wintery mix

yesterday it snowed for hours.

so we opened the blinds and pulled aside our gauzy curtain to watch the flurry of sparkly white magic blow around in the chaotic winds. every texture of snow was represented-- icy shards of sleet, tiny flakes of snow-dust, and cottony pea-sized puffballs. it was mesmerizing.

on our after-dinner walk last night, we admired the pink sunset light glinting off the corners of windows in houses across the gully. all the cleanly snow-covered rooftops gave the suburban landscape a seasonal uniformity, and the smooth swathes of rosy, opalescent clouds glowing above it all made for a highly dramatic, majestic backdrop. everyone we saw on that walk was taking a photo of the sky: the neighbor with his two larger dogs paused at the end of the parking lot to document the loveliness; a woman on a third-floor balcony in the next building leaned out with her phone to capture the perfect light.

after months and months with a mere handful of days with any precipitation at all, this afternoon of winter was wholeheartedly welcome. despite all the blustering wind, I wanted to walk around in it all evening. only the older pug's protestations prevented this. Wesley hates these cold, cold days.

thankfully, our little layer of snow is still around (though as the Tuesday morning grey fades into the brightness of afternoon, I'm sure it will all melt away before long). thismorning the clouds to the north lengthened themselves into perfect ridges, like the tips of a heavenly mountain range. to the east the sky seemed to be auditioning for a role in a Bob Ross painting-- everything blended back into soft smoothness. 

the snow-dust and puffballs, for now, are plastered evenly around the west-facing sides of the tree trunks, draped over eaves and ledges and windowsills like thick frosting, and clumped in the leaves and needles of all the shrubbery. my inner child imagines all this fallen snow as lost and scattered fairy-pearls, broken free from their settings and necklace strings, blown frivolously into our world from some other enchanted dimension. while they're here-- before they melt back into magic-- we can shake them out of the trees, into the cold grey sky, onto our hatted heads. we can dent the clumps and layers of them with our footprints and fingerprints. most of all, we can inhale all the serene beauty that the whiteness has added to these days at end of the year.

maybe it will snow again this week. the weather channel gives it a 5% chance.