Time marches on, always, annoyingly, in the same direction. Winter is finally setting up camp, settling in for its months-long occupation. It seems unjust to complain - until this week things have been quite unseasonably gorgeous, for far longer than folks in this part of the world have any right to expect. Over a month ago, I recall, I was sitting in a Starbucks staring out over a parking lot, watching a dark, swirling spider-cloud loom over the city, dangling cold tentacles, lashing the afternoon shoppers with snow . I had just come back from the sun-drenched red-and-gold fall splendor of the east, and it felt, then, that I was already watching winter's armoured columns rolling in. It had been a good, long summer, but with a familiar, resigned sadness, we would have to hunker down, pull up our collars, and accept that it was over.

Its not so much winter, but the drab pre-winter that bugs me, like the drab post-winter that follows it - The time after the last sun-golden leaves have fluttered to the ground, the grass is dead, and nature starts to almost blend in with the concrete - before it all gets refinished in icy, sparkling white.

Now that it is truly here, I remember that winter has its beauty - A stark, sad beauty- one that mourns the loss of long, warm summer days and the fleeting colours of fall, a beauty that waits, filled with a quiet yearning for the renewed glories of spring.