Just because we don’t look for it on these frigid days doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I noticed winter shade on my last walk around Lake Anne. A filigree of darkness in the light. A refuge from glare.

The deciduous trees don’t produce it. They cast a sharp shadow but offer no place to hide. But the hollies and magnolias still make it, the pines and arborvitae, too.

In wintertime, my eye is trained to look for shadows, long and lean, but there is shade, too, a place of safety, even in the cold.