I remember my mom and brother and me gathering around the kitchen table to play a game of pick up sticks. It required a steady hand. Mom was pretty good, after all there were only two kids in those days and her nerves were kind of steady. Years later with five active kids running around the house I bet she could never have beat us at the game again.
These days I play pick up sticks with another Mother--Mother Nature. I worked a long afternoon or two just picking up sticks that she'd thrown to the ground on our lawn. I piled them in bundles along the edge and Patrick would come by with the tractor and cart and remove them to the fire pile.
I was quite proud that we were finally getting the upper hand on dead fall on our property. That's what I thought anyway. Mother Nature has a way of putting things in perspective. You just don't mess with her. Apparently she likes the way she decorates and if you should choose to redo her designs she'll just do them over.
Last week she decorated in frosty, snowy white. She rearranged the shapes of the trees bending some of them all the way to the ground. She even pruned one of the big trees by the side of the yard. Bringing down a huge branch the size of a grown tree itself. Peeking through the winter white were bright colors of yellow, orange, and red; leaves that were still on the trees celebrating fall. And to top off her new theme and put me in my place she threw down a plethora of sticks.
The white theme was gorgeous, a blanket covering everything in sight; making a tent all around us. At times it was impossible to see beyond the fluffy flakes that fell for hours on end. Flakes that accumulated and took away our electricity for two days, leaving us to live with warm fires in the fireplace and candles and flashlights to light our way.
Don't mess with Mother Nature.
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