It's looking a lot like ... winter

 Snow was predicted when I went to bed so it was no surprise to find the morning quiet and muffled as I lay in bed about 6 am. I listened for a car or a school bus to pass. Nothing. Eventually I got up and looked out the window. The ground was shrouded in white and in the sky white flakes still drifted lazily down.

 My phone lay beside me. A weather alarm was issued during the night for a "heavy precipitation event". I heard nothing. At 3 am I am as sound asleep as I get.

 I ate breakfast and counted cars passing on Clayton. One. Two. Three. That was all. School was cancelled and many people apparently had called in to work. Almost nothing was moving.

 We had just three inches of snow. No big amount. And it brings my winter total to a mere 7.5". And yet this is the most wintry we've looked all year.

 At 7 am I stepped outside ...

 The world is utterly without sound but for the whisper-soft tinkling of snow flakes as they hit the ground. It is almost imperceptible, an almost-silent background static that I me barely aware of. It is there only if I stop and listen. Like the ticking of a clock, take away your concentration for a moment and it is gone. It is merely background.

 This maple by the kitchen window is where we've hung most of our birdhouses and two feeders. It is too early for the birds. They are still asleep. This is a good morning to take it slow.

 Looking south from the back porch, the pines are covered in snow. Flakes stick to my eyelashes, dart about like summer insects.They bite in a new way.

 The driveway lies hidden beneath this new blanket. Rising up in the distance are trees more familiar when it is light. Now they are a bit sinister, even frightening. Unlike recent nights the snow is trackless. But it is also new. I usually note birds, rabbits and what I guess is a kitten, hereabouts for several nights. I have seen none of them making tracks.

 Last summer Mom and I bought a picnic table. It was something she was proud of, something she had always wanted. Only Tom and I have used it. Next summer we'll sit there again and share a whole watermelon.

 It is soon getting light and I have my weather to report. By noon I'll begin to see patches of blue in the north sky. A short while later the sun will break through. And, as I type these last lines, I hear a plow pull into my driveway and begin clearing the snow. It is a neighbor, surely, but I have no idea who. He does the work out of love and expects nothing in return.

This is a wonderful place to live. The sky buries us but a neighbor is at the ready to dig us out.