Invicible summer


I woke up this morning to the sound of wet tires on a busy street, the road splashes that signal a rainy day. The sky looked grey through the blinds on the window, and my first thought was, “rats, I wasted a bright sunny day yesterday doing housework and laundry”.

I walked to the kitchen to feed the critters, and my spirits lifted at the sight out the back deck: snow. The first, bright, heavy snowfall of the year. The air was thick with white, clinging to the grey naked  trees and covering the muddy schoolyard with a clean undisturbed layer of snow. I love the quiet mornings after a storm, before feet and cars and warmer daytime temperatures and maybe rain turn it all into a mucky slushy mess.

It was almost a relief, really. Fall can be a trying time emotionally and physically while our bodies adapt to the cold and the long dark days, as we resign ourselves to winter. I have not been coping well this year — it all seems to have happened so…fast. Wasn’t it just last week that I was out enjoying my deck garden in a t-shirt, battling raccoons and taking pictures of flowers? Well, the sight of snow snapped me out of denial, once and for all. Time to face facts: it’ll be another five months before the leaves on the trees come out again to play. Winter is a time to go inward. I’ll be in my grow room if you’re
looking for me.

“In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus