And then it was 31 below

Note: I will be touring the Virgin Islands and the Galapagos Islands, so there will not be a new post for several weeks.  Enough of this winter!

     Fourteen below was bad enough.  Then six inches of snow added to the insulation blanket for the shrubs in my Japanese garden.  It was needed to survive the rather brutal 31 below zero (36 below Celsius). 
     The little mounds next to the picture window are made of snow covering my new boxwood plantings last fall.