On Tue, 9 Sep 2003 00:56:33 +0200, "Boystrup Pb, ann,..."
wrote:


The cold fresh air of winter. The piles of snow, the big and small snowmen
covering the landskape. Ice coveering the water of lakes and beaches.
Snowstorms, children playing peacefully in a great white came world and the
smell of warm hot chocolate milk in front of an open fireplace.
Nothing, absolutely nothing can compete.
I have lived in Denmark for 13 years and seen some very hard and cold
winters, and believe me, I love them. I can't stand the heat. I would give a
lot for a white christmas.
Winter is a time of joy, harmony, yet something is missing, the growth in
spring, the birds singing their songs for us and everone to hear.
But remember, for us orchid hobbyists, some of the most beautyfull orchid
species bloom during those dark, cold and calm winter months.
To close this speech something I had to read in one of my English lessons.

Snow is sometimes a she, a soft one.
Her kiss on your cheek, her finger on your sleeve
In early December, on a warm evening,
And you turn to meet her, saying 'It's snowing!'
But it is not. And nobody's there
Empty and calm is the air.

Sometimes the snow is a he, a sly one.
Weakly he signs the dry stone with a damp spot.
Waifish he floats an touches the pond and is not.
Treacherous-beggarly he falters, and taps at the window.
A little longer he clings to the grass-blade tip
Getting his grip.

Then how she leans, how furry foxwrap she nestles
The sky with her warm, and the earth with her softness.
How her lit crowding fairytales sink through the space-silence
To build her palace, till it twinkles in starlight-
Too frail for a foot
Or a crumb of soot.

Then how his muffled armies move in all night
And we wake and every road is blockaded
Every hill taken and farm occupied
And the white glare of his tents is on the ceiling.
And all that dull blue day and on into the gloaming
We have to watch more coming.

Then everything in rubbish-heaped world
Is a bridesmaid at her miracle.
Dunghills and crumbly dark old barns are bowed in the chapel of her sparkle,
The gruesome boggy cellars of the wood
Are a wedding of lace
Now taking place.

By Ted Hughes


Very lovely. I shall have to clip that. I have never seen it
before.

SuE
http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/albums.php