Welsh Snow

Awoke to a pale crust of powdery snow, which was starting to fade as the daylight warmed the ground. It had come from the west, from Wales a mile away, and the western windows were still wet this morning. The house sits square to the compass; a western side facing the Welsh hills, a southern side, a northern side and an eastern side facing into England. All day we have been threatened by snow, the clouds leaden and full of it, the occasional flurry of sleet or frozen rain. The sky has been sullen. I drove to Leominster and there was no colour in the landscape at all, just hills unfolding in shades of greys and pale whites, sharp silhouettes of naked roadside trees black against the greyness, the constant threat of snow. There was snow on the distant hills, in the Radnor Forest and beyond, all day. And then I turned a corner and the sun came out, and it was so clear that even driving I could see buds on the trees, the promise of leaves and blossom, tree-flowers. Seasons do not end abruptly but fade reluctantly, and this fading is a special moment between one season and another, this sense that the winter is leaving but can still blast us with blizzards, subzero temperatures, glooms.