Here on the cusp of spring, winter has finally arrived. Last week we had an “ice event.” The temperature dropped and the seemingly endless rain turned to ice transforming every branch, leaf and blade of grass into a magic, crystalline encasement of fleeting beauty. By the time I walked the dogs down to the creek after breakfast it was falling like tubes of shrapnel.

icing on the smoke tree with frozen redbud in background

As I came up the hill I saw that the only casualty was the stalwart cherry tree in the Easter bed that had been damaged by hurricane Francis in 2004. That year the winds racing up from the Gulf had thrown the majority of the tree on to the ground, with only a low hanging branch standing  upright; upright it remained until last week when it could hold on no longer.

cherry tree’s last gasp: RIP

I examined its upturned ant compromised root system until the cold drove me inside. Within a few hours all the gorgeous ice had melted and the Two Acre Eden was returned to pools of bitter dank wet. But when I drove off the property and got to a point where the vista opened up I could see a demarcation in the higher elevations where the ice remained, a lacy filigree with foggy clouds drifting past, a wonderland of crisp reflective winter.  Breathtaking. We live here.

blueberry encased in ice

Last night the winds were blowing with such sustained ferocity that I thought the roof would peel off. Then I fell asleep. There’s nothing like a good weather event to put me right out. This morning the ground was a blanket of white, the distant mountains shrouded in blowing snow. And while the weather caster in a more northerly county was announcing the road closures with giant flakes falling all around her, out my window tiny pellets swept past and have continued to do so all day, despite the rising temperature. What once was, is now gone and the ground is returned to a sodden mess. All through the day I have watched the trees buffeted by the ongoing winds. It is a miracle they can withstand such punishment, majestic pines flailing like eager game show contestants, sturdy poplars barely registering the onslaught, and the flexible oaks with leaves tentatively clinging. Soon the new leaves will push the old ones off and THEN spring will really be here.

oak leaf hanging on

I was walking the dogs around the lake today, horizontal snow pellets blowing at us until our eyes watered. I was marveling at all the bird life. The ducks and geese carrying on as if nothing were unusual, chatting away in little groups. The blue jays must be trolling for mates because they are unusually screechy, a little more show-offy in their flight patterns. Then again it could have been the wind. I’ve been seeing all the different kinds of woodpeckers we have around here, the common flicker and red-bellied coming to the suet feeder. There was a giant Pileated, with its distinctive caw drawing my attention upward there at the lake earlier in the week, flinging wood chips down on my head and flying away just as I got the camera ready for its close up. House wrens have taken up in one of our collection in the Nest Museum, scaring the bejesus out of me with their flash and furious wing beating whenever I exit from the kitchen door. You’d think I would learn. Crows as big as chickens screech across the property…or they might be drones. Then the best sighting of all: two hoodied teenaged girls were laying on their stomachs side by side on the wet empty tennis court impervious to the freezing damp and the blowing snow, birds of a species most marvelous.