…..if one, especially the homeowner, has prepared for it.

I cannot remember a winter more visually more beautiful than our present sample of snow and cold.

It’s been colder, much colder in the past. It has snowed, and snowed heavier in the past….but a winter such as ours here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota this season, cannot be beat for its beauty.

I wonder how many of our fellow Twin Citians have recognized what we in the artistic landscape garden business see?

Fields of perfectly white snow no matter how far the human eye can see, do yield a feel of beauty….the loneliness of sight and sound, its vastness of space, its coldness, its blanket of white unmarred by the fresh snowfall…its bite.

A field is a field, not a landscape garden. No art form is held higher throughout the history of mankind than a Garden of Eden, the idealized view and dream of Paradise.

Because of the snow, because of a gentle sun causing notice of form and shadow from the vegetative world around us, after a kind snowfall, even without human intent, overwhelming beauty surrounds us as a Garden of Eden…..if we might bother for a moment to look.

Day after day, week after week, such beauty has befallen us here in our Twin City world. The difference from other Decembers and Januarys?

Answer in two, perhaps three words ‘cold’, ‘snow’, and perhaps ‘wind’. We have seen and felt the first two words on a regular basis. There was no January thaw throughout this month. About every third day or so, the white remains white with a new two to three inch dusting of white. No ‘heat wave’ in January means nothing melts.

In addition, the winter seems windier….regular blows once a week or so. Blown snow also whitens nearly everything in sight…..moreover adds interest to so many conifer shrubs and trees, making them the prize plants of the planned winter paradise here in the Midwest American North.

How would you rank your grounds for winter beauty and interest. Are you uplifted in breath and spirit everytime you walk your grounds, or even simply to go to and from work or shopping?

A common appearing house is far more awe-inspiring in a beautiful setting than a beautiful house in an ugly or barren one. It becomes a matter of how close to “Eden” one prefers to live.

Althought much neglected in our own American experiences, landscape gardening is mankind’s most revered art form. You may want to give us a call at Masterpiece, 952-933-5777 for advice and/or assistance….especially if you seek beauty in your home grounds.