Let it Snow!

Some of you may have noticed that while Australia suffers in the grip of drought, flood and fire, the Northern Hemisphere has enjoyed some very cold weather recently. I use the term 'enjoyed' with some hesitation, because I realise that for some it has been difficult to deal with this really cold weather.


Many people over here groan about the snow because it causes inconvenience, and it can be hard to walk through snow and to slide about on the ice. But on the whole, I think snow is a much friendlier 'weather event' than drought, flood or fire. Snow is genuinely beautiful. Snow is also relational: it invites snowballs. And snowballs really need to be thrown in order to reach their fulfilled state.

And we enjoyed it. We took an afternoon off and went out to see what we could see.

What we saw was lots of white covering everything. Snow dusting trees, covering fields, rooftops, chimney pots and flaking down in a gentle flurry of white when it snowed.

We went crunching through the snow and slipping over the ice. We found a pond half frozen with some intrepid ducks valiantly relieving passing pedestrians of their bread.

And seagulls.

Being naive Australians we thought seagulls were only found at the sea. Something about the name of the animal giving us that false impression. So, it was quite a surprise to us to find them gallivanting around in the snow.

Here they are with the ducks on the frozen lake.

Here they are against the snow. You might not be able to see them because they are, well, white like the snow and there are so many of them. I think we counted 43 in this photo, but one can never be sure because they move around a bit.


They're like the Royal Mail: always out there, doing their bit, rain, hail or shine or, snow. I'm not sure that seagulls really count as useful members of the community, but they are certainly, unavoidably present.

Jonathan was quite taken with the snow, and particularly enjoyed watching mum and dad have snow fights. Again, notice the presence of, let's say, 67 seagulls scattered around in the snow. They get in the way of making a serious snowball sometimes.

We all returned from our excellent adventure in good cheer despite the disturbing presence of certain sea fowl.

And now, warmer weather has appeared and melted all but the most intrepid snowpiles. The seagulls, however, remain. JMB