Summer Erased

The tops of my feet still bear a faded flip-flop tan. But the snow is here.

Big, wet glops of white. Some flakes instantly melt into soggy puddles. But a mounting number fight the liquefying urge and gather on the grass and trees and deck.

Well, that was a few hours ago. Since then, the snow crystal army has defeated the puddles and whiteness coats the farm, erasing all signs of summer.

Out on the deck, the kids' Adirondack chair that I painstakingly painted last June -- while flies buzzed around and humidity blanketed me -- is fuzzy white.

So is the little slide that Hadley laid claim to. How many summer evenings was she perched on top, clad only in a diaper and brandishing a drippy popsicle to ward off the heat?

The citronella candle we religiously lit -- though admittedly a meager weapon in the war on mosquitoes -- is snuffed out by ice.

And under clumps of snow, the tractor still sits in summer mode -- the bush hog mower poised for a kidney-jarring trundle back and forth over weeds, fescue, and a sea of buttercups that popped up in August.

Still there are signs of winter's chill. The horses are wrapped in heavy blankets. The cats have donned thick coats and rarely emerge from their hay-bale den in the loft. The sheep are clustered in their run-in shed. We've all hunkered down and forgotten about the searing sun, the parched grass and humid summer storms. Those images are gone. Whitened out.