow was starting to drop off of the trees by the time I took these pictures.

Here is snow among my grape vines.

This is a view of the west end of the garden with snow stacked on top of the posts holding the wires for my grape trellises.

Outside the west garden fence, the snow covers the field and the trees in the forest beyond.

The trees in the forest were quite pretty this morning with the snow on each branch.

Our lane going west covered with snow.

This is the path going back to my bee hives next to the pond.

The hives are covered in snow but protected from the west and north winds by bales of straw.  All of the hives are wrapped in roofing felt to give them further insulation from wind.  They have top entrances so I did not bother to clear the snow that was blocking the bottom entrances.

Looking from the other side.  Obviously, it was too cold for any activity today.  The bees were all snug in their clusters deep in the hives.

The bales do not rest right up against the hives.  I left a gap of about a foot.
The bales are held up with steel fence posts driven into the ground to keep them from toppling over onto the hives.

The bird feeder in my back yard was busy today, though I didn't catch any birds in this picture.  A new addition is the black baffle that, so far, has been successful in keeping squirrels and raccoons from raiding the feeders.  I find that the seed now lasts much longer.  The squirrels have been quite determined to find a way onto the feeders, climbing around on the screens on the windows of the house and attempting to jump off of the porch roof to reach the feeders.  However, they have had no success to date.