The snow is melting

The sun is out and it is warm. The sound of water running off the roof is more than an indication that the snow that has blanketed it for more than a week is melting. The icicles are dropping like spears to the ground below and everywhere is the thumping and crashing sound as large piles of snow that have been clinging to the tree branches fall.

The green leaves of the oaks and pines are predominant again and I, at last, am able to clean the sunflower husks that have been frozen to the glass table outside. For days the squirrel feeder was frozen there also. In the mountains in the distance more brown earth is revealed that formerly was white with snow.

The branches that were bowed under with the weight of winter are beginning to straighten, except my small maple which is still resting its head on the ground. The sound is of rainfall in a forest. The clouds this morning were crimson and gray floating like individual puffs of cotton candy while the quarter moon still hung high in the sky greeting me with its pale golden light. I love daybreak.

The beginning of a new day. It's like the opening lines of a good book leaving you in anticipation of what is in store as you continue reading. Each sunrise is as individual as the inhabitants of this little town, as are the houses and the lives within them.

As the sky brightens activity increase. Soon the sound of birds breaks the silence, and my resident pesky little squirrel, for once, arrived early announcing his coming with footfalls or rather paw-falls, on the roof. The cats ran to greet him at the window that looks out onto the deck.

He acknowledged them in his usual grandiose style as if he were a start in a play and the curtain had just risen. All that was missing was the applause. He always eats the peanuts as his first course.

The snow is beginning to recced from my barrel planter and the bulbs I was concerned might have frozen are showing their little heads, green and healthy despite their long sojourn beneath a foot of snow. I was grateful for their hardiness and determination and anticipate their future blooms.

01192001