Tiny Icicles

We got some heavy snow on Christmas Eve, but in saying that I have to clarify a few things.

1) "Heavy snow" doesn't mean the same thing in Tennessee as it does in New York. In Tennessee, this closes schools:



In New York, this does:



Both of these are called "heavy snow", though, and that brings me to my second point.

2) Just because your heavy snow is measured in feet and our heavy snow is measured in inches, that doesn't mean that our heavy snow isn't terrible. People who live in consistently snowy climates have things that we don't.

First, they have experience in dealing with it. They know how to drive in it. They know better than to careen wildly through the city streets in their cars while screaming in terror and somehow believing that the trick to driving in bad weather is to drive even faster. People in Tennessee don't know this. People in Tennessee are born in Florida and move to Tennessee and experience snowy driving conditions for the first time after they've been driving in regular conditions for a couple of decades. Not only that, but even if they're a fast learner they have few opportunities. To learn how to drive in snow, they need to have snow more than three times a year.

Second, you have plows. I have yet to see a functioning snowplow south of the state of Pennsylvania. I'm sure they exist, but I'm also sure they don't have any in my town. We can't afford to spend $80,000 per vehicle on a fleet of trucks that we will only use once a year, unless those vehicles are somehow related to football or Jesus. I'm reasonably sure that we don't have sand and salt trucks, either. That means that when it snows here, the snow just sits on the road until it gets compacted into ice by the weight of cars driving over it or until it melts. That's why when it snows here the response is generally, "I'll just stay in my house until it's gone."

Anyway, before I got all ranty, I was trying to say that we had heavy snow the other day. (FINE. It wasn't as heavy as YOUR snow, Northerners. Can't we all just agree that snow is terrible and move on?) Since I was already out of the house, and there was no one on the roads, I decided to go try to take some snowy pictures at the university gardens, but I only ended up liking three of them.

This one with the holly berries is kind of holiday winter festive:



and I like the effect of the frozen rose in focus in this one while the rest of the rose garden is all blurry and suggestive of winter without actually being all "look at the gigantic snow drifts":



but my favorite one is the repair that someone's made to the broken rabbit statue:



He's practically a jackalope now!

Even more than the snow pictures, though, I really like the ones I got of the little tiny icicles clinging to the rusty truck installation:









It's such an odd contrast to see this blocky, massive truck with these delicate tiny icicles all over it like little jewels.