Snow is falling on our "Decameron"
Sadness ...
When it started snowing in thick flakes yesterday evening, the last lines from James Joyce's "The Dead" came to my mind:
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
... and Hope
In the morning Aurora discovered that one of our rose bushes already had flowers in full blossom.
And she began to sing an old German Christmas carol:
"Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flow’ret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night."