From my Kitchen Window - A Playful Diversion

Several years later, sky a bit cloudy - December 22, 2008
(Trampoline is in the lower right of the picture)

The mantle of white that I see out my kitchen window has transformed the green brown of a usual Victoria winter to a fairyland. A broad, blue and beautiful sky rises unclouded from frozen trees hiding the school playground. Earlier, wind whistled through bare tree branches and around corners, singing in telephone wires an unneeded reminder to all, that with this great beauty comes colder air.

A quiet settles as the wind dies down, stray snow flakes drifting and floating gently onto the trampoline in the back yard, lonely for the energy and laughter of children. From the corner of my eye, I catch a hint of movement in the quiet yard. A burst of two young boys warmly dressed, with rosy cheeks that can only come of playing in cold winter air, shatter the peaceful scene.

Clambering up on the quiet snow covered trampoline they drag a snow shovel with them?!  My mother’s mind tells me to call to them that they’ll ruin the trampoline. They’ll put a hole in it with the sharp corners of the shovel! And not only that they will probably slip on the wet cold trampoline surface and break a leg – or arm? And………and……….

They clean the snow off of most of the trampoline, try a few bounces and watch as the smooth snow surface breaks into icy crackles.  Then just as suddenly they are gone leaving the snow shovel lying midst the broken snow.  The trampoline has been given a reprieve from the silence of winter and settles back to wait for a warmer drier day.  The backyard relaxes once more into the quiet of a lovely winter white day, the only hint of any change a lonely snow shovel left to keep company on the trampoline amidst the shards of crackled snow.

January 31, 2005

            

“When it snows, you have two choices:

shovel or make snow angels.”

~ Author Unknown