Winter is icumen in

We woke up this morning to six inches of wet, perfect for snowman, snow. It's beautiful, even if large chunks did fall on my head and slither down my neck when I walked out the laneway to get the paper.
This shot is taken out the bedroom window looking along the edge of the back field and showing Little Stuff's swing.
This shows the laneway going toward the barn with a corner of the old cabin visible through the trees.

The apple tree under the kitchen window. You can just see the birdfeeder on the left. The birds love this tree because the branches are dense and they can sneak up on the feeder from it.

Shot from the kitchen porch.

Three of these shots are simply cropped and pasted in. In the fourth I did some revision -- balanced the tone using one of the utilities in Corel PhotoPaint. It looks a lot more dramatic that way but I am never sure I am not cheating when I do this kind of thing. It's a funny divide. If I had taken the time to reset the camera white values, this is pretty close to what I would have got and that seems perfectly legitimate. As does using polarizing filters or double exposing. But once I have the image, I always need to say so if I have done any editing.
Why is this, I wonder. I would not have to confess if I had edited something I wrote -- I just assume that editing is a necessary part of writing. (And I cringe when I read anything I have not edited.) If I am painting I retouch without thinking about it. Weird. I guess I am a living fossil or something.
Just in passing, I took these shots about an hour ago and if I did the same thing now I would get an almost perfect whiteout because the temperature has gone above freezing and fog has rolled in. Bummer!