First snow...

Winter’s here, sudden and early, the earliest for seventeen years they say, and cold, very cold. The ground is frozen hard and there is snow on the mountains with more threatening. The clouds form quickly, huge stacked clouds with that strange yellow-pink cast that only snow clouds have.

And the leaves have gone from the trees all of a sudden, the few that remain brown and brittle, soon to mush to mould. I don’t know when they fell. I’m sure they were still on the branches last week, gold, red, amber - lighting up the landscape, keeping winter from turning his icy corner. Well, that corner’s turned. There’s no going back. He’s here.

Listening to the radio they say he isn’t going to be a particularly hard on us this winter. They say this winter is likely to be dry. Well, the trees, and berries, and birds show a different forecast. We’ll see who’s got it right their machines or Mother Nature. Either way the birds were everywhere this weekend, looking for food, needing water. We had four long tailed tits on our feeder at lunch, pink and white, long black forked tails twitching.

Anyway, I know who I’m putting my money on. Here comes the frost, the ice, the cold, and (if we are lucky) just the right amount of snow. I’d like a white Christmas, not too white, but waking up on Christmas morning to snow is such a magic.