THE LION AND THE LAMB

There is only one week left in February for the lion to retreat and let the lamb claim victory for March with promise of spring to come soon.
This day began with minus 12 degrees below zero. If we could all cheer for the lamb we may be able to claim victory for this gentle creature. But since Mother Earth has the final word, we will await her decision. She has not been in a very good mood lately. It may be she has not been appreciating the oily sand we have been flinging in her face and polluting the air other ways, even as she keeps busy growing trees and many other foods that keep the residents of our wonderful planet alive. We have just now watched the sun make its cheerful entrance over the Silver Star Mountain as some folks look forward a day of skiing from its slopes.

For dinner yesterday, Carrington residents here were offered a green salad as usual and a choice of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes or oven baked, green or yellow beans, cauliflower: or baked chicken breast as the other main entree. Rhubarb and strawberry pie topped with whipped cream was chosen by most people for dessert but not for me as I adhered to tummy-talk routed through the mind and chose strawberry jello instead. “Sorry,” my mind intoned once again, “you must remember what that medical doctor told you when you consulted him while on a California vacation – FLOUR AND FAT baked together give many of those wonderful organs of some digestive systems a rough ride through its many parts and will thank you later.”

As the trees of our beautiful Silver Star Mountains take their places for today’s viewing they also have some advice, “Remember those first gentle soft snows of winter that now lay hidden under the stern upper crust of the slopes and can now create avalanches that give no warning and in seconds can take a life and already has taken too many this season. Just yesterday, an Alberta family lost three members while they were snowmobiling on B.C. slopes and brought great sadness to the family, as well as to their entire Alberta town and to all of us.