Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 12: Turn, Turn, Turn

This is the 11th in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

To everything (turn, turn, turn...)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn...)

Frankly, that song drives me nuts.  About as much as winter does, which is why I was less than thrilled to see those big, fat clusters of snowflakes falling from the sky and stacking up on my lawn this week.

I'd like Winter well enough if I could stay inside with books, hot chocolate and a blanket, watching the lazy flakes float down, making tree branches lacy and leaving me with a snow-globe world.

Source: Microsoft Office

Instead, I'm driving multiple times a day on slippery roads, praying I'll make it alive to wherever I'm going. And before that, I'm shoveling and salting the 45-degree slope of my driveway four times a day, lest I go sliding out into the five lanes of highway traffic at the end of it.

We get ridiculous amounts of snow in our driveway.

Watching those snow flakes this week, I found myself dreading the five to six months of winter that now remain, panicked that I'll ever make it to Spring.  And then I realized that I wouldn't get Spring without the Winter.

The yellow riot of forsythia...

Source: Wikipedia

The fruit trees in bloom...

Nodding tulips...

Source: Microsoft Office

And without Spring, I wouldn't get Summer.

The weekends at the lake...

Old-fashioned roses...

Walks on the beach...

And without Summer, I wouldn't get the best of all: Autumn.

The glorious colors against a true-blue sky...

The giant orange pumpkins in my father's garden...

The stunning purple asters...

I know there are places I could live where it's Summer all year.  But I'd miss Spring and Fall.  And I've lived where there's Spring, Summer, Fall and a snowless Winter, but the "Winter" is brown, gray and drab, a world covered in mud and dead grass.  Somehow, the snow globe is so much more appealing, even if it means months of white-knuckled driving and whole days spent shoveling.

So, I guess in the end, I'm actually thankful for a proper Winter and its beauty.

Remind me in January, will you?