Snowfall in December . . .

Softly and silently settled the snow, a pure white duvet of feathery down, unexpected and exciting; transported while dreaming of sugarplums and chocolate fountains, we found ourselves awakening in a foreign land full of fantasy and magic, the familiar changed into an unfamiliar place.

An angel had appeared upon the lawn, fluttering it's snowy, icy wings in the chilly, morning air



. . . the medieval cross on the square looked strangely chilled and stark against the snow~tipped branches of leafless trees, cold and bare . . .

Across the valley, the silent mountain stands, a great cake, risen and cracked with long slow baking in some giant oven of the Earth


. . . . the old Victorian school house, long empty now, standing alone on the hill above the sugar~dusted tree tops in the valley below,

The house I knew as Sunny Bank, Christmas~card and picture~perfect, standing still and silent in the trees; a distant hamlet stranded in the snow . . . .

A Pembrokeshire tree, twisted and gnarled by years of prevailing wind is dusted and draped with nature's own tinsel and glitter . . .


. . . while the tree at Y Fagwr is laden with royal~icing tipped boughs of green

A pristine scene, complete with its own Christmas tree

Gentle Reader, be warned, do not be caught out after dark, for evening comes swift on this, the shortest day of the year, when late afternoon sun shines like a beacon across St Brides Bay. The rock on the Garn, wrapped up so warm in their blanket of snow, look like an alpine landscape in miniature, but danger lurks beneath, for a small pool lies hidden below that innocent, feathery snow . . .

. . . furrows ploughed create a pattern on the frozen land . . .

Carn Llidi in the late afternoon, the light now fading, the cold sky drifting into night . . .

. . . and last of all, my friend, but not the least, if God has a Christmas tree in His Heaven, surely it would be decorated with more of His wonderful creations, like this frozen gorse bloom, withered by an earlier frost, now glistening with the dewdrop as the thaw comes in . . .