Snowfalls and Spring Whispers

The sun is shining on a sodden world beneath a milky sky of wedgewood blue.  There's constant music out in the midst of this damp and sparkling day, all suffused in the steady rhythm of a drip, drip, drip from every branch and rooftop, like the ticking of a clock. But still, in the shadows, the remnant of our lovely snowfall can be seen. We only get one snowfall each year it seems, blustering into the quiet southern winter on not quite the coldest week and hushing the world.  It closes down the towns and opens hearts to a gleeful sense of wonder. 

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 All the lichens seem to brighten in the snow melt, I don't know that I usually pay them as much attention as they deserve, but today they were beautiful.  There's the coral-like cartilage lichen (Ramalina americana), and the flat, creeping monkshood and green shield lichens (Hypogymnia physodes and Flavoparmelia caperata) and, of course, and wiry and wild old man's beard (Usnea strigosa), whose medicinal properties are legendary, yet with which I, sadly, have not yet experimented.  They look weird and magical adorned with ice crystals, don't you think? 

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Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather,
only different kinds of good weather.

-  John Ruskin

I sought the wood in winter
When every leaf was dead;
Behind the wind-whipped branches
The winter sun set red.
The coldest star was rising
To greet that bitter air,
The oaks were writhen giants;
Nor bud nor bloom was there.
The birches, white and slender,
In deathless marble stood,
The brook, a white immortal,
Slept silent in the wood.

“How sure a thing is Beauty,” I cried.
“No bolt can slay,
No wave nor shock despoil her,
No ravishers dismay.
Her warriors are the angels
That cherish from afar,
Her warders people Heaven
And watch from every star.
The granite hills are slighter,
The sea more like to fail;
Behind the rose the planet,
The Law behind the veil.”

- Willa Cather, I Sought the Wood in Winter

But the hibernation ends before the week is gone, and now the only snow to be seen is in little white patches in the shade of trees and houses, speckled with dark holes like giantish lace spread beside the bushes. There and in great piles by the road side, muddied and iced over and looking as though it plans to settle there for the rest of the season, not exactly picturesque, but snow nonetheless.  The sun that melted the snow sets early on a bedraggled yet rejuvenated world, and there's a brightness in the damp air that conjures thoughts of garden plans and seedlings.  But for now the evening comes early, and the afternoon air turns biting, and I must say, I am glad of it.