FROZEN MOTION

It snowed 6+ inches last night.
And the temp dipped to low teens.

Today we shoveled and raked roof snow [low-pitch roof] and fed birds and squirrels.

In early AM looked out at a silvery, foggy, very cold morning.
I was reminded of the wintry scenes in Lion, Witch, Wardrobe film.

In a day or two an arctic air mass is supposed to dip actual night temps to ca. 5 below…
Now, that is cold.

But today is tolerable. The sun burned off the fog and we took pictures.

And we noticed the animal tracks.

Footprints in the snow – footprints in snow are like…frozen motion…a sign that something has come and gone our way.

It is like looking at photos of long ago, slow-shutter photos with people, things moving during the taking of the pix…and blurring…

Frozen motion.

I love it.

19th century photos with subjects moving and blurred…it is like seeing the impossible…motion in a still print: slushy, snow-covered roads in Victorian London; or tire tracks outside our home this morning.

Too good.

Out wood pile is next to a neglected flower bed, long overgrown.
The overgrowth is now quite bare – all the leaves are gone.

I was packing up the ax and saw – the wood was stacked, ready for the evening…when I looked into the midst of this poor, neglected bed, into the middle of the now leafless stalks and branches of whatever weeds have managed to survive another year.

And right smack in the middle was this 3 foot + pine tree – a baby, as it were, and perfectly shaped.

It has been growing all previous spring an summer and most likely for some few summers before that.

Only now we noticed it.

Dear Wife has wanted me to clear the bed for several years and I have put it off…put it off.

I should have cleaned it up...made it look respectable.
We would have discovered this little volunteer.

Now we will.

It really is true that often we only see what we are looking for.

We should look for more things.