Aftermath

The whole day after this giant  two-foot snowfall I felt  like a kid. When I backed my car out of my driveway with that big marshmallow of a top-hat still on the roof  I did what I’ve always loved doing: went fast down the hill then braked hard to see if it would all fall down fwump! on the windshield.It did and I loved it all over again. I love seeing the wipers jump into action the way they do, rushing in to clean things away, like lowly ball-boys at a tennis match.All day I worked at my job and did my errands. Came home and broiled some lamb chops and made a pot of wild rice with pine nuts and almonds mixed in; made an Autumn-Vegetable soup  from scratch and then sat down in an actual chair and watched a whole 2002 episode of Six Feet Under, still to me the greatest work Alan Ball and HBO ever did.Finally, dazed with the beauty outside the window and the unaccustomed sense of peace inside my head, I got out the camera and took these pictures - just as  the sun begun to sink and the moon got ready to rise. That's one neighbor's house on top, taken from inside our kitchen; then going down another neighbor's house looking across our yard; then the poor magnolia; and  finally the long beard of ice growing from the gutter outside the window of  the upstairs study...