Spent the weekend digging out from under another six inches of snow. Winter weary northerners shoveled driveways, searched for buried cars, and negotiated icy roads. This morning we woke up to a zero degree temperature reading and another struggle to don heavy coats, woolen scarves, fleece lined boots and insulated gloves. Walking from house to car is the equivalent of a ten minute workout with weights.

It will be April before we see signs of spring in northern Illinois. Not early April, that's when we usually get one of our heaviest snowfalls. By mid April temperatures will moderate and the rains will begin. Spring will be here in April.

My featured guest blogger:

Hello everyone, I'm Toby. You may recognize me from previous blogs. This is my reward for being a good cat all week. I wasn't perfect, She tells me, but I'm much better. Yesterday for instance this idea of tearing up a magazine just popped into my head. She took away the magazine and told me that wasn't allowed. I saw Her put the magazine on the counter but did I grab it the minute Her back was turned? No, I tried to make a good impression.

There are so many rules. No walking on the counters, no jumping on the tables, no eating the dried flowers, no chewing on shoe laces, and on and on... Who could remember all those rules?

Somehow She knows what I've done even if She didn't see me do it. How does She know? I have to give that some thought. There must be a way to make Her believe it was one of the old cats or maybe that silly dog.

I remember where that magazine is.

The world is black and white and gray

My farm sleeps under a blanket of snow. Not even a breath of wind whispers in the unnatural silence.

Pine branches bend beneath the weight but the bird houses stand straight as sentinels.

The pasture stretches beyond the creek to merge with the gray sky.

In the Pasture

On the first day of snow, when the white curtain of winter
began to stream down,
the house where I lived grew distant
and at first it seemed imperative to hurry home.
But later, not much later, I began to see
that soft snowbound house as I would remember it,
and I would linger a long time in the pasture,
turning in circles, staring
at all the crisp, exciting, snow-filled roads
that led away.

by Mary Oliver

Wild grapes display a winter cloak of white.

Out of the bosom of the air
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bore,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,.Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A winter garden

Frozen toes and fingers are forgotten in the magic of a winter garden. Fanciful shapes and sculpture created at the whim of whirling winds. Diamonds dusted atop pristine white. Prisms of ice reflecting color back into the light.


Most of last season is covered and hidden. Only the occasional blackened, withered foliage left to hold a place against the coming of spring.



Mary Oliver's words capture a little of the eerie silence and unnatural light of a snowfall.



The First Snow
~ Mary Oliver

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, it's white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; Such
an oracular fever? Flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle.
Less than lovely? And only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things;
Stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and through the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain--not a single
answer has been found--
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

A tiny snowbird suns himself on the russet stalks of Autumn Joy.