Good freezing morning! Our angel of dawn is shivering at the window – peering in with a little bird nest that fell during the blizzard. Where has our little bird now resting? Is she still in my back yard? Resting her little vocal cords to sing to me this spring? My fingers are trying to wake and write out some quotes on winter and snow that I hope you’ll enjoy reading this morning. Then a favorite poem written by the trees and flowers on what is going on behind nature’s curtain as preparations are unseen to us for their arrival on our stage in spring. Think now of the little tulips that are preparing to shoot up & the little wildflowers just resting under their blanket of snow. Preparing their entrance to show us their beauty always follows harsh winter. Always. The winds of time…always blowing. The winds of time…always bringing spring to every soul.
A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water. Carl Reiner
Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Winter teaches us about detachment, numbness. But it’s a way to get through. From winter we learn silence and acceptance and the stillness thickens. Gail Barison, The Winter Solstice of my Soul
And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms. William Bradford (Plymouth Plantation 1590-1657)
In a way Winter is the real Spring — the time when the inner things happen, the resurgence of nature. Edna O’Brien
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
A Riddle - On Snow by James Parton
"From Heaven I fall, though from earth I begin.
No lady alive can show such a skin.
I'm bright as an angel, and light as a feather,
But heavy and dark, when you squeeze me together.
Though candor and truth in my aspect I bear,
Yet many poor creatures I help to ensnare.
Though so much of Heaven appears in my make,
The foulest impressions I easily take.
My parent and I produce one another,
The mother the daughter, the daughter the mother."
There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you…In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; Only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. Ruth Stout
There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year. Kathleen Norris
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus
O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Percy Bysshe Shelley
One kind word can warm three winter months. Japanese Proverb
Talking in Their Sleep by Edith M. Thomas
"You think I am dead,"
The apple tree said,
"Because I have never a leaf to show –
Because I stoop,
And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow!
"But I'm still alive in trunk and shoot;
The buds of next May
I fold away –
But I pity the withered grass at my root."
"You think I am dead,"
The quick grass said,
"Because I have parted with stem and blade!
But under the ground,
I am safe and sound
With the snow's thick blanket over me laid.
"I'm all alive, and ready to shoot,
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here –
But I pity the flower without branch or root."
"You think I am dead,"
A soft voice said,
"Because not a branch or root I own.
I never have died, but close I hide
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.
“Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
You will see me again –
I shall laugh at you then,
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers."
Under the scene of our blanket of snow the wildflowers and mushrooms are planning their entrance. The geese are still sitting in apathy. How can they look so “unmiserable” when they are on one leg on ice? I’ll never understand how they can do that and not be complaining loudly. Winter. One day at a time.
It’s beautiful outside…so still. Winter means stillness. Time with thoughts. Time to look at children. Time to pet animals. Time to read. Time to set goals. Time to create mentally. Time to rest our minds. Time for excuses (grin). Thanks for letting me write for you again this morning. Thank you so much for running to the store for your gifts and your books. Thank you for spreading the word of our bookstore and continuing to bring us books. These books are changing lives. Let us go make the moments in our day today worth recording if we must write our epitaph tonight. Time. So quickly moving. Our choice to make the most of our gift of life. Susan
Latin for this week:
bruma – “winter”
Hiems – winter
Erat hiems summa – It was the very depth of winter (Cicero – In Verrem II)