Weather traces ... funny moods

First snow, November 13, one-half inch, but heavy and wet. Though the snow flattened much of the garden, it recovered in a day.But I like its temporary flatness.The sprawling grass blades, the stippled blacks, browns and golds recall the ironic beauty of disarray and destruction in an Anselm Kiefer painting.The mood is lively. More birds are out now that the leaves have fallen from the trees. They've lost their forest cover and come to feed on berries and seed heads.Though this snow could have ended the garden for the year, I'm rather delighted with the energetic mess of colors and shapes. On days like this the garden has a crazy atmosphere of change. It lifts my spirits. The house rests like a stable ship above the disorder of a rollicking sea of vegetation and frozen precipitation. Comic, happy-go-lucky spirits are at play ...... at play for a while. All this will soon end.The garden's become a joke, coated with wet snow, slipping, trying to stand, but mostly unsuccessfully.Salix kyoryanagi 'Rubykins' bends easily but whips upright as soon as it sheds the frozen weight.Believe it or not, this Miscanthus giganteus lying flat behind a Button bush and a tall dried Silphium laciniatum was totally upright the next day.                A hosta trying to rebloom, but too late.