This morning, the chilled breath of winter clung to every leaf, flower, and bud.  Contours once hidden from view were accentuated by the delicate tracery of tiny ice crystals.

The last dahlia, the last of the black-eyed susans, and the last rose of summer competed for best of show, but I could not award the prize. All were strikingly beautiful, all were brave and bold as they tried to hold the line against the frosty sword of cold and the first scatterings of snow.

Coated in a blanket of hoarfrost, the dull brown landscape glowed. And as the sun grew higher in the sky, the fairyland melted into droplets of dew until it evaporated into thin air, just as surely as it had come, even by the hand of God.

“He gives snow like wool;
He scatters the frost like ashes.”
Psalm 147:16