MELT!!!

As the sun was going down on the way home from work, the white pines at the side of the road were sparkling.  Yesterday was cold and grey and very windy--and the snow piled up all day.  Today, though the air was still cold,  the sun was out, and the world once more was white and green and blue.   Though it is only February,  the sun is already showing its power.  Mid-day, despite the cold, it began to melt the snow on the boughs.  As the air began to cool at the end of the day, the drips turned to elongating icicles, and they picked up the glow of the setting sun.  A fairyland!!

I passed a building  that sported huge icicles from its roof almost to the ground.  

Here are some tiny icicle ends that caught that end-of-day light.

One of those icicles was as thick as my wrist and white as a birch tree limb, but at the bottom was a multi-fingered blossom of clear, new ice forming.  See how the sky, the snow and the trees are living inside?

The small miracles of nature are a solace, if we stop to see them.  Stopping and looking is a simple, miraculous thing.