Remember that TV margarine ad with the line “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”? Well, she sure doesn’t mind fooling us. I wrote a recent column for the Sunday edition of The Rocky Mount Telegram about how crazy warm our Eastern North Carolina February has been.  “Instead of a few snow days or at least the usual cold,” I penned, “we’ve had a big dose of spring. …Is winter already over?”

Two days after I clicked SEND, it snowed. Fortunately, my totally wrong forecast was only a paragraph in the middle of a piece about all the contradictions in life, but I could still picture people glancing out their windows as they read my words and asking, “Did it not snow in her part of town?”

Well, yes, it did. Looking at my beautiful backyard, I almost didn’t mind my foolish paragraph. My husband, a much better photographer than I, captured part of our winter wonderland.

Anticipating the snow (unlike me), my better half stocked our bird feeders before the first flakes. We enjoyed watching a variety of birds flock to the food. I love the cardinal on the feeder to the left. He matches the two on the outdoor pillow.

A few days before it snowed, I swapped out my snowflake garden flag for the “It’s five o’clock somewhere” one pictured above. Yep, Mother Nature had me fooled!

Apart from my botched column, I had one other mishap due to the snow. My daffodils! With the warm February temperatures, these early blooms had busted out big-time.

Here’s what the snow did to them.

As you can see, the flowers are pretty much on the ground. Once the snow melted enough for me to check, I was relieved to see the blooms were at least still there. From my kitchen window, I had seen only stalks.

Slowly, slowly, these little beauties are raising their delicate faces to the sun again. I don’t know whether they’ll regain their former posture, though.

Mother Nature can be a tricky ol’ gal, that’s for sure. But I guess with hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters up her sleeve, a nice, gentle snowfall isn’t such a bad prank.