Mondays are tough. It's the first day of week - there's the ol' Garfield "I hate Mondays" feel to it in the first place.

On top of that, for me it's the longest day of my work week schedule-wise - it's non-stop once I get in the door.

And when I leave my house, it's garbage day - so there's a lot of work to get out of the house between putting the last of the garbage together and taking that out to the curb (can't do it the night before because of the raccoons) and getting my daughter in the car and hitting the road.

One other element - this year is super-busy.

So Monday, February 25, 2013, was one of those busy mornings - especially because it was returning to school after a week off - but unlike most mornings, I took a second to appreciate the beauty of the scene around me.

And now I'm sharing that with you.

Let me set the scene: Here in Framingham, Massachusetts it snowed pretty much non-stop all day Sunday. It started late Saturday, and there was a changeover for a bit to rain, then a heavy, large-flaked snow fell for 20-plus hours.

The picture above is the view I caught when I put the garbage at the curb. I was so struck I took the picture at left...because look at that sky. There's a nice contrast between those snowy branches and the sun-streaked sky as the sun rose on a beautiful, non-snowy day. At least, I thought so. (I think you can click on the pictures so you can appreciate the full images. I hope.)

Whenever I see the trees looking that snow-covered (and sometimes ice-coated) I think of two things: One is that I never saw a scene like that growing up. There were never enough trees in my part of Queens to give that kind of a snowscape. (There were other snowy scenes, just not like the ones I'm talking about.)

The second thing I think of is a storm that hit in late 2005 or early 2006. At the time I worked at a school in Sudbury - a commute of 10 or 15 minutes from home. I had lived in the area only about a year, and I was still very unfamiliar with what to me were very country roads. I did not know my way around very well.

We were either let out of school early or it was right at the end of the school day that I started making my way home...and I encountered some downed branches one way, and then there was a stuck school bus another way, so instead of waiting I went a way I had never gone before. Bottom line, it took me more than an hour to get home that day. But I ended up on a road (if I remember correctly I ended up going north when I had to go south, and I eventually did find my way home) that was lined with snow-covered branches overhead.

It was the most beautiful and scary thing I'd experienced to that point - scary because I was legitimately lost. But beautiful because I think that was the first time I experienced that kind of snowy scene.

But Monday morning I went down a road that had a similar look to the one from seven or eight years ago. So I snuck this picture to share that with you:

Next Monday I promise I'll go back to being a grump.