Stay up reminiscing till the sun come up

It is snowing! It's still melting in the streets, but it's sticking to trees and cars and yards. I am hoping it does not merely resolve back to rain again; I am enjoying at least the illusion of winter.

I have just been notified by my mother that the smaller of the two maple trees in my parents' front yard has been cut down. It was strangling in its own roots; half of it was as black as a fire; it lost tall dry branches with every high wind. According to professional assessment once it was down in sections on the lawn, the next storm would have broken the entire dead crown of it over my parents' house, which would obviously not have been a good thing, but everyone is still mourning. I climbed that tree almost every day as a child and adolescent in that house. It wasn't the higher climbing tree, but it had a branch that curved like a handlebar that was superb for hanging upside down from. It was the one with the bright green leaves in summer and the cut-paper jack-o'-lantern flare in fall; we hung decorations in it for Halloween. The whole landscape of the yard will look thrown out of true without it. We never tapped it, but it was a sugar maple.

spatch told me the story of the cat who buys fish with leaves.