It looks like we’ll have a white Christmas in our part of Colorado this year. Good old Mother Nature dropped a good foot of snow on us last night and it’s not likely to melt much by this weekend.
Growing up in Virginia, the concept of a white Christmas was really only something Bing Crosby sang about. I guess I dreamed about it too, it just didn’t ever do me much good to ask Santa Claus for snow. I remember one year when we got flurries, and another when we had enough to make a tiny snowman using pretty much all the snow in the backyard. My folks let me pack it into a Tupperware and put it in the freezer so that we’d have snow for the following year. I think I was in college before they found it and released it back into the wild.
My big winter memories come from shoveling snow. Or rather, watching my dad shovel snow. Apparently, when I was still in diapers, my sister, our poodle and I used to sit on the couch and just stare out at my dad shoveling. Later, I’d bundle up and sit on my sled in the front yard while Dad in his green Army jacket would soldier away at our fabulously long sidewalk. We lived on the corner and as if that weren’t enough shoveling, he’d also clear the gutter in front of our house and then go over and shovel our elderly neighbor’s walk as well.
Virginia snow usually happens in January or February and then it’s this slushy awful, ice on the bottom kind of snow.
Colorado on the other hand takes its snow seriously. Here, the snow tends toward the light and powdery variety even if you only live on the plains like we do. Also, it can start as early as October.
Not everyone in this state skis or snowboards, a fact to which my Wagner family are a testament. However, there are other things you can do in the snow. Like shoveling and meeting your neighbors for the first time.
The Jade House is on the corner and the sidewalk along the side of the house just seems to stretch on and on when the snow comes up to your knees. However, today I met our neighbor who lives behind us. We met her briefly, when we first came to look at the house and now after talking to her I learned that we would have met her sooner had we done more in the yard this fall.
Our neighborhood is an older one, as far as the suburbs go at least, and she had some fine memories about winter in our neighborhood. Such as the fact that a helicopter landed in the street the day her youngest daughter was born because of the snow that year and the fact that they couldn’t get to the hospital any other way.
In closing, here’s a shot of the cats inspecting our petite Christmas tree. Have a happy and warm holiday weekend!
~*La!
~red ink in her veins~ 