OUR LITTLE PEOPLE ARE GETTING READY

42: Our little people are getting ready.

Outside the snow still is thick on the ground. When we do go out, we are huddled in thick coats, mittens and hats, and if possible thick boots with 2 pair of stockings.
I could still make a snowman yesterday, but still… there are some flowers peeping out of the snow.
Last week I did see the Snowdrops, a thick bunch of them, so I enjoyed: spring is coming soon. Yesterday, just before the snow, I did see the first blue blooms on a Hyacinth, so I stopped to look.
But this morning there is thick snow on the ground again, and the frost was severe. So cold, that soon we can skate not only on the fields, we set water on, so we could skate safely, but also on the ditches and wider waterways.
I do wait, until a grownup tells me, it is safe. Do you know why? I’ll tell you.
Once I was as little as you are now, and I did not listen well. The ice did look lovely and thick, so me and some friends dared each other to try if it was. We told each other: the smallest one first, than one who is bigger and so on.
I was the smallest one, but when only one foot was on the ice, I already went through! Luckily the bigger ones could help me out, and I had to run home with one wet and one dry leg! Brrrr!
It was that cold, I was happy I had not gone under totally! So now I am careful, like you also should be.
Our little friends are much lighter, and they use the snow-shoes I told you of before: when they walk, it looks, like a big bird have walked there, while on the underside they made markings like that.
And may, may, are they busy now!
They almost have a double duty now! Very busy preparing for spring, but now, with the late snow and ice, they also need to rescue the animals, trapped in the ice, or who cannot find their hidden food, while there has to much snow fallen in one night.
So they even asked the elf’s to give an extra hand, while it is almost to much to do at the same time: preparing for spring, ánd taking care that as much as possible animal friends survive the sudden cold.
So there is an going in and out in the dwarf-houses. Luckily not to much of the heat escapes, while there are those extra doors, while they often have to go in and out. That doors keep the heat in.
But the dwarf mom’s are also a bit in the spring mood for their dwarf men did bring in some nice smelling flowers of those Hyacinths. We do not see, when they with careful hands take of one bloom from a stem with a lot of them. Now their houses smell lovely.
They only hope, that spring is not waiting to long any more, for the rooms with the help food are already half empty, and that is not good for their friends.
So they do ask from us: will you too help us to bring our friends in nature through this long cold winter?
That also can be fun: who does not like it to make a long chain with peanuts in the rind for the tits?
You can ask an older person to do the tread through the needle, if you cannot.
And when mom does have some fat left, you can poor in some seed, you can find in a pets-hop, or may be even collected for that purpose in autumn, and ask for some breadcrumbs to lay on a sheltered place, where the little kitty-cat cannot come and catch the hungry birds.
Than our little friends have more time to do some ‘spring is coming’ duty, we cannot do.
Why cannot we do that? Do you know where new bulbs or other flowers are growing under the snow? I cannot, they can.
It is, as if their noses are double good, like dogs-noses, so they smell out new growth, and when to much snow is on top, they take a big part away.
Not all at first, for than a frost would freeze the new leaves, a thin layer of snow protects the leaves for to much frost.
I now stop telling, for I have a pot full of fat, that is used a couple of times, so it needs to be renewed. And I do have bought in autumn a few big sacks of seeds for birds in the pet-shop.
So I go now, and stir all together, put some old sultana or onion sacks in the bottom of old cups and poor all in.
Tomorrow, when all is hardened, I do bind this close and can take them out, to hang in the trees and bushes, besides the sling of peanuts.
All the birds in the neighborhood fly by, for I do this each year.
I am a grown-up. I can work with hot fat, and not burn myself.
You will ask for help from somebody, old enough to do so, will you not? I am sure of that.
So when we wake up tomorrow, and not are going to have some other tasks, you will help too?
But please, be careful, like our little friends.
For now we know that we have, just like them, to be aware of hot from the fat, but also of the cold from the snow and ice, and also, that the animals need us too.
But spring is almost in the air… we just have to wait a bit longer!

© Nan van Daalen.