Pictures worth 1000 words...

In a relative sort of way, winter is probably a whole lot less serious in the Ozarks than it is across the Great Plains or in the Rocky Mountain states or in the upper Midwest, or Upstate New York or in New England or....

But we occasionally do have days here when we know it is winter! It snows. It gets cold...

And usually within a week or so it warms back up a bit so we think “well, this isn’t so bad...”

In summer you get the illusion

That life must be gentle and warm,

But wisdom comes to us in winter

When we have to stay home in the storm.

When the blizzard comes out of the northwest,

You cannot do as you would do.

So winter is when nature teaches

That the world is not here to please you.

Garrison Keillor, Hymn to Winter, APHC, Oct 12, 1996

And there are some things about winter that are truly breathtaking.

"It’s a Bob Ross Sunrise," the LOML yells. He happens to be puttering around the kitchen just as dawn begins to break.  Bob Ross was an artist who taught a “wet-on-wet” painting technique on a program we watched on Public Television. He gave the impression that just about anybody, without any art training at all, could paint some really nice landscapes by giving various shaped brushes certain twists and flicks of the wrist. We used to laugh at his rather lurid sunrises and sunsets. “That’s just not realistic," we would say.

Of course they were realistic.

If I was a sailor at sea, I would have been worried; as it happens, there was more snow on the way.

And this morning, the sun was shining at just the right angle, and just enough breeze was blowing, to shake down ice crystals that were clinging to the trees, and it looked like a shower of diamonds.

"Should I even attempt to take picture of  this," I ask?
"It's digital, honey," the LOML says, "it doesn't cost anything if they don't turn out."

As it happened, the pictures didn't turn out.

The flecks of ice are there (honest, they really are -- click on the picture), but the sparkle effect of them floating through the air is missing. A video would have worked, and my camera does take short videos, but I didn't think of that. Oh well, another time perhaps.