Tag Archives: Snow

278. Winter is the time for comfort – it is the time for home. ~Edith Sitwell

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He knows no winter, he who loves the soil,
For, stormy days, when he is free from toil,
He plans his summer crops, selects his seeds
From bright-paged catalogues for garden needs.
When looking out upon frost-silvered fields,
He visualizes autumn’s golden yields;
He sees in snow and sleet and icy rain
Precious moisture for his early grain;
He hears spring heralds in the storm’s turmoil.
He knows no winter, he who loves the soil.
~Sudie Stuart Hager

…and the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil.  For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as He delighted in prospering your ancestors…  ~Deuteronomy 30:9  ✝

272. I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost.  ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,–
the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes,
noiselessly transforming the world,
the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter,
and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery
all objects upon which they fall.
~John Burroughs

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Yesterday was a double, good whammy kind of day, and the whamminess began and ended in the heavens.  Right after first light little, bitty snow flakes began to fall, and by noon the frigid, gray day had been punctuated with a lovely smattering of snow.  The north wind was a contributor in the snowscapade because at times it seemed to be blowing down even more of the “exquisite crystals” from the white clouds of heaven’s expanse.  The second whammy played out when sparkling stars and a slender slice of the ancient moon punctuated heaven’s then blackened dome and prettified to a greater extent the frosting of snow on the ground.

Most nights I go for a short walk before bedtime.  Walking alone at 9 or 10 o’clock at night is a delicious experience.  The streets are empty of traffic and most folks are inside watching TV or getting ready for bed.  Especially in wintertime for some reason, it feels like I’m the only one left in the universe except for God.  And His presence is so large and close I feel like I could just extend my hand and feel it slip into His.  When I see my exhaling breath as one can when it’s terribly cold, I feel as if He’s just breathed those first breaths of life into me once again.  The air is so cold and crisp and invigorating, and the solitude is filled with His holy peacefulness.

–then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  ~Genesis 2:7  ✝

239. Blow, blow, thou Winter wind… ~William Shakespeare

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How can those who do not garden,
who have no lot in the great fraternity of those
who watch the changing year
as it affects the earth and its growth,
how can they keep warm their hearts in winter?
~Francis King

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Blustery was the north wind that came up last night.  As it ran groaning around the corners of the house, it rattled the windows and doors.  But there were no snow flurries nor threats of icy assaults, no misery other than the cold sting in the sound of creaking tree limbs, in the sound of the rushing gale.  As the Sabbath dawned, blue were the skies and bright was the light from above, but the relentless, chilling winds kept on and in check the thermometer.  The endless gusts and leafy flutterings throughout the day intimated over and over again that tonight will neither be inviting nor without loss.  To lower the risks inside faucets will be left to drip, cabinet doors will be opened in front of the pipes below, and thermostats will be turned up higher than usual.  So I will not feel the bite of the chilling wind nor will my heart for, oddly enough, I know where lay outside what will keep it warm. Though I know not how they survive, the larkspur seedlings in the photo will make it through this long, cold night as well as others like it.  I may not be able to fathom all that God built into Creation, but I can and do praise Him for all His goodness.

From its chamber comes the whirlwind, and cold from scattering winds.  ~Job 37:9  ✝

210. If you really want to draw close to your garden, you must remember first of all that you are dealing with a being that lives and dies…One will not always see it dressed up for a ball, manicured and immaculate. ~Fernand Lequenme

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I love people,
I love my family,
my children…
but inside myself
is a place where I live all alone
and that’s where you
renew your springs
that never dry up.
~Pearl S. Buck

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Last week’s frigid winds and pelting sleet so punished the late blooming roses and perennials that their flowers, hips, and leaves were left hanging like the heads of mourners as they perished on nights too cold to sustain fragile life.  But usually when our area endures an arctic storm such as this one, it’s not too long before the temps warm back up enough to melt the snow and/or ice. This assault, however, lowered temperatures so far below the freezing mark and the cloud cover has stayed in place so long that it may be a week or more before the temps rise high enough to rid us of the treacherous frozen remains.  On those warmer days, whenever they do come, I’ll be chomping at the bit, as usual, to “draw close” to my beloved garden and dispose of the flowery carnage left in the storm’s wake.  I like to do that so that when next I’m in that place “where I live all alone” like Buck and am unable to get outside, I can look out the window at the garden’s “ball gown” without it looking quite so tattered and torn.

The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs…strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.  ~Isaiah 58:11

208. It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost… ~John Burroughs

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We feel cold, but we don’t mind it
because we will not come to harm.
And if we wrapped ourselves against the cold,
we wouldn’t feel other things,
like the bright tingle of the stars,
music of the Aurora,
or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin.
~Philip Pullman

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After last night’s winter storm, we woke to find the ground, the streets, and the rooftops covered in a solid blanket of sleet mixed with snow.  Icicles were hanging from eaves and other solid objects; branches, stems, leaves and the few remaining roses had been encapsulated in ice.  The forbidding frozen world outside was steeped in silence but for the occasional gusts of wind that sent falling leaves round and round in capricious little whirlwinds tapping softly against the icy ground.

In the coming days the garden will shrink dramatically.  It’s beauty will be harder to see, but for those who continually walk its paths with searching eyes and vivid memories, emerging treasures can be spotted and glory envisioned in places where it was and shall rise again from seeming nothingness.  During the warmer spells in the next few months, I’ll clean up the growing season’s spreading, untidy tangle and reshape her fetching figure while below in her fertile womb mysteries, ancient and sacred, are coming together to birth yet another springtime.

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm.  He said From whose womb comes the ice?  Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the water become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?  ~Job 38:1 and 29-30  ✝

207. Come, come thou bleak December wind, and blow the dry leaves from the tree! ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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The leaves drift toward the earth like ships to land,
a voyage launched from timbers’ great lofty berths,
toward harbors safe, concealed from raider bands,
of icy galleons coursing wintry dearth.
~Dan Young

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Brrrrrrrr!  Winter, though its debut isn’t until the solstice on December 21st, has been sending emissaries with forewarnings of its coming, but so far the fiercest courier it has dispatched is the bearer of today’s tidings.  The forecast this time around includes threats of freezing rain, accumulations of ice, and the possibility of a wintry mix of ice and snow.  The frigid north winds this particular messenger brought in are pushing fast and hard against comely autumn’s closing doors.  So if not from this cold front, then from another one that can’t be far behind, the time draws near for that all too frigid breath of air to not simply shake and disturb the garden but to completely destroy its few blooming remnants.  Whatever comes of this assault may put an end to rambling and pottering in the garden for awhile. But, the first seed catalog came yesterday, and whilst I wait for the sun’s return, next year’s dreamin’ and schemin’ can get underway.

The tempest comes out from its chamber, the cold from the driving winds.  The breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen.  ~Job 37:9-10  ✝

126. What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Take almost any path you please,
and ten to one it carries you down to a dale,
and leaves you by a pool in the stream.
There is magic in it.
~From MOBY DICK by Herman Melville

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Like Melville, I’m drawn to water and its magical properties.  The curious thing is that the magic happens not only in vast bodies of water like oceans but also in bodies of water as limited as what might be found in a garden fountain or the  sometimes glassy stillness of water that stirs up magic and mystery.  Yes, mystery too, and part of the mystery is that water gives the feeling that one is in the presence of something alive and vibrant.  I remember as a child begging to go out and play in the rain or snow.  If and when I got the chance, like most children,  I’d stick out my tongue to catch raindrops or snowflakes and was so thrilled when either of them landed on my tongue.  When I felt the wetness I knew instinctively that I was being fed something good, something essential to my existence.  Perhaps  deep in my heart of hearts, I knew even then that the Presence I felt in water was the Holy One’s.  After all it was He who once hovered over earth’s waters and imbued them with His sanctity and His life giving force.

For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills. . .  ~Deuteronomy 8:7   ✝

24. Within the seed’s case a secret is held. Its fertile whisper shapes a song. ~Joan Halifax

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When I see that first, miniscule, curled, pale
green wisp of a sprout poking up between a couple of
grains of vermiculite, I hear God speaking.
~June Santon

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Seed plants date back about 365 million years ago to the Paleozoic era.  These wondrous pieces of antiquity vary greatly in size: the smallest being the dust-like seed of orchids and the largest, weighing as much at times as 50 pounds, being the fruit of the coco de mer, the double coconut palm.  A typical seed is composed of 3 basic parts: 1. an embryo, 2. a supply of nutrients for the embryo, and 3. a seed coat that protects the embryo from injury or from drying out.  Seeds have two points of growth, one which forms the stem of the plant and the other where the roots of the plant form.  Some seeds have wings or hairs and are dispersed by the wind.  Others are buoyant and float in rivers to the oceans and wash up on beaches; then there are those that are dispersed in various ways by animals.   Given the fascinating science of seeds, how they work and how tiny some of them are, how could one not hear fertile whispers from God in them.

Each seed, regardless of its size, is a sacred promise.  The dictionary defines a promise as: 1. a declaration that something will or will not be done or given, or as   2. an express assurance on which expectation is to be based, and seeds definitely declare what the Lord has done and given and what we as His children can expect.  Special mention of seeds and their promise is made on the 3rd day of the Genesis story where we can see that plants and trees are profuse manifestations of “this seed force.”  Plants and trees have been coming forth for millions of years and come forth yet.  During the unseen holy hours of nurturing, the “seed force” reaches down into the darkness of the earth’s “concealed depths” therein to be sustained by water.  In the Celtic tradition the moisture in earth’s soil is a “symbol of the waters of God that enfold and infuse all things.”  God’s goodness, deeper than any evil, then can be seen at the inception and very heart of life.  J. Philip Newell says that “everything that is born in the great matrix of life is sustained by roots that reach into the deep mystery of God’s life.”  The image which Newell’s words paint of all life reaching deep into God’s life is what, for many of us, shapes songs of joy and praise, for there is no more comforting, good, or safe place in the world than the heart of God!

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without  watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  ~Isaiah 55:10-11   ✝

23. Nature, like man, sometimes weeps for gladness. ~Anonymous

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Rain! whose soft architectural hands
have power to cut stones, and
chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
~Henry Ward Beecher

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Each drop of rain is a powerful miracle, a miracle that falls between heaven and earth as it travels vast distances around earth’s surface.  It speaks so loudly of holiness that whenever it appears here, it never fails to draw me to itself.   Perhaps because somewhere in my memory’s oldest and deepest recesses there’s a vague in-utero recollection of the soothing nature of a watery beginning, a remembrance of a sacred mothering source.  When the first drops of rain hit the ground, especially after a long absence, they fall on my ears not unlike the chords of a beloved’s voice.  And after the rain, when the smell of wet soil and damp grass greet my nose, I “weep for gladness.”  The deliciousness of its return prompts the same urges I experienced in childhood.  What fun it would have been to have played in the rain and danced with wanton delight in the sloshy puddles beneath my feet had mom not forbid it.

All the water earth will ever have was granted us at the beginning of time.  In whatever form it falls to earth, be it rain, fog, frost, snow, or sleet, water is part of a divinely designed cycle to insure Creation’s continuance.  The holy water-bearers bring the stuff without which there is no life for it is the substance in which life is formed and the substance of which life is sustained.  As a part of the grand and holy design, falling waters move in never-ending circles to kiss the earth and return to the clouds.  Given that I can’t help but wonder how far each drop of moisture has traveled throughout the eons of time.  One thing of which I’m always certain though is that rain’s “soft architectural hands” were made by the soft Hands of He who made the earth and us.

I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit.  Leviticus 26: 4   ✝

18. The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. ~J. B. Priestley

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Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Our area, that had been desperately in need of rain, was the beneficiary of fortuitous events on Christmas Eve.  Could it be that the celebration of the Messiah’s coming the night before was what prompted the blessing of rain as well as the magical, miracle of snow.  So many voices were lifted up in praise and worship of Him that our petitions for rain might have been heard as well. Occasionally on cold, crisp wintry days or nights layers of snow blanket God’s creation even here in north central Texas, but this time we received a strange mixture of “wet” goodness.  At eventide sparkling stars punctuated the ancient moon in heaven’s blackened dome, but during the course of the Messiah’s birthday, clouds laden with moistures moved in, flashes of lightning lit up the sky, a good amount of rain was garnered, hail fell, and finally snow covered the landscape.  If this is not an assortment of  Divine providence mixed with earthly “enchantment,” then as Priestley says, “where is such to be found?”

Praise His Holy Name!