About late yesterday afternoon

Walked out of work in to a wind sharp and cold and it took my breath away and blew me awake. Above me the pin oaks rustled and chattered as they will until next spring. The sky spit snow.

My car was stiff and reluctant to head home, unlike its driver.

To the west and north the cumulonimbus showed great blue rips and the wefts of light promised little but a hard freeze tonight.

In November, winter comes

Route 24 from Huntington to Fort Wayne ribbons through the small, farmland-flat valley of the Little River, with tree-filled ridges to the north and south--once, the Wabash-Erie Canal flowed there, too. Long gone, though a plaque for old Lock No. 4 can be read when you sit at the right place at the stop light in Roanoke.

The leaves linger long, even on the maples this year, and the ones around the houses on the north ridge still flame red and orange, though the brilliant puddles around them grow larger. Soon, all will be reduced to thin silhouettes.

The soybean fields are long since harvested, and the corn mostly so, the stalks bent and the fields stretching yellow-gray from the road to the wind-row down by the river.

But like a checkerboard oasis, acres of green intersperse the fallow. With the harvest, and empty fields, comes planting. Even now, already, winter wheat grows, and these fields will grow all season long, even as ice and snow cover them. The green remains.

I love winter wheat.

How about you? What gets you through the winter?