Your new assignment is "Snow"

The definition of snow is type of precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. The process of this precipitation is called snowfall.

In 1885 Wilson Alwyn ("Snowflake") Bentley, of Jericho, Vermont, began taking photographs of snowflakes through a microscope. Thousands of Bentley's photomicrographs were eventually collected in his book Snow Crystals (1931). The fact that not one of the snowflakes photographed by Bentley was identical to another is probably the basis for the idea that no two snowflakes are ever exactly the same--an idea that is in fact unverifiable.

When I was in college, one of my roommates had a dress that she wore on the first snowfall of each year. Dressing up to celebrate the first snow, was a new idea to me, and this photo reminds me of her delight and exuberance. Snow makes the world magical, even the most ordinary, even unsightly places are transformed.

The beauty of these so-called weeds, encased in ice and hoarfrost, is there whether we look or not.

The cunning of even the smallest of birds to prevail on spilled grain meant for livestock, still amazes and reminds me that great determination is around me in the natural world--to live.