Twenty-seven years ago this week, 8 inches of snow blanketed at least the southern half of Indiana. It was the biggest snow I remember in October in my more than six decades of living with Indiana weather. I know it snowed 8 inches on Oct. 19, 1989, because that was the day we moved to where we currently live. There was no way out of moving that day, and a neighbor with a cattle trailer saved the day!

So why am I anxious for winter to come again? Because I prefer winter so much more than summer. In fact, here are my top 10 reasons why I would take winter over summer any day.

SNOW SCULPTURE: Who says it can’t be beautiful outdoors during the winter? Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

10. No more mosquitoes! Who ever heard of not being able to sit on your back porch in early October at 5 p.m. without getting eaten alive by mosquitoes? This was a crazy summer for those varmints.

9. The Hallmark Channel runs Christmas movies practically nonstop. OK, call me romantic or sentimental, but I love watching gushy holiday movies with predictable plots, even if I’ve seen them dozens of times before. It’s the only time of year my wife and I get to watch something we both enjoy at the same time. She’s into food shows. I prefer cop shows. Christmas movies make a great compromise. 

8. We save money on hornet and wasp spray. This episode may become a Front Porch story someday, so I won’t give away the ending. Suffice it to say, we went through six cans of hornet and wasp spray this year. It was a banner summer for stinging insects.

7. You can walk through tall grass without worrying about ticks. Tick spray was also high on the list this year. Anytime someone walked through tall grass, it seemed like at least a couple of ticks hitchhiked out with them.

6. No reason to waste money on fireworks. We shelled out a considerable sum for tickets to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game this summer, primarily because the downtown fireworks were that night and they're supposed to be spectacular from the stadium. That might have been true if fog hadn’t settled in. After 10 minutes with fog and smoke, you could hardly see the building where the fireworks were set off.

5. Ice and snow make pretty pictures. Just look at the picture above. Can’t you see God at work? It beats looking at a field of dead weeds in the dog days of August.

4. They don’t hold county fairs in December! OK, my wife is a fair rat, but I’m not. I enjoy raising animals, just not dragging them into hot barns and sitting there hour after hour, feeling sweat beads run down my face. "Heat" is becoming the operative word here.

3. I can save on sunscreen. My skin is sensitive to the sun. I burn easily. It’s cloudy so much in winter, and I’m outside less, so we spend less on sunscreen. That’s a good thing.

2. I hate heat! If it’s above 80 degrees F, I’m looking for air conditioning. How I ever stacked hay in a barn with a metal roof on 95 degree days, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I can’t stand it now.

1. I really, really, really hate heat! It’s important enough to take up two spots in my book. If it’s a choice between 90 degrees and 20 degrees, I’ll take 20 degrees every time. You can put clothes on. Nobody wants to see me take clothes off!