FEBRUARY 10, 1988

By Eleanor S. Martin

Some way or somehow the seed catalogues have my name on their mailing list. I am receiving catalogues almost daily, some with colored pages, as a breath of spring and roses in December. Also there are leaflets advertising VCR's, lawnmowers, bolts and nuts and other things.

Since Christmas and New Year’s Day have passed we should move on to other things.

One week ago we had our first tracking snow. I tried to write about it, but it melted before I finished my article but we didn’t have any use for it anyway, let it go on back north from whence it came. But for a brief period I don’t think Currier and Ives could produce anything more beautiful. I’m impressed by the silence brought to the countryside.

We can always dream a little, with a few changes, of what our landscape would look like. The catalogues will help.

Winter is always reluctant to give way to spring.

Do you remember walking through an apple orchard in full bloom, not only the beauty but also the fragrance?

If the groundhog comes out to view the world and sees his shadow, it doesn’t matter if he sees his shadow; we still have a long stretch of winter to go before we see the daffodils blooming.

Where did the groundhog start predicting the weather? It all started in New Hampshire, but it’s too hazy to quote.

I think you get your money’s worth with bulbs. They grow in any kind of soil. I’m told if the squirrels get too friendly plant a few mothballs with the bulbs, the squirrels will get the message. I’m not advertising doing this, I don’t know if it works.

Some years ago they come out with the Peace Rose. It must be the queen of all roses, and then there were others. But who would think for a moment we could outclass the rose of long ago known as the American Beauty?

While the snow was on, I took Buff, our Golden Retriever, outside late one evening waiting for dusk to fall. She loved it! The soft snowflakes were falling all around us, and we noticed the silence once again. It was awesome. It seemed so warm to be snowing. I looked up and wondered where it was coming from.

From our place we get a view of rows of oak trees, blacktop street, an ice cream store, a florist shop and a craft store. Sometimes we see it through the rain, bathed in sunlight, in the snow and in the moonlight. That’s home!

A quote from Frederic William Faber:

"Kind words are music to the world.

They have a power that seems to be beyond natural causes,

as though they were some angle’s song,

which had lost its way and come back to earth."

Try to make each day count, when your mind is fresh and you have new dreams.

P.S. It’s snowing again