Snow....

I am sitting in one of my favorite places in my home - in the TV area.  Those who know me can safely assume that the TV is off, and that it is the window that holds my attention.  Six feet outside there is a cedar hedge, about ten feet tall.  It creates a wall of green between our's and our neighbor's yard.

Boring, don't you think?

You'd think any view so short-sighted WOULD be boring.  But it changes daily.  Today it reminds me of my childhood, when we'd crawl into the snow tunnel under the white pine hedges, lay on our backs in the soft, dry needles, and look up through the white-covered green to the blue sky.  Or of a ski day years ago, when I rested at the edge of a slope, looking upward through hemlock pinecones to eternal blueness.  That particular visual memory became the mental picture I focused on during my long hours of labor for Citygirl.

It's all too easy to lose sight of beauty in the everyday rush of our lives.  But a winter snowstorm is a very, very pushy sort of beauty.  There is no escaping the sparkle, the brilliance, the deep contrast of every color to the white. 

My hedge is silent today.  The little birds who sing me awake in the morning and to sleep in the evening have stilled, huddled somewhere against the intense cold.  They are brave, these little birds.  They do not leave for the winter, and they sing almost every day.  They make my view a musical kaleidescope of green and brown and sometimes white until the cold stills the motion, like today. 

It's an oddly peaceful view.  It stills my mental to-do list.  It makes me take deep breaths full of gratitude for beauty, seasons, a good furnace and money to run it.  Blue. White. Green. Warm. Amen.

DeeDee