It's windy today. After several days of unnatural warmth January is forcing its way back into the Northeast. The weather doesn't come calling politely anymore. It just blows the door down.

The wind is so strong it has managed to drag the sodden leaves out of the woods and send them tumbling and spiraling across the clearing next door. The wind probably annoys the leaves as much as it annoys me. They were just settling down to decay in peace and figured they were done with all that flying about.

On days like these we are lucky to keep our power. So far, however, the intermittent flickering light isn't anything electrical but rather the result of the nervous shadows cast by nearby tree limbs flailing in the wind.

The sun is out and the yards and woods and roads are alive with squirming shadows. The shadows of drooping evergreen branches fall around the rough barked curve of tree trunk, the shapes as precisely delineated as Victorian cut-paper silhouettes. Then the wind gusts and the trunk sways and the shadows break up and flow and the effect is more like a light show from a sixties rock concert. Mesmerizing to watch. It'll give me something to do if the power goes off.