Cardinals Winter

is finished.


I love it. It looks just like I wanted it to look. Frosty and icy, red popping, just the way the cardinals look when they come to visit us during snow storms. I love watching our cardinals visit. (Except that one female who lands on the window screen and glares at us--I don't like being rebuked by a bird) The males are not all the same shade of red; some are richer ruby red, some are this incredible devil red that, surely, God was having a really good day when he made. I never noticed that before moving to the country. In the summer, we don't notice them as much, but, when the world around you is dreary and white, it sure is a basic "happy" to see that pop of color. Our bunnies are a bit more "whispery"; they zip across the front yard after dusk and live under the front steps or in one of the bushes. In the winter, it's a little gift to find their tracks in the snow.

One of the things I've tried to do this winter is to start noticing things like that. It seems to me that, for all the annoyances of snow, it hides the ugly and allows nature to show itself. I rush by farm fields in the winter nights, eager to get home, but, this winter, I've tried to notice the details, and it's been fascinating--seemingly barren fields where I've never seen deer, but I see their tracks now, and I know they're there. I like that. I like seeing them silhouetted against the winter night sk (as long as they stay off the road). I love seeing the colors of the birds, the blue of the jays and the red of the cardinals--you can't manufacture that pretty. It's been a wonderful winter in that regard.