No Hunting, 6×6, Oil on Canvas, $100

This is our Labrador, Saxon, posed by my husband after a hunt.  Saxon was young then.  Today she is very lumpy and arthritic; she hobbles to the door and off the deck into the snow.  She is still the most virtuous dog I know, always striving to please, tolerant of having Pugs wrestle all over her bed when she’s trying to get some sleep.  Her character informed my older Pug’s character.  The first year we had him, it was a near run thing whether we’d keep him, but he adored Saxon and gained goodness by association.  With the younger Pug, it’s still a near run thing.

We’ve had more snow fall this year than any year I can remember since moving to Wisconsin.  Here is a poem about snow from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

SNOW-FLAKES

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is a poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.