Time was in Maine when November was a cold, dry month, where the ground froze solid by the middle of the month, and as long as leaves were raked by Thanksgiving, you were pretty much all set. Hunters prayed for snow by Thanksgiving, to make it easier to track deer. Sometimes they got it, but more often they didn’t.

Nowadays, the snow can come as early as the end of October, and it falls on green grass and unfrozen ground and unraked leaves. As the snow melts, which it usually does, it makes a muddy mess, and the wet leaves are that much heavier to rake.

This morning we woke up to snow, and after breakfast, I went outside to get some pictures of the snowy yard and woods. It is pretty. I will give it that. But I miss the old days of cold, austere November, which prepared us for December, where the snow often didn’t come until Christmas. I remember my mother and grandmother expressing the hope that we would have a white Christmas. Then, in January, the snow would come for real, and nobody worried about having a green landscape.

We must take what comes, of course, and work around it. Still, it’s a little odd to be old enough to remember what was and note how much things have changed.