I Heart Frozen Mix

In months without foliage the bedroom window shows me the T-intersection below the cliff and about 200 yards away--dangerous during the best of times because from both ways the county highway curves and comes sharply downhill. On snowy/icy/sleety nights when hearing the snowplow thundering my way to shear snow from the road, I get up to see its lashing yellow lights briefly pass then disappear, thinking: Someone's taking care of us. And someone is hoping he comes home safely and soon.

No one else here voluntarily drives in this weather, so during snows a vast silence is broken only by the plow, usually. Tonight's big wet flakes the TV weatherman called "hamster-sized" (welcome to Missouri), ticked the roof like cornflakes. I went out to take photos with my newish phone, not realizing its camera had automatic flash until back indoors when I saw how the camera flash captured the trails of falling snowflakes, a phenomenon otherwise invisible.

This is the first real winter in several years, with snow days (four or five now) and frozen mix -- my favorite. It really is like driving in that frozen mix of peas, cubed carrots and green beans you buy in the freezer section -- my worst nightmare. So I appreciate the plow and like watching it come up one side of the road and down the other. Beats seeing ambulances and cops converge at our crossroads as happens about once every season. I am told that when I was a kid I did not want to play with dolls but with trucks.

March 26 in Missouri

They say here, "If you don't like the weather, wait 24 hours, and you'll see how good it was." Hamster-sized snowflakes fell today. Thursday was a mildly sunny day, about 70 degrees, a great day for walking and climbing...I enjoyed the tiny buds on trees, small mayapples and wake robins springing from the forest floor, and looking for a jack-in-the-pulpit. I told a friend, "It should always be early spring." Then last night it got cold. Nothing on the ground this morning. But 5 inches of freakish snow on the ground by 7 p.m. It covered up my daffodils, violets, hyacinths. I baked chocolate chip cookies; what else could I do?