White, White Winter

I'm not sure I can remember a winter so snowy. For months there has been a constant veil of white on the ground, and storms that come in waves like the sea, misting the air and dusting the trees with powdered sugar. It seems like there are always snowflakes dancing in the windows. Really the most wonderful year for a winter lover.

It is so cold that I have spent the last three days at home, keeping warm with hot chocolate and my crocheted shawl, reading Angela Carter and watching Legend. What have you darlings been up to?

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/casienserio/4253873034/in/faves-30495408@N04/

April Showers Bring

Lately it's been as gray and wet and stormy as Misselthwaite Manor here. It's getting very dreary, but against all the gray everything looks so lush and green I almost don't mind. I think the volcano in Iceland is to blame... just like the Year Without a Summer.

And Winter Came

It is unmistakeably winter here

Everything is white. The sky is white, the ground is white, the air is white. All is white except the bare brown branches.

The river behind my house is covered with snow, the overhanging branches glancing over the frozen surface. The woods seem naked and empty without leaves to hide behind. The trees grow blurry with strange winter mist, melting together in the distance. It is so cold now that it hurts to go outside. The fields are empty, choppy stocks of grass rising from the snow. I used to look out over those fields as a child and imagine stories and figures there.

Sometimes I still do.



I know I have been terribly absent here in the last few months and I am sorry. I will try to do better!

Summer Days

Today was a little chilly and now that it's dark out the air is quite cold. I'm all snuggled up in a thick, wooly sweater with a cup of hot chocolate to keep me warm. I've had such a lovely day. This morning I got a call from work saying I didn't have to come in because of the cold, so instead I went to the waterpark just for fun. I paddled around the little river on a big yellow life ring, chased waves in the pool and ate a chocolate and peanut butter sundae.



This afternoon I visited the nearby school. My family goes there often (usually when my brothers and father want to play basketball) and it's become one of the things I look forward to most each summer now, because each year the science teacher plants a little garden out behind the building. I'm always curious to see what new flowers have been planted and which old ones are returning, and I'm always on the look out for the pretty little things she hides there: glass marbles, snakeskins, windchimes, and smooth stones.


I brought my camera, and my little ship, and a pair of my favorite earrings that you've never seen. Everything was so pretty, I couldn't resist taking pictures of it all. Then when I was my camera was full of pictures and I was satisfied, I lay down on the grass and watched the clouds until it was time to go home.

Spring Arrives

I'm sitting at the computer with a big bowl of cold grapes. It is finally warm enough to have my window open. I love leaving the window open, catching snatches of birdsong, feeling the fresh air, the way the curtains dance in the breeze, the patterns of lace playing on my carpet.


The robin who has been visiting the nest in my family's tree has finally moved in, and brought his wife. The grass is now green again, and the woods behind our house are coming back to life. The trees along our street are covered in little red and green buds or torrents of white blossoms, and magnolias and tulip trees are opening. The neighbor's yards are exploding with color, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses, and of course, dandelions.


I actually really like dandelions. They remind me of little yellow stars, and I love the way they turn to seed in the summer for people to blow away and make wishes on. My brother however, is in charge of lawn care, and is much dismayed at their return, as it means the restarting of his war against the ever-encroaching sea of weeds. But I don't care. Dandelions mean spring is here again. ^^



Photos #2 and #4 by me
#1 by http://www.flickr.com/photos/merwells/
#3 by http://www.flickr.com/photos/28424746@N08/

The Frozen World

I dream of winter. Winter like the winters in fairy tales, where the world is a blanket of white, when the branches are like roses dipped in glass, the windows etched with icy lace, when all sound is muffled in the utter stillness, and in the silence the senses grow heightened to a razor's edge.




Winters that bring thoughts of wrought iron walls hiding snow-white gardens, of glass coffins and endless forests, of nights where the wind howls like wild beasts and the windows rattle in the cold. Winters that whisper of secrets beneath the whiteness, waiting for the ice to thaw and the snow to melt and reveal them to our eyes.




Wintry Inspiration

Books

Clockwork by Phillip Pullman
The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
The Veil of Snows by Mark Hellprin and Chris Van Allsburg




Music

Bjork - "Aurora"
Bjork - "Frosti"
Emilie Simon - "The Frozen World"
Enya - "Athair ar Meamh"
Enya - "Lothlorien"
Vanessa Carlton - "Half a Week Before the Winter"




Movies

Legend
"Lithium" (Evanescence music video)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship