One could hardly have believed it was Winter. The sun shone full and bright from a sky that was in incredible blue – the kind of blue that makes you wonder if you’ve ever looked at the sky before…if you’ll ever look away now. A few fine, white clouds were stretching across the horizon. They were like fine lambs-wool, every pure white fibre defined and altogether beautiful.

 The sun was shining on my garden, into which I’d come to enjoy while the pleasant weather lasted. The lawn hadn’t been cut in a while, so it was deep, thick and a lustrous green that belonged to Summer, not Winter. My feet sank down into that fragrant blanket of grass and clover and I watched as the wind sent a gentle breeze across it. The tallest stalks bent slightly, straightened, swayed, alternating between a sunlit emerald and a shadowed jade.

 I gave in to the temptation and dropped to my knees. The grass was cool and oh, so soft. I almost lay down in it. The dreamy warmth, vagrant breeze and the scent of the garden were so potent a combination.

 There was water down at the ground level of the grassy forest. I could see small beads of dew clinging to the slender, green trunks where the shadows were darkest. Each tiny sphere, like crystal orbs, threw back reflections of the grass, the sky, myself, like infinitesimal shards of a broken mirror.

 Then a breath of wind wends its way through the grass. The crystalline balls slip away, down, down into the fragrant darkness, down into the heart of the earth. And the grass sways, the clover leaves tremble. The sun dapples them all with its light and the warm wind stirs them ever more…

 It is Winter.