The winter storm that started trouble making in Texas is now upon Free Union and headed up the East coast. It started snowing last night just after 6:00 p.m., and at 9:00 this morning there were 13 inches on the ground and more still falling. This is a pretty significant snow event for our area.

I ducked out in a break between snow bands to dig out the driveway. Yesterday I had staged the tractor, putting on the smaller bucket and moving equipment around in the garage so I could back the tractor in, ready to head out bucket first in the event of a big snow. Sometimes my storm preparations seem like overkill, as in Central Virginia snow events tend to bust more often than boom, but all the forecasters were saying this one was a sure thing. I didn’t want to be caught with my tractor trapped inside behind the zero-turn mower, sporting the wrong bucket for shoveling snow.

Using a tractor bucket instead of a snow plow is slow going. It took me about two hours to dig my way out of the garage and down the driveway toward the road, where I cleared the path to the mailbox for the mailman who probably won’t come for days. I worked pretty slowly, trying to preserve what little gravel I have on the driveway. I thought it was interesting that I was the only person out clearing anything—my neighbor was snowboarding down the road with his three teenage kids!

I often mention on this blog how much I love my green tractor, and today was no exception as that tractor meant the difference between being trapped in the mountains and not, once the main road is plowed. I felt like a Carhartt-clad snow queen in her chariot, enjoying the slack-jawed gaping of the few country neighbors who slid by in their pick-ups.

I had only a tiny bit of shovel work right in front of the garage on the side where my car is parked. Once I was done I checked on the chickens, filled up the very-popular bird feeders and headed inside to the woodstove and a cup of hot tea, just as the next round of heavy snow began to come down.

We’re supposed to get a few more inches of wet and heavy snow tonight, and the winds are really picking up and blowing into near white-out conditions—certainly working to undo this afternoon’s plowing. High winds mean the power may go out, so I’ll hit publish while I still can. But at least I have my driveway plowed enough to get out with my S.U.V.

Now, when the fifteen miles into town are a bit more clear, I could actually go somewhere!

I was driving home last night around 9:40 after a late yoga class and grocery shopping. I was almost to the village of Free Union when I saw a white beast in my headlights, in the middle of the road. At first I thought it was a coyote, and then a wolf! But as I slowed down I saw it was a dog, a little tan and white Border Collie, so scared that it was running completely hunched into a comma shape with its tail way between its legs.

I ditched the car in the nearest driveway, which happened to be a church, and opened the door. I called to the dog, but it kept skittering down the road. I saw a collar on its neck. I called it again, using all of Patricia McConnell’s tricks to get a dog to come, bending low, making myself smaller and turning my body away so as to be less threatening, and softly clapping. The dog stopped running and turned to look at me kneeling in the middle of Free Union Road. It let me approach, and both of us had a moment of faith as I reached a hand out for it to smell, it wondering if I was a friend and me wondering if I was going to get bitten.

The dog didn’t bite me, and it let me gently take hold of its collar. In my flashlight’s beam I found a tag and learned her name was Lola. Once I spoke her name her posture instantly changed, and she let me lead her over to my car where, when I opened the door, she quickly jumped in the back seat without any extra encouragement. I was glad to see she appeared uninjured.

With Lola safe in the car I called the number on her tag. A woman answered, and she was actually speechless when I introduced myself and told her I had her dog in my car. When she regained her faculties, the woman explained that she lived in Charlottesville but was actually traveling in South Carolina. She had left Lola with her mother, who lived on the road right behind my house. The woman was so flustered that I told her I would take Lola up the road with me and call her mother to come pick her up. She agreed, and we got back on the road, Lola sitting so prettily on the back seat, looking out the window. In the dark I could hear her licking her lips, so I knew she was still nervous. But she was totally polite as we wound up the road, a sweet, beautiful, obviously smart dog that reminded me a lot of my own Tucker in her energy and spirit.

Once home I left Lola in the car for safekeeping while I got her petsitter on the phone. Within a few minutes a nice man arrived in a pickup to claim Lola. Apparently she had bolted several hours earlier, and her caretakers had been frantic looking for her before having to call their daughter to explain they’d lost her dog.

They think she was trying to get home, back to town. The man who picked her up explained that Lola was a pampered city dog, and he feared that between cars and coyotes she wouldn’t have made it long on her own. But it made me wonder—Lola had navigated five miles down three different pitch-black roads and was nine miles from home—on the right road, headed the right way—before I picked her up. It makes the movie Homeward Bound sound not entirely unreasonable.

It was after 10:00 p.m. when Lola’s owner called back to thank me again, telling me she was still so shocked. She said Lola was “like her baby” and she would have been devastated had something happened to her. I told her not to worry, that everything is okay, and to have a Happy New Year.

And with this, my dear readers, the last story of 2013, I wish you all a Happy New Year. May we all be lucky enough that adventure, heartbreak, and salvation rejoin us on the other side of midnight.

Last week I took the train up to Connecticut to visit a friend and caught this view approaching Manhattan. I like how this photo plays with scale, the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan dwarfed by the towers in the forefront, and all of it seemingly floating on a frozen marsh. Nature below, manmade above. You can see the Freedom Tower catching the sunset. I think the design is simple but very elegant, and I really like how the light plays on its different sides.

From Connecticut, we took the train into Manhattan for a day and our first destination was the High Line, a public park and garden with planting design done by my favorite garden designer, the Dutchman Piet Oudolf. The High Line used to be an abandoned, overgrown elevated railway until the Friends of the High Line got together in 1999 and garnered enough public support for the park that in 2004 New York City granted $50 million for the project.

The park has been completed in sections since then, and it’s achieved worldwide recognition for its success at transforming urban blight into public greenspace, and revitalizing a formerly decrepit area of the city. Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis are studying the High Line as a potential model for their cities.

All this to say that although I’ve followed this project for years, I hadn’t actually gotten the chance to visit until last week. And I was so impressed. The hardscape materials—steel, glass and concrete—were combined with enough weathered wood to warm up the garden without losing touch with its urban environment. I loved the little alcoves that jutted off the main path. They formed garden rooms that would give a gathered group of friends a sense of intimacy while still allowing them to be part of the action.

And of course, the plantings were awesome. I know enough about Oudolf’s work to expect a lot of grasses and dried seedheads this time of year, and the High Line didn’t disappoint. Oudolf designs for four-season interest, and I suspect that the dried plant material and stark, berried bushes we saw in winter might be even more interesting than the abundant but overplayed flowers of summer. A blanket of snow threw all the plants into beautiful relief and was an extra bonus.

I know “naturalistic,” “new perennial,” and “meadow” planting are so trendy in garden design right now, and I also know just how much work and knowledge it takes to put together a garden design that replicates a natural meadow. But I was really struck, as I walked the High Line, by how it looked like one could have just transplanted a section of my front yard right into Manhattan. If that was Oudolf’s intention, and I believe it was, no doubt he succeeded. And maybe I succeeded too, by setting up my home in a natural, beautiful meadow without having to plant it first! Art imitates life, life is—if we keep our eyes open—art.

I’m going to go ahead and call today as peak fall color. I’ve been watching the leaves as they’ve turned, and though they’ve been pretty  for weeks, today they became spectacular. Sometimes I lament living 25 minutes from town, but on days like today, I pinch myself in disbelief that I get to live here. I can’t make the drive last long enough as I struggle to keep the car on the road while snapping iPhone photos out the window. Here’s a taste of what I saw while driving home today: