Winter morning on the farm...

I know that it's the time of year where it's become acceptable (and even fashionable) to gripe on constantly about the winter weather.  Gone is the shock and mild outrage of early winter (Gosh!  How cold it is out there!), replaced instead with the sort of salty resignation (I'm ready for Spring now).  

And I feel that.  Really, I do.  I'm totally ready for flower buds and warmer temps and ephemeral growth and baby everythings flopping about through nature's new flush of spring.  But sometimes winter can surprise you, and present you with moments of epic beauty that are impossible at other times.

So it was this morning when I was bumping around in the kitchen just after sunrise.  The sun was glittering off the freshly blown snow, rabbit tracks were everywhere (as always), and snow was falling so slowly through the morning light I felt like I was witnessing some sort of cheesy slo-mo treatment from an indie film.  Quite lovely.  I even tried to get all that beauty crammed into a camera (I only caught some), and in that brief moment I was thankful for winter, despite the inconveniences it brings.

Rabbits, rabbits everywhere...

If we just gave up all this gardening nonsense and dubbed ourselves a wild rabbit sanctuary, we would already have achieved success on a massive scale.  Spied a real wee'un today nibbling around the edge of the gardens.  He's no threat to our raised beds yet, I don't even think he's big enough to hop inside.

At any given time, one can walk out our back door and immediately lay eyes on one (or more likely several) rabbits.  Sure, they munch a bit in the garden (and are absolute hell on young trees in the winter), but they're cute as you'd like.  Also, it gives our cat something to do.  He's usually glued to the windows watching BunTV (whenever he's not passed out on the floor in an odd position, that is).