Is Winter Here Yet?

Temperatures at Shady Hollow dropped below freezing last night. I haven't checked, but I'm sure the impatiens, begonia, salvias and cannas that have been hanging in there all fall finally took a death blow. I can't remember a time in the twenty years I've lived here that the summer blooms have lasted so long. Of course the poor plants were bedraggled and far from lush, but they were still alive and had a few flowers. There were even some petunias that were actually thriving in the mild weather, blooming happily.

Here in the Western North Carolina Mountains the weather is fickle and does not usually follow the norms you might find anywhere else. The mild fall weather has been a prime example of this. All my weather lore (learned from my father) tells me that we will have a cold winter, with the possibility of several substantial snows. I could be wrong however, as I learned to read the weather at lower elevations. I often am wrong here. The mountains follow their own rules.