White Friday

It's early Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving.  I stand here with a warm cup of coffee in my hand, looking out my kitchen window.  The backyard is covered in white. The thin, uniform coating of freshly fallen snow, has yet to be disturbed by deer, turkey or the other animals that frequent my yard.  White flakes of snow continue to fall from some unseen source in the sky, but the box must be nearly empty.  There are just occasional crumbs falling now, here and there, lazily drifting down and blending seamlessly into the white blanket that accumulated over night.  There is a sense of gazing into a large snow-globe that is settling down after a good shake.  

Every horizontal surface is white, the lawn, the deck and its wooden railings, the picnic table and its benches. The wind seems calm allowing even the smallest surfaces like the thin branches of the birch tree and the wooden top of the wind chimes to retained their tiny coating of snow this morning. Only the vertical surfaces of the brown tree trunks, the walls of neighbor's red shed and the greenish-grey 4x4 posts holding up the play house are left showing their contrasting earth tone colors.

The sky is mostly cloudy but it allows for an occasional, pleasant glimpse of a clear and iridescent  blue behind the white clouds.  The sun has just risen above the tree covered hills to the east.  The clouds have cleared from that area as if chased westward by the coming of the day. The new day's bright light reflects of all the white surfaces and the yard almost glows.  It hardly makes any sense to have so much light and so little heat.  I stand quietly sipping my coffee, considering the benefits of my de facto decision to avoid the retail stores this morning and enjoy this pleasant morning sunrise.