First snow

Good things come when it snows.

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-ting-a-ling too...

We had a few half-hearted flurries last Wednesday. I saw the clouds and sniffed the air, and thought it looked like snow, but figured it was too early. But the next morning they told me we got some anyway.

But the fire inside's delightful, and since we've no place to go...

We had a whole afternoon of the white stuff yesterday. It was a Sunday--hurray!--and Dad and I stayed home and enjoyed ourselves. We built a roaring fire and shared a big pot of Blumenthal Special Roast coffee, and I made pinto beans and cornbread for dinner. There was a ball game on, and a Scrabble game (which Dad won by three points, grr!), and a lovely pile of books. I spent time on Iona with a modern pilgrim and in the court of Louis XV with Madame de Pompadour, which was a combination.

The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through white and drifted snow...

Mom and the sister came home from Grandma's yesterday and arrived in time for the fire and a batch of brownies (thank you, soror mea) and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Then Jonathan called. It would have been lovely weather for a sleigh ride, here; but where he was, it was a perfect night for sitting in the gazebo and watching the stars over the lake. But a phone call is a good thing to receive in the snow, whichever end the snow is at, and one can hope for a white New Year.

Just like the ones I used to know, where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow...

This morning dawned (very late, it being this time of year) blue and cold. The ground was just frozen at my house, but as I drove up the hill, I found a thin white frosting that thickened into a ruffly layer over everything. And now the sun is up properly, and the eaves have all turned into slim flashing waterfalls, and the yellow leaves on the willow opposite are shaking themselves, much as to say, "What was that?"

In the meadow we can build a snowman, and pretend that he is Parson Brown...