Autumn Snow Transitions

It snowed four inches here on Halloween night. I'm told that's not really unusual for Colorado, but in all honesty, I wasn't ready. Sure, we'd shut down our sprinkler system, detached the hoses from the house and our make-shift irrigation system, but the hoses were still all splayed out on the lawn. We hadn't picked up the dog's toys from the yard. I wasn't ready to drive to work with my hands at ten-and-two, my neck straining with the stress of making sure I didn't hit anything, and hoping that the new car would perform as promised. It did. It didn't make the drive any easier. The only preparation we had for this early snapshot of winter was that we had already turned up the temperature on the hottub. I wasn't ready for my dogs to love the snow as much as they did. They romped in it. They didn't tread carefully, caring that their paws were cold, or whine about having to squat to do their business on a sheet of white where it would be on public display. They loved it. They bounced in it, ate it, chased each other in it, dug through it.

The snow is almost all melted away, as promised, almost a week later, and I'm sorry it's gone from the backyard. The skeletons of hoses are still there, mirroring the skeleton of the dead garden and hibernating perennials. All the leaves are gone from the apple trees and the lilac. This is the winter I was expecting: the graveyard of summer. Now I can look out at the backyard and mourn the summer gone, properly, before being thrown into the joy of a winter wonderland.