Texas winters are often kind of bleak. The temperatures (sometimes) drop, the trees are bare and dormant, and the grasses all turn brown. Rarely are these beautified by a concealing layer of snow, at least in these parts. If we get cold and condensation at once, it is sleet or ice and it creates muddy slush that seeps into your shoes and tracks into the house. For the most part, winter in Texas is just a dry brown break from the green and growing of the other ten months of the year.
In spite of this, I find much beauty in the absence of the flowers and leaves: the expansive, shaggy tans of the dry grass against the still-blue sky, the bright green winter rye growing thinly in the black fields, and the highly saturated pinks and purples of the sunrise broken by the skinny black silhouettes of naked trees. I like seeing the long rows of round hay bales, stores lined up neatly like so many cans on my full pantry shelf. I love the crisper gleam of the stars at night when the air is cold. A pair of doves cuddle on a bare branch, a flock of fat meadowlarks glean seeds from the field. Looking at the stack of wood near our porch, I almost already feel the warmth from the fires they will sustain in our wood-burning stoves. And the buckets of pecans we’ve collected foretell many tasty baked goodies.
Like a Wyeth painting, the December to February landscape around here may be dry at first glance, but a careful observer will find much beauty that brings joy.
Posted on January 7th, 2008 by Dove
Filed under: Uncategorized
Have you noticed how much bluer the sky is in the wintertime, too? Less hazy humidity in the way…
Beautiful writing!
Except right now, I think this unseasonably warm weather is reaching all the way up to you guys too, per your post about the birthdays.