All heaven and earth
Flowered white obliterate…
  Snow…Unceasing snow
           --HASHIN

Ah the power of a simple, 19th century Japanese haiku. What could better describe Maine in the last 24 hours?

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is time to talk.
Blade-end up and five feet tall.
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
-- Robert Frost, 1916

Thwack!

The ax bites a little deeper into the trunk of the waste tree cut down near the old barn this past September. It grew in an area where my wife and I will put in a shade garden this spring. The trunk of this small tree lays across the old chopping block we found here in the wood shed.