On Our Fence on Christmas Morning

     Early Christmas morning I awoke not to the sound of Santa on the rooftop, but to the insistent full-throated call of a tiny green tree frog.  He (or she) was so loud, I thought at first that he might be sharing my pillow but, as it turned out, he wasn’t even in the room with me.  When I was sufficiently awake I tracked him down.  He was just outside the bedroom wall perched on the river rock surrounding our heat pump in a sort of vegetation-less wasteland.
     I thought about going out and “rescuing” him (i.e. moving him to a friendlier environment, perhaps near the rhododendrons) but my bathrobe, bare feet and the drizzle prevailed and I decided that he knew best.  He was there, singing his song, for most of the day.
     Not too much later that same morning I noticed that the Dorothy Perkins rose on our fence, dormant now for a month or more, was sporting one perfect bloom – a single pale pink blossom amid its thorny, mostly leafless branches.  The last rose of summer?  Or the promise of spring?  I know that Oysterville is a magical place – Brigadoon some people call it – but frogs and roses on Christmas Day?  I felt as if we were in some sort of vortex or in the middle of an Edward Allan Poe story.
     Perhaps both were a reminder to count our blessings and to look forward to the possibilities.  I’d been feeling a little gloomy about Oysterville and its problems and thinking that 2011 hadn’t been too kind to us.  But, it’s hard to remain in low spirits surrounded by tree frogs and roses, even when there is only one of each!