Snowspits

Snow again. We get flurries at 3200 feet in the Sierras; it snows for five minutes, stops, snows again. It's 28 degrees outside. A light breeze pushes the icy, dry snowflakes haphazard and willy-nilly, floating them in slo-mo first this way, then that, and then both at once. I love how the intense white rimes each and every twig, branch, pine needle and chain-link fence diamond, like a dusting of confectioners sugar to make the ordinary world sweet and extraordinary. And just outside my kitchen window, close enough to be sheltered from the falling snow, a yuletide camellia bud swells, making ready for a months-late but much-anticipated red-and-gold debut.