Glass Ornament Tree

In December in Pennsylvania, the trees are bare of leaves, and I am often reminded of the words from Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXIII:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

While walking on the north end of campus last week, I was delighted to discover something new and unusual. Someone had decorated one of the bare deciduous trees with glass ornaments, and inside each glass ball was a leaf. The tree was covered with more than a hundred of these ornaments, all the way to the tippy-top!

The night before I took this photo, a huge howling wind roared through central Pennsylvania, shaking the eaves and waking me from sleep. I prayed for the safety of my house. And I admit my thoughts returned, worriedly, to the glass ornament tree on campus.

I made a quick detour on my way to work the next morning to check on the status of the tree. I was happy to discover that only two of the glass balls had fallen; and they had landed in the grass below, unbroken. All of the other balls were securely in place. What a relief!

No bare ruined choirs here: the tree branch reaching out like a bony hand is clad in finery. And after that big wind that swept all the cobwebs from the sky, I caught glimpses of blue sky and puffy white clouds: the promise of a beautiful day.