I’m a sucker for the floral and houseplant displays at the grocery store, especially this time of year when the trees look like nothing but sticks and my gardens are frozen over.  I mean, I’m excited to think about what the gardens will look like in the spring, as the flowers and herbs and shrubs we started last year become more established, but I’m impatient.  I want to water things and trim things and observe new growth from day to day right now.

Today I was theoretically just shopping for chocolate, but I ended up coming home with two little cactus friends nestled into my purse, too.  The cashier gingerly wrapped each one in a plastic bag before she handed it to me, but I still poked my fingers when I unloaded them.  That’s ok, though.  It just shows that they’ve got spirit!  One has a tidy pattern of little spiky clusters, and the other one has a more unruly hairdo of longer spines.  I put one in my office and one in S’s office to greet her when she gets back from her trip.  I’m actually really excited about them.  They’re just so round and adorable.  And the cats can’t nibble on cactus needles like they do on the leaves of most of our other houseplants.  My lucky bamboo has suffered that terribly unlucky fate repeatedly.  Maybe it brought luck to the cats, though.

And winter progresses.  Time passes.  Our paper-white and our geraniums flowered recently.  We have some crocus bulbs sprouting on the windowsill, but no sign of buds on those yet.  The most exciting thing I saw today was some new-looking leaves poking through the ice in a cement urn outside the train station.

strung up in the snow

Originally uploaded by yellowlens

So far it has been a perfect winter, with snow that clings to the trees when it falls, snow that sparkles. We have a new back-saving snow shovel, and the use of a driveway to clear with it. We have snowshoes begging to be strapped onto our feet, to help us glide and float and flop through the woods.

Oh how I missed the snow when I was in Georgia!

But really, right now I’m just thinking about being out there on the sidewalk. I took the dog for a tiny walk a little while ago, and there was snow falling. It’s been falling all day, and I clicked a bunch of photos when there was daylight. It’s different at night, though. Only one car went by, and the snow makes everything more silent, and I have a cold right now, so the silence entered the strange pressure I have in my ears and nasal passages and soothed it a little bit. I felt sort of purified, as fresh-snow has a tendency to imply with its whiteness, even though each crystal is formed around a speck of dirt. It’s not late enough in the winter yet for me to start feeling depressed about the lack of color outside. Right now it’s just a sense of calm and beauty, and I’m grateful to have that. Very grateful. Sadness is too eager to jump me.