Friday Ramble - Still Cold

It is cold this morning, almost -20 (Celsius) with the wind chill factored into the equation. Beyond our windows are clouds and a forlorn copse of skeletal oaks, maples and ashes trying to put out leaves, catkins and flowers. Alas, the tree people have a long way to go before they leaf out, but they are working on it.

In the street, the north wind cavorts in gutters, ruffles dead leaves and other detritus like playing cards. It eases around the corner of the little blue house in the village and sets the copper wind bells on the deck in exuberant motion. So ardent is the wind's caress that sometimes the bells are almost parallel to the ground.

Trees in the park are still bare, and low mist swirls around them, puckishly revealing a curving branch here, a burl there, a tangle of vines somewhere else. We can almost hear the earth breathing in and out. Most eloquent of all are the empty spaces where trees have expired and gone to earth. The stumps serve as nurseries for tiny saplings that will grow tall and one day take the place of their fallen elders in the woodland, a hopeful state of affairs if there ever was one.

On the way home from our walk, a few robins sing, and a woodpecker (probably a pileated from the volume of its hammering) drives its formidable beak into an old birch. Now and again, he or she pauses, takes a few deep breaths and gives an unfettered laugh that carries for quite a distance. Even a bird in the mirk, it seems, knows the value of taking a break from its work now and again, just breathing in and out for a minute or two and giving voice to a cackle of raucous amusement.

I can't see either the caroling robins or my whomping woodpecker, but that is all right. Their voices are welcome musical elements in a morning that is all about the nebulous, the mysterious, the magical and unseen. Beau and I love our early morning rambles, and we always return home refreshed and hopeful.

In the kitchen, coffee is in progress and and a little Mozart (The Magic Flute) fills the air, but something more is needed. Miracle of miracles, crocus are blooming in the protected southern corner of a neighbor's garden, and I can see them from the window. The little dears are lit from within, and I swear, they could light up the whole village.