This scene in our front yard, a couple weeks ago, takes me back to a drive down through Ohio one spring. We were driving to a jazz gig near Columbus, but what I remember is all the daffodils in people's frontyards along the road, their flowers pinned to the ground as if a hand were clutching their neck. Among spring flowers, daffodils can evoke the greatest range of emotion, from the cheer of their unfettered blooms to the utter despair of vanquished hopes when snow makes them pay dearly, or at least graphically, for their early spring optimism.
By contrast, the snow served to decorate the Wishing (the earth) Well in our frontyard. It's of original design and proudly placed there to demonstrate an alternative to loose piling of leaves in the street. The inner cylinder is a critter-proof place for kitchen food scraps, disguised by the leaves around them. As long as the leaves remain moist and the base of the corral is in contact with the soil below, the leaves will decompose over the summer without stirring, and provide rich compost in the fall.
Unlike the nearby daffodils, the optimism of a leaf corral cannot be toppled by a snowstorm.
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