Spring is finally here, after a winter that seemed to go on forever. Temperatures are moderate, the grass is growing, and needs mowing again. Spring and fall are the best times in this area, with winter and summer keeping you inside during temperature extremes.

I'm posting the picture above as a reminder of the barren, yet somehow beautiful, look of a real winter's day. There's a fresh snowfall and it's dark and dismal and cloudy and snowy. The sun makes a brief appearance to confirm that it's still there, even though it can't do much to warm things up.

At first, the picture above appears quite dark, but this is what the scene actually looked like. I tried lightening the image by playing with the histogram, bumping up just the shadows, etc., but nothing worked. The results were more "correct," but they lost the whole feeling of this cold and forbidding winter morning.