Despite the frigid temps, the cold and wind have com­bined to form the most won­drous land­scape I have seen in a long time. It would take me a win­ter to just sit and deci­pher the ways of the wind. We have drifts where we have never had drifts. Huge, tow­er­ing peaks of snow that sur­prise you when you step on them, just how deep they really are. We go to bed at night with a clean side­walk and wake up to a 3 foot drift. Con­trasts of val­leys of snow and clean windswept ground. How the wind must swirl and twirl around and over the obsta­cles in its way to form such beauty. Where I think there must surely be drifts, there are none, and where there should never be drifts, there are. When the cats and dog now come out of the barn they pause, tak­ing in the new land­scape, try­ing to fig­ure out where the old one went and if this one is dan­ger­ous. Mag­gie always barks a few times at the new scene, the cats climb ten­derly, scal­ing drifts we would eas­ily sink into. Mag­gie moves, slip­ping and slid­ing and try­ing to find a grip in the snow. Yes­ter­day her cohort Tin­ker the cat and she were sit­ting on a drift out­side my kitchen win­dow, side by side, one large the other tiny, star­ing off into the grove, watch­ing the squir­rels scam­per back and forth in the trees. What a pic­ture, I thought.
All the beauty is not with­out its down­falls. I hung bird feed­ers high so as not to tempt the cats, but the swirling and drift­ing have taken the snow to within inches of the feed­ers. Luck­ily it has been so frigid the cats are not stalk­ing. But the feed­ers are in the open and the birds watch­ful. I have yet to see a cat grab a bird. I knock on the win­dow and warn the birds if I see a cat sleuthing around the side of the house. I can­not move the feed­ers, they are frozen. I guess things will be what they will be. Next year I know bet­ter.
I often won­der where the birds go when the winds are fierce and the temps frigid. We have a machine shed they could fly into. We don’t want them to, as they dec­o­rate the boat, trac­tors and trucks with lit­tle gifts. But  sur­pris­ingly they are not in there. Today I was in my laun­dry room by my back door when I heard con­stant twit­ter­ing. We keep this door cov­ered in the win­ter because we don’t use it, so I peaked around the blan­ket and there, in the bushes, in a well pro­tected cor­ner sat hun­dreds of birds. Chirp­ing away in the sun despite the cold, only feet away from their food. So now I know. It has me think­ing that maybe this spring I will have my hus­band build an aviary for them some­how. We have tons of extra wood. Some­thing that blends in with the land­scape but come win­ter offers them food and shel­ter. I will have to pon­der that.
In the mean­time, while I am home bound, I will try to take a few min­utes when I am antsy and just look at the beauty of win­ter and not wish it away. For in wish­ing it away, I also wish away min­utes that I can never have back.
Some­times it is hard to find good in these awful days. Today I did and I am grate­ful once again for where I live.
Have a good one.