The year comes to a close, and enduring blasts of cold arctic air, snow piles up to the armpits, and we wonder what the New Year will bring.  The calendar grows top heavy, Christmas trees spring up like miniature forests in formerly bare parking lots.  Sleigh bells and Christmas carols fill the air, as winter hits with a vengeance.

                Pewter bottomed clouds hover over the hillsides, the air grows still and hushed, and before we knew it, snow  began to fall.  Even in Northwest Montana where snow is a given, when the first real snowfall arrives, one dashes out taking photographs of heavily laden pines as they become living Christmas cards.  It is always a pleasure to hear the sugary crunch of  footsteps in the newly fallen snow as we tramp about in the twilight of the day.  We make great footprints in the lawns of people we don’t even know.

The dogs love it, the children love it, and other than the skiers or snowboarders, the adults gripe about it as they gingerly make their way about town to do their everyday chores.  Goldie frolics around, tossing great chunks of ice around the snow laden garden.  The Boston’s and the pups were not quite as thrilled as they disappeared into the foot high drifts, and dashed in and out within minutes, complaining it was too darn cold to stay out and play. 

I spend most of the winter knitting, painting, writing, and reading all those garden books that one doesn’t have time to read in the summer when the outdoors beckons, and the magazines get piled up, a treasure to be read at one’s leisure in the dead of winter.  Mostly I can manage to contain myself from thinking about planning next year’s garden, buying or starting seeds until February’s “Elfin Piper’s” painted by Rene Cloke appeared on the calendar that I had received at Christmas.  This fairy calendar contains beautiful works of art depicting fairies, including the gorgeous “Titania” painted by John Simmons in 1866, the exquisite “The Fairy Lily” by Luis Ricardo Falero, in 1988, and “Midsummer Night” by John Atkinson Grimshaw.  I do believe in Fairies and believe that fairies and gardens go hand in hand, and what more magical place is there, than a garden?