It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Winter!

We had our first big snowstorm of the season last night. And this morning, it was truly a winter wonderland.

“Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It's late afternoon - the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.”

-- Jean Webster, "Daddy Long Legs"

“All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate...
Snow...unceasing snow”

-- Hashin, Japanese Haiku: Two Hundred Twenty Examples of Seventeen-Syllable Poems

At the ditch, the snow was deep, the ponds still, the trees laden with white.

“A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.”

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

The giant pine outside of Rick's house was carrying its weight in snow.

He's away this week. I'm hoping his kindly neighbor will plow him out!

My street? It still isn't plowed, this evening, many hours after the snow. If it freezes, we'll be driving in ruts till it melts!

“I love snow for the same reason I love Christmas: It brings people together while time stands still. Cozy couples lazily meandered the streets and children trudged sleds and chased snowballs. No one seemed to be in a rush to experience anything other than the glory of the day, with each other, whenever and however it happened.”

-- Rachel Cohn, Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

The snow was endless, a heavy blanket on the outdoors; it had a way about it. A beauty. But I knew that, like many things, beauty could be deceiving.”

-- Cambria Hebert, Whiteout

“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”

-- Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“It looks like something out of Whittier's "Snowbound,"' Julia said. Julia could always think of things like that to say.”

-- Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

“Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson."

"Lake and Palmer?"

"Ralph and Waldo.”

-- Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

One must be careful at the Ditch. Plowing is not part of the experience. Neither is shoveling, though there are buckets for salt. Still, lovely it is...

“Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.”

-- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“In the nineteenth century, Fritjof Nansen wrote that skiing washes civilization clean from our minds by dint of its exhilarating physicality. By extension, I believe that snow helps strip away the things that don't matter. It leaves us thinking of little else but the greatness of nature, the place of our souls within it, and the dazzling whiteness that lies ahead.”

-- Charlie English

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”

-- Carl Reiner

Personally, I prefer my ice in cubes. But you can't deny -- it's lovely! Let the caroling begin!