Winter Blows In!

Monday in the yellow light of our late afternoon, I spent an hour outside with the camera. Just as the sun set lower in the sky, the light was at its best. It's easier to show you drifting in the snow when the sun is not directly overhead blinding us to the beauty of the glitter that sprinkles the surface and the waves made by the high winds.

This old fence is on the property line to the west of our house. I have always loved it, and would never dream of removing it. (At times it can look untidy but as long as it stands, I'll enjoy it. It gives me and my photos some perspective; seeming to protect the farmhouse for years with weeds and wildflowers clinging to it and friendly birds perching there...chirping and singing as I hang laundry on the line.)

The wind leaves some of the ground completely bare, while other spots where it works its way around obstacles, have beautiful waves of drifting. All around us are wide open spaces, pieces of sky that look like they never end. Somehow, the snow makes all seem hushed; the clouds seem lower.

To the right here in our old garden spot is a huge drift, probably above my waist if I were to wade into it--and it is showing up with shadows making the contours of it even more pronounced.

Just at sunset is a perfect time to capture nature's gifts to us; even in the wickedly cold sub-zero winds, there is something beautiful to find with every step you take. Here, icy nubs hold onto a lacy weed for dear life.

Behind the old garden spot the wind worked the ground bare and produced a beautiful snow dune just behind it!

I often think about how similar our ordinary rural life is to seaside living. We watch as our ocean changes with the seasons. It's beautiful of course, as it lives, when the waves of grain are young green sprouts all line up in rows and then they turn to tall and leafy plants, a green ocean. They gently sway in the summer winds. It is truly a beautiful soothing sound, and a gorgeous picture, always drawing your attention to it.

Our ocean changes when the fall frosts come and the living crops are changed into something brown, crisp, more still and aromatic and pungently earthy.

The harvest comes and then...the snows. The earth waits for its blanket to cover it and says "Hush, now, let me sleep, I've worked hard and I want to rest." White blankets lay over it in waves, topped with glittery flakes.

Can you see this ocean of a field with the waves of snow that are ever changing?