Winter arrival

Winter has arrived. A few days ago we had snow. Today it is chilly and windy. A hard blue sky, and the limbs of the great Oaks sway to a great rhythm. The wind moans and howls around corners, making your bones chill, even in a warm house. You just have to shiver.
Squirrels are wearing their winter coats, with pretty white spots on the backs of their ears. Slate Colored Juncoes forage under feeders, and if my grandmother were still here, she would call them "Snowbirds", and claim their presence presages snow. The leaves of the woods Orchids, Cranefly and Putty Root, have popped into being, and are collecting sun light while the great deciduous forest sleeps. Turkey Brush, a type of Club Moss, covers road banks and forest floor, hopefully dreaming of its glory days, when its ancestors were taller than the mighty Oaks, about sixty or so million years ago. How the mighty have fallen...
Though the woods look dead, they are not. Squirrels forage in the dead leaves that fell mere weeks ago, and deer pick at the buds of shrubs that sleep in the winter as they quietly avoid the puny efforts of human hunters who seem to fill the woods at this time. Of course, humans are not the only hunters...
The Red Tailed Hawk floats above the fields, and suddenly falls to pin the rabbit to the ground. Ah, a full day's meal - she won't have to scuffle for voles and mice today. The Coopers Hawk darts through the woods and the brush on the woods edge, popping the occasional song bird that fails to be aware of threats. Life needs constant vigilance out here in the winter woods.
As we go deeper into winter and the days finally get longer, life will get even more difficult, but the days will get longer, and the sun will finally start its journey back up in the sky. But, today, winter is upon us.