The first snowfall

I woke this morning to a green landscape sprinkled with snow like Mom’s cakes and brownies garnished with sifted powdered sugar.

As a child, I didn’t understand that Mom sometimes frosted her cakes with powdered sugar as a matter of economy — the expense of butter at her favorite A&P store, and the time beating butter and sugar in her mixer, then frosting the cake.

However, I saw Mom’s abbreviations for such things as powdered sugar (p.s.), and toilet paper (t.p.), on her growing grocery list she kept on the kitchen counter.

Later, my mother stood in the doorway between the kitchen and livingroom where Dad watched TV. Timid with a dishrag in her hand, Mom asked Dad for grocery money that produced the ever-present box of Domino powdered sugar in her cupboard.

Gazing upon November’s first snowfall, I recalled nothing pleased Sadie Lee McCoy O’Brien more than to place a fresh-baked pie, cake, or brownie on the table for her family and guests. Since I am my mother’s child, I remembered the box of Double Chocolate Ghirardelli brownie mix in my kitchen cupboard.

No, I said to myself. Today you devote to paperwork at your desk.

Ugh! I’d rather be baking!

The snow melted as the day passed outside my study window. Sleet fell for a brief while as I read, typed, and filed papers.

Did you know reading and writing provoke hunger as does weeding and raking? So, I prepared a healthy lunch of avocado with naam bread, lentil soup, and melon. A remnant of a friend’s delicious apple cake with maple frosting provided my desired dessert.

For Anne also believes a balanced meal includes a sensible sweet, especially when prepared with local fruit of the season. She also served a beautiful salad and tasty Bacon-Sweet Potato Soup with our lunch.

Hmmm…I wonder if Anne also inherited from her mother the passion for testing a new recipe.

My paperwork at last set aside before nightfall, I walked down to the henhouse. My little flock is now reduced to three, one with an injured foot and isolated from her two sisters. Otherwise, they’d peck her to death.

Yes, the natural world is also brutal.

On the other hand, my old girls provided me with two eggs today. Enough for breakfast tomorrow morning with cranberry-walnut toast.

When I returned to the basement with my eggs, I discovered the pump under the washtub dripping water, and couldn’t find the source of the leak.

Entirely useless in solving the problem, I unplugged the pump, placed towels under it, and leaned back on my heels — surrendered to the tyranny of machines.

Then I stood, walked upstairs and left a voicemail with my trustworthy appliance repairman.

Dear Reader, thus is the breadth and balance within our natural and mechanical world. God provides the beauty and inspiration of the first fallen snow of the season.

And thankfully, after calling three plumbers, a young man with skill to repair washtub pumps is scheduled on my calendar this afternoon.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com