Winter rushed in this weekend like a dandelion going to seed. OK, maybe that’s a silly simile. But it did come really fast! My remote thermometer said it got down to 26° on Sunday morning, and it’s been at or below 30° each morning for the past three days. We had some snow on Sunday morning, including this interesting juxtaposition of snow on the pretty little Meidiland roses along my front walk. The snow melted by Sunday afternoon.

It’s actually supposed to warm up again this week, getting back into the 70s. But these hard freezes have done their damage, and the zucchini squash plants are dead, as are the petunias and other tender annuals. The tomatoes were hurt the first night, and then I covered them, so we’ll see if they can keep going as it warms back up. Not sure they’ll get over that initial freeze, though.

Anyway, here are a couple shots of my Autumn Blaze maples in my backyard. The pale one is the one that I’ve had some chlorosis problems with. Now that I look at these photos, I realize I need to prune these trees better to develop a good healthy scaffold form. Not sure exactly how to do that, but I bet I’ll learn something about it in my master gardener class.