As winter drags it's ragged edges together to curtain the shortest day of the year...
...I'm sitting at the computer.
Reminiscing, thinking....warming up...
Chai tea giving off a steady waft of heat, heavy with cream.
Steam from each sip fogging my glasses blurring the sight of the heavy wet snowflakes falling insistently outside our windows.
Bella's tucked up cozily in her basket. Warming up after returning from her escorted day trip outside into the cold.
Now curled up in a catlike semi-circle, grey polka dotted tummy hidden under a turquoise blanket.
The glow from reflected snow lights up the inside of the house at this time of year, but it comes courtesy of the white carpet outside.
The unusual warmth accompanying this current snowfall is melting the icicles on the roofline. Our dreams of a short winter have allowed us to be fooled into momentarily thinking it might be February instead of December.
Wishful thinking...but if I concentrate enough the drips nearly drown out the roar of the snowplow going by every hour, and yet...winter's barely started today.
We have a long road to plow before this season changes.
We came in after a trip outside in the wet sloppy flakes, melting diamonds cascading down our heads. Out there following fresh raccoon tracks, her using her nose, and me reading the long-toed deeply clawed prints like words on a page...the snow is a good storyteller.
Tracing the tracks that meandered up over the back porch, around the bird feeder, and down to the compost where the raccoon left it's discarded banana peels draped across the fenceline.
Her dainty high legged steps prancing in the cold snow, each paw carefully placed directly into the footprints of a midnight meandering kitty, while my clumsy boots obliterate any clues.
Inside, Winter encroaches and darkens, it obscures the views of the garden, leaving the beds like giant white mounds of icing sugar. It leaves us with wet gifts of slush-covered roads whose splashes feel similar to puppies cold slobbery kisses.
It stuns bare branches with ice, shrivels all of my overwintering herbs, but softens the landscape and lends an air of mystique to the barren fields. The mountains squat behind us, dark blue with cold, dusted with a light icing of snow, glowering in dislike of this season, sulking until the late afternoon sun momentarily gilds them with a warm golden light that makes them shine.
Inside at the computer, my cup of Chai tea steams and scents the air, spicy and welcome,
and the cat emits a kitty snore, while outside snow continues to fall.
It's Winter, my favourite season, Merry Christmas to all.
Jen @ Rural
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