Ahhhh, February you keep coming and we don’t know what to do with you! At this point I am sounding like a broken record, but we keep getting pounded with more snow and the relentless cold won’t let up. This Thursday the high expected for the day is 8 degrees.

So, I can tell you for a fact that I have my work cut out for me this spring. I have lost both my Emerald Green Arborvitae to winter damage. I would love to show you a picture, but I can’t. They are buried under three feet of snow.

To show you I am not making this up, just look at this comparison:

My backyard in early September 2014. Truly blissful.

To Saturday, February 7, 2015:

I took this yesterday morning. Can you believe this?  That’s just accumulation, and not shoveled or piled snow!

Yes, I am afraid I am going to have a lot more damage from winter and deer this year than I have in the past. Well, a few more lessons will be learned this spring, I will detail them all for you!

So, as you can imagine, I have been laying low. This past week was the worst driving to work week in all the years I have been living in the Buffalo Metro area. So, this weekend has been really subdued for me.

This is my uniform on weekends in bitter cold weather:

I have been on a kick this winter purchasing big, woolly warm boot socks like these from Wigwam.

Snuggly socks and blankets leave you wanting to do nothing but read. I have been really stoked lately because a couple of weeks ago, I purchased a book that I have actually been looking for in some way, shape or form for a long time. When I read about it in Outside magazine, I couldn’t help myself. I had to buy it!

Now, this is an encyclopedia of trees that will be loved by everyone from gardeners to woodworkers. I am talking about The Woodbook: The Complete Plates. This is a fantastic undertaking by Romeyn B. Hough in the late 19th century – early 20th century. Hough was a doctor and botanist who between 1888-1913 created a 14 volume series that included actual samples from every tree in North America.

This edition of the book was compiled by Klaus Ulrich Leistikow. It has three different “slices” or cuts each of more than 350 trees neatly laid out. This is a multilingual edition that comes in English, French and German. It can be a little confusing, because some trees are referred to by two or more names sometimes, but it lists the description, habitat, type of wood (hard or soft), and use for each one. Informative, thorough, and wonderfully done. It’s been a joy to look through all the plates and see how beautiful the trees really are. This is, as they say, a truly unparalleled work that keeps blowing my mind!

One of the responsibilities of my day job is that I am a graphics/layout designer (not to be confused with a graphic designer) of sorts, and I am getting a ton of inspiration from looking at this book. I have so much to look at and will continue to enjoy this book while I keep getting snowed in!