Before First Light

Winter has returned, and it has not come quietly. All night long high winds buffeted the little blue house, dancing in the eaves, shrieking down the chimney pot, howling around corners, rattling the fence and shaking the trees in the garden. Just before dawn, snow started falling.

This was the view below my kitchen window just before first light yesterday, frost and the newfallen snow on the lawn transformed into something rich and strange and very different by the light coming through the window panes and falling diagonally across the frozen grass. When Cassie and I meandered across the garden to fill the bird feeders a while later, the ground underfoot crunched and crackled in a most satisfying way, and we both enjoyed the experience.