Snow and Cold
Sandy came in from sweeping snow off the steps, pulled off her mitts and scarf, rubbed her hands together and began to sing.
“Chestnuts roasting by an open fire, icicles dripping from your nose,
frozen birds strung out on a wire…”
Coltin grinned. “You haven’t got the words quite right there.”
“I sing it the way I see it. It’s -32 this morning with a light breeze. As in frigid. My poor birds!”
“Look at the up side of the season. Our world needs winter. It’s a rest for the earth. This cold will kill off the bugs. Snow melt waters the land in spring.”
“Still, you notice how many great songs and poems have been written about the other seasons and how few about winter,” she said. “Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful…”
“Well, you’re the poet. Why don’t you versify some of the laudable things about our winter? Fat snowflakes falling from the sky. Catching snowflakes on your tongue. Sunshine glistening on snowbanks. That kind of thing. Leave off the killing bugs part.”
Sandy went to her desk and flipped through several notebooks. “I did write one once — but it probably won’t enthuse you much. Ah, here it is.” She read from a coil-bound notebook:
Winter dreams Oh, to fly with blackbirds twirl with the windblown leaves that dance the autumn through. Such are winter’s day dreams for the snow-bound scarecrow with his frozen smile.
“Hmm… Yeah.” Coltin handed back the book. “It’s okay, but for extolling the virtues of winter, this doesn’t cut it.”
“The best of winter’s virtues I can think of this morning is that it doesn’t stay. Now I’d best pop out and feed the birds. Can’t imagine how they survive.”
“”Well, there’s one praiseworthy note. It kills the bugs but not the birds.”
Ragtag Daily Prompt: ICICLE
Pixabay image of sparrows in snow: Santa3
Christine's Collection 
Fall, Leaves, Fall. Emily Bronte
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow.
I shall sing when night’s decay,
Ushers in a drearier day.
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So, one fan of bleak winter. But you never know with those Bronte sisters.
I’m more in tune with Archibald Lampman’s Snow Begone though it’s the cold I don’t like, more than the snow. 🙂
I hear this storm that’s pounding a lot of the US, ON & QC came from down your way.
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Not down here — a bit north where they’re getting temps they’re not used to. The ring of mountains is holding the front north of me. I’ve had to explain to a friend in Colorado Springs why he should have put his car in the garage. The battery is dead; two tires have lost air.
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So the mountains aren’t just for looks. 🙂
Yeah, if a person isn’t prepared for serious weather. Reports of 340,000 customers are out of power in ON & QC and people are being told to have a warm go-to place just in case.
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Nope. The mountains do things… Sometimes useful, always beautiful. We get those temps down here in January, and it’s completely different when you expect it and it’s part of your life. But it’s really hard on people even then, especially ranchers when it happens in March when the calves are already coming. When I was looking to move here people (who don’t want people moving here) said, “It’s gets down to 40 below,” thinking it would discourage me. I don’t mind that so it didn’t work.
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ooo, beautiful. Glad I posted mine before I read that or I’d be intimidated!
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Thank you.
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