This Is For The Birds

So just yesterday — yesterday — I was out in the garden and saw this…

and this…

and then last night the snowflakes began to fall, and it was beautiful. 

Oh, the children were so excited.  After all, we don’t really get snow here.  And, after all, we just recently studied Snowflake Bentley.  I must admit that I, too, had a feeling of delightful anticipation.  When I awoke this morning you know what I did first!  I ran to the window like a little kid to see if there was snow on the ground.  And there was!

No, it’s not a deep snow, but it’s a powdery pretty snow.  For now.  Things seem to be getting wetter as the day wears on and they say the temperature and the roads this evening will be treacherous.

In the meantime, I’m just enjoying walking through my tiny garden, looking out the window, and sharing a bit of cornbread with the birds.

Yes, this cornbread was baked with the thought that…

this is for the birds. 

When hubby got up this morning he noted that there were about 40 birds around the birdfeeders, but alas no birdseed.  I called my mom to lament and she suggested that the birds love breads and grains and that she would just bake some cornbread and share it with the birds.  And so I did.

Though these birds are not real…

These birds certainly are…

I have watched the crows swoop down to our compost this morning and fly away with little bits of this or that. 

Princess of the Universe could not be kept inside today! 

She was out early to play and then she and a neighbor child did the following:

• came in
• went back outside
• came in
• went back out
• came in and warmed up
• went back out
• came in all wet
• went back out

 In between some of these trips they managed to squeeze in some hot cocoa, cornbread with butter, and later some warm mac and cheese. 

Playing in snow is hard work!

Hubby, being the common sense kind of dad that he is, has been sweeping off the steps all morning so no one slips and falls. 

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures from the garden and a pretty something by one of our major American poets.

The Snow

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain,–
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem,–
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen,–
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

Emily Dickinson