Winter Blues

This winter has been crazy here in Iowa (and many other parts of the country!). Since the middle of November, I think there has only been one week where I made it to work every day and didn't spend a day or two at home because of bad weather. I don't mind working from home a day a week, but there have been weeks where I spent 3 days in a row snowed in! This week we had ice. It built up on everything, and all the tree branches are coming down and knocking out power. We lost power for about an hour yesterday, but have been ok since then. Yesterday all the schools in the area were closed because of the ice. Today, some were closed because they did not have power. I decided to walk the two blocks to the post office today (I figured it would take longer to get the ice off my car), and took some pictures.

Here is a close-up of some berries on a bush down the road:And here is what that same bush looks like above the sidewalk. Generally, you can actually walk down the sidewalk.
These are the bushes between our yard and the road.

Here is our house and all the trees. You can see a pile of limbs already in the yard:

And here is where we park our cars. Yesterday I moved the cars to the church lot behind us, where there aren't trees. I'm glad I did, because all the branches in the picture below fell directly on to the spot where my car was parked. Someone moved them off to the side of the road before I had a chance to get out there.