winter

Okay, we get the message. Winter is here. The days are getting shorter. Dark by 4pm! Today we woke to a covering of heavy snow that weighted down tree branches. As the sun came up, and the sky turned a dark blue, we reveled at the transformation of our known world into something else. It happens every year and yet we are still surprised.

As for the bell in the crab apple tree, I learned that from my mother who often put bells in trees both inside and out. Her beloved bougainvillea which thrived through forty New England winters donned a small bell and had ivy growing at it's base. The pink flowers were radiant inside as the snow fell outside. The bell in my crab tree was hers, surely she bought it on one of her many trips to the "Far East." The little tree outside my kitchen window has become a kind of shrine to my mother. I think of her as I gaze out the window at all times of year. The granite marker in the cemetary in Andover is cold stone. But a bell in a tree, steady through all the seasons, now that was my mother.

As for the august pine, now white with snow, that makes me think of my father! (in a good way!)