Gray month

This is the time between green and white, the period of gray.  Leaves have fallen, grass curled back, plants all done for the year.  But snow hasn't seriously fallen.

Blue skies, when they occur, have that fierceness we associate with gleaming over snows.  Otherwise the skies are white and gray, as if paused just before delivering snow:

The ground is chilled, not completely frozen, so we take stabs at some little digging.  Ceredwyn put down some bulbs against spring, and I pry loose some silt in the driveway's drainage ditch. But the 2011 growing season is over, and we are already settling into assuming frozen soil through March.

(photo source here)