Edelweiss by Berthold Auerbach

In the early winter, as in the early spring, the Morgenhalde was the pleasantest place in the whole country. Old Lenz was right in saying that the morning sun lay on his house and meadow all day long. But little fire was needed half the day. Flowers blossomed in the garden behind the house long after they had disappeared everywhere else, and put out their leaves again in the spring, when everything else was bare. This garden was as sheltered as a room, and in it grew, what was rare in those parts, a chestnut-tree, which attracted many an unwelcome squirrel and nutpecker from the neighboring forest. The house protected the garden on one side without keeping from it the sun after ten o'clock; and the mighty forest which covered the upper part of the steep mountain seemed to take special pleasure in both house and garden, and had stationed two of its tallest pines as sentinels at the gate.

Had there been many promenaders in the town, they certainly, in these first chilly winter months, would have often taken the path up the meadow, past Lenz's house into the wood, and returned along the mountain ridge. But there was only one promenader, or rather there were only two, in the town, -- Petrovitsch and his dog Bubby. Every day before dinner Petrovitsch got up an appetite by walking through the meadow, past the house, and over the ridge of the mountain. Bubby doubled and trebled the distance by leaping back and forth across the gullies which to the right of Lenz's house the water had channelled down into the valley. The gullies were dry at this season, but served in spring and summer to carry off the rushing water. Petrovitsch was very loving towards his dog, and in moments of special affection would call him Sonny. The old man had come home rich from his foreign journeyings.