White mandala on black background

The frost came in on Tuesday like someone had been up all night with a fine nib. Every pane in the kitchen has gone white at the edges, and this morning the black glass over the sink had a flower in it, a big one, with petals folded in rows and little beads along each rim. I stood there with the kettle going cold and could not stop looking at it. Mam would have said it was the Lord's doing. I say it was the cold doing what it does, which is making patterns out of nothing.

So I took the whitewash brush down to the byre and tried to copy it on the black tarpaulin we keep over the hay bales. It took me three hours and most of the tin. The middle is the hard part. You have to start small and let each ring grow out of the last, the way the rings on a sycamore stump do, or the whole thing goes lopsided and looks like a dropped pie. Dad used to say I never had the patience to finish anything. Well, I finished this.

Tom from the Hallows came over with the feed lorry and stopped dead in the yard. He said it looked like the sky had been turned inside out and laid flat. I didn't tell him it was my bad copy of a window. I let him think I'd done it on purpose.

I'm sending you a photo on the phone Dad gave me, though I'm not sure how it'll come out. Look at the bottom petal, the one that points down like a drop of milk. That's where I went wrong and then went right again, and I'm rather proud of it. Come at Easter if the roads are clear. The frost will be gone by then, but I'll keep the tarpaulin up.

Love, Bet