And again

 

"so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow,”

                                                         Wind in the Willows

                                                                    Kenneth Grahame

Snow yesterday, snow today. And blimey, if it don't look like snow again tomorrow. And an appearance by the abominable Snow Whateley

 

The snow started Tuesday night and looks like it will continue for awhile. Still it is fairly light and not to cold. And Whateley is a fan.

Here,

I’m here—

The snow falling

Issa

Snow and home again.

"No wiser now 
Than the spellbound child
who first beheld beguiled, 
Long seventy years ago
Enchanted snow."

                                               Enchanted Snow 
                                          Melville Cane

After mentioning that there was little snow, it snowed on Jan. 5th, the day before we were heading back to Calgary.

Then winter arrived with a vengeance. I sent this email to my family on Jan. 12th.

"We are okay. We had to go out for a minor medical errand this afternoon. The temp registered outside the cab, we made no attempt to start the car, was -35. That was not the wind chill. I did do a bit on the walk this morning and I said to Helen it was about as cold as I could ever remember. Nina and Whateley are only out for a minute or so but sometimes Nina limps in and has to be carried up the steps from the landing."


But it is supposed to warm up on the weekend.

Spring back/Winter Wonderland

 

  "Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 

     its white flag waving over everything,

      the landscape vanished,

      not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   

      and beyond these windows"

      from Snow Day

       by Billy Collins  

And let's remember.

Morning

This morning I went out to shovel but this white-tailed jackrabbit 

was still resting so I came back inside.

“The Whole landscape drifted away to the north,

To Moose Factory, hundreds of miles, to the pole

And beyond, to the Arctic ends of the earth,”

A Window on the North

R.A.D. Jones

Snow with Coyote

Snow this morning, At 6:30 I was just finishing shovelling 

when a coyote trotted past me down the centre of the 
street. It is -15, wc -23 but it did not feel that cold.


“so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow,”

from Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

 

Snow

 

'All my life,' she said, 'I've been so busy running from Beethoven to Bach to Brahms, I never noticed I was twenty-nine. Next time I looked up I was forty. Yesterday, seventy-one. Oh, there were men; but they'd given up singing at ten and given up flying when they were twelve. I always figured we were born to fly, one way or other, so I couldn't stand most men shuffling along with all the iron in the earth in their blood. I never met a man who weighed less than nine hundred pounds. In their black business suits, you could hear them roll by like funeral wagons.'

'So you flew away?'

'Just in my mind, Mr Terle. It's taken sixty years to make the final break. All that time I grabbed on to piccolos and flutes and violins because they make streams in the air, you know, like streams and rivers on the ground. I rode every tributary and tried every fresh-water wind from Handel on down to a whole slew of Strausses. It's been the far way around that's brought me here.'

from The Day it Rained Forever by Ray Bradbury

Snow Day

"White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly."

from Snow by Archibald Lampman

 

A photo from our trip to the farm at Christmas

"I've learnt the beatitudes of ice,

something sacred, something cold,

demanding respect, a paraphernalia

of horned boots, cowl and padded vest,

for body nicely flexed to winter's mould."

From Shovel to Self-propelled Blower:

The Immigrant's Progress

Reinzi Crusz

Whateley and the snow cone

 "The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths."



from First Snow in Alsace
Richard Wilbur

Polar Vortex - looks like it will be cold all week.

 

"snow
the day shut down like Napoleon
at Moscow
a day for art
the marvel of flight and of stillness
commotion and silence"

War and Peace
D. G. Jones

So we filled up the car, got some dog treats and snacks and prepared to hunker down.

We weren't the only ones getting ready. This squirrel is planning on getting into macrame in a big way. Helen is painting her miniature. Mine are still in the mail. And we can start patching the drywall in the big room in the basement this week.

A skiff of snow Sunday.

"in the distance. All the while the woods have grown dark,

and suddenly he looks across the table,

and you’ll see in his eyes that he’s lost."

from A chat with my Father

by David Bottoms

Very snowy day

  "burning on the snow
drag-footed across the fields
whiskey-faced men go

the blind lead the blind
and coarse oglers invade the
countries of the mind"

from Haiku on Brueghel
by Phyllis Gotlieb 

 While Calgary often gets snow in Sept and October, sometimes quite significant snowfalls, it normally lasts a day or so, then the autumnal weather returns. This year it has been cold and snowy for some days and today promises to be more of the same. 

from Snow Towards Evening by Melville Crane

"From some invisible blossoming tree

Millions of petals, cool and white.

Drifted and blew,

Lifted and flew,

Fell with the falling night."

 

Oct 14, Snow Day

 

    "Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 

     its white flag waving over everything,

      the landscape vanished,

      not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   

      and beyond these windows"

      from Snow Day

       by Billy Collins  

She, then, like snow in a dark night,
Fell secretly. And the world waked
With dazzling of the drowsy eye,

from Like Snow

by Robert Graves

Winter waxwing

"Pan, who and what art thou? he cried huskily

"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, 

"I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”

― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

New Snow with Hare

More snow today. It seems spring is self isolating elsewhere, 
heeding government warnings about unnecessary travel. 
When I went out to shovel before bed I found a white tailed 
jackrabbit had claimed the virus stilled street.

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world
older and more complete than ours they move finished and
complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost
or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear."

from The Outermost House by Henry Beston

And we had good news tonight, we needed some.

A couple days of snow and extreme cold is breaking, but not the coronavirus fears which are just beginning.

"Time does not pass when snow is falling —

only the silence falls. Trees glisten, trembling

as a body trembles beneath a white sheet,

the room cold, "

from The Snow

by Bruce Meyer

Feb. 2nd Snow

"That night and for years afterward, she had envisioned another dream land, built from the imaginings of powerful women dreamers. Perhaps it would have fewer gods, she thought as she watched the moon vanish over the horizon, leaving her in the darkness of the ninety-seven stars.”

from The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
by Kij Johnson,

Dec. - Trip to Calgary

p k page
from “Stories of Snow”

Those in the vegetable rain retain
an area behind their sprouting eyes
held soft and rounded with the dream of snow
precious and reminiscent as those globes
– souvenir of some never nether land 

–which hold their snowstorms circular, complete,
high in a tall and teakwood cabinet.