I’m never sure whether to make a New Year’s Resolution or not.
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February
The world outside our windows is full of motion and light today. Fat drops of water are falling steadily from the icicles on the eaves. Wind is pushing walls of snow across the landscape. Birds are stretching their wings in the almost-forgotten joy of brilliant sunshine that pours like water through the bare branches and down across the hillsides. I couldn't put my boots on fast enough this morning. I had to get out into the glory of the morning!
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March
In the summer, one imagines that the wind is singing through the leaves in the trees. Yet in the barren, leafless days of winter, I still hear the wind in the trees. As I stepped out the front door of the house, I was immediately aware of three things: the sun was so bright I could hardly keep my eyes open, the cold air found every bit of skin I hadn't covered with snow gear, and the birch trees on the back hill were singing as the winter wind gave them a voice.
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April
Each time I look outside my windows I see birds in these days of early spring. I watch blue jays swoop around boldly as I wash dishes. Turkeys in the front yard distract me as I sit down to the computer to do school work. Normally cheery robins look a bit worried as they hop about on the cold ground, looking as if they weren't counting on there still being snow when they returned to the north
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May
There is so much light and color in the garden in these early days of May. I will let the flowers speak for themselves, through these photos. They sing their own prasies quite sweetly!
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June
Rain drips from glistening blossoms beneath a cloudy sky which promises more rain.
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July
Just a few photos from the garden after a week of rain... Too breezy for good clear shots, but here is what's growing in my garden on this windy hill. Orange Butterfly Weed, asclepius, above is opening in the butterfly garden, as is a tiny patch of purple asters.
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August
Last year, I wrote about a “Quiet Country” moment that I experienced while chaperoning a high school music department trip to NYC. (You can read that old post here.) This morning, I experienced the opposite. It is our town’s annual summer festival and this morning was the parade. Unfortunately, a huge rain shower was also on the agenda for the morning. I saw the clouds and grabbed an umbrella as we headed out to the parade. Limerick was at an estate sale, Senryu was working at the coffee house in the village, and the three younger kids and I were fortunate to be invited under a tent where a fund raiser was being run to watch the parade.
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September
What I notice most in these waning days of summer is not the flowers, though they are still blooming sweetly, nor the colors, though they are especially intense and vivid. What I notice most is the quality of the light. The way the sun slants through the sky to pour, nurturing and warm, across the earth takes my breath away.
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October
The photo above shows some yellow mums that bloomed in October 2008, and below you see the billowing clouds in an October 2007 sky. The last photo from October 2006, my first October as a blogger, shows the effects of an early cold snap. I am still without a camera, and did not have one to borrow today. Even if I had one to borrow, the wind and rains might have slowed me down! I was in and out a few times today, but spent time indoors in my own kitchen and at a lovely baby shower for a young woman who used to babysit my daughters "back in the day." She is expecting her own first child, another little girl. Now, my mulled cider is warming in the crock pot and the house is smelling good!
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November
Most people use the terms Autumn and Fall synonymously. For me, they are two different seasons. Autumn days intertwine with the days of late summer, with warm days and crisp nights and generous color in the trees. Fall begins unexpectedly one night as a cold wind rips the leaves from many trees at once, and in the morning the streets and sidewalks are paved with slippery, gold and brown leaf litter. This year, that windy night was Friday, leaving the trees in skeleton form just in time for Halloween.
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December
crystal petals fall,
a gift from heaven to earth,
flowers made of ice
– a haiku, by Aisling
Here, at the trail head of the butterfly garden, is a quiet place to sit and think... But Maude and I kept moving down the snow-covered trail, between the bent and broken stalks and the flower heads clinging to a few last seeds.
We walked past the quiet pond, where cattails with their brown velvet crowns rise above a thin layer of snow-dusted ice. My heart lifted with the tiny bit of "frisk" in Maude's gait. 
We trudged through the deep rectangular impression left by 13 years of tending a vegetable garden in the same place. The herb gardens are caught in drifts, with stalks rising above the snow here and there. Most of the plants look like this white and withered Bell of Ireland...
but we found one tiny yellow lettuce blossom blooming amid surprisingly fresh, green leaves.
Maude crossed the road and wandered through the barren hay field, nibbling snow and sniffing the December wind.
Flags wave
Leaves shiver,
And trails wander away.
Paper snowflakes twist on ribbons,
“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace."
"The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." ~ Bertrand Russell
It has been snowing for days now, and when the sun peeks through the clouds the hills shine, and the tree tops glitter with the snow caught on the branches.
My sons put on their winter gera and headed outside with their sleds this afternoon. The wild flowers have donned their winter hats as well.
"Trees
Yesterday our children put the nativity set in the hutch. With four of them working, it was done in just moments. Only one figure was dropped; a shepherd boy who survived his fall without a scratch. 
This afternoon, with the little ones in school, I hung the stockings up along the staircase. When Haiku got home from school she helped me make a Countdown to Christmas garland for each of the boys, from tiny chocolate candies knotted up in colored plastic wrap. Little ribbon bows separate the candies. The boys can untie and eat one each day through Christmas, beginning tomorrow. By counting the remaining candies they can answer that one question asked so often in December by the young and young at heart: How many days until Christmas?
I pulled a big pile of Christmas picture books out of a closet to read to my sons this month. These books have accumulated over the past 19 years since our oldest child was a tiny tot. I do remember her eyes all aglow over the tiny details, as she saw from her earliest days that there is love sewn into every stitch of our homespun Christmas.
photos by Haiku, November 30, 2009
