I'm Dreaming of a White...Halloween?!

Perhaps you've seen the commercial for Birds' Eye frozen vegetables, where people are picking bright, ripe peppers in the snow. One of my students asked me just this week if that could really happen, and I laughed. Boy, am I eating my words now.Brian and I went out this morning to salvage the rest of our crop. Yes, we are picking TOMATOES in the SNOW.

Next, we harvested the sweet potatoes.

Not bad for a first try at growing them! I think I'll bake this one in the oven tonight, to go with a steak...that is, if we keep the power on. The heavy, wet snow is causing tree branches to come down all over our township (poor trees!), and the power has cut off a few times already.
The rain barrel needs to be emptied before it freezes, so I used some of the water to rinse off the sweet potatoes. As a bonus, we found some more blue potatoes that I missed the last time!
These are some coral bells and little bluestem grasses in our front garden. They make me sad like this, all squished and drooped over. The blueberry plants are almost buried and the mums are wearing a cap of white.

It creates cognitive dissonance to see Halloween decorations and hear the sound of snow shoveling at the same time around here. However, I will use this opportunity to add to my forecasting knowledge of coastal storms, slip my feet into my favorite alpaca socks, and try to make sense of trees resplendent in fall color yet iced in snow.