Wordless Wednesday - Snowfall

(If you'd like to hear just the snowfall, you can turn off the music on my right sidebar.)

video by aisling, filmed 1/3/2009

Sunday Stroll - Betwixt the Snowflakes

Snow dominates earth and sky in a northern winter, but beneath the pale sunlight and betwixt the snowflakes, caught in the crooks of trees and piled on vacated nests, there are remnants of other seasons.

Where ever you are, whatever the weather, I wish you beautiful moments.

all photos by Aisling, January 3, 2009

Sunday Stroll Invitation

"Nature has undoubtedly mastered the art of winter gardening and even the most experienced gardener can learn from the unrestrained beauty around them."
- Vincent A. Simeone


This is one of those rare Sundays where I might not get outside and take photos. I don't think the camera would withstand the cold, cold temperature and the frenzied, blowing snow. I will wait to see what weather the afternoon hours bring. In the meantime, there are dishes still stacked on the counter from yesterday to tend to, and a novel calling my name from my bedside table.

If you have time this week for a Sunday Stroll, to walk into whatever weather the first Sunday of the year offers, please about about it on your blog and then come back here with a comment and a link to your post. You may use the Sunday Stroll button at the top of this post on your post or sidebar if you would like. I will add participant names to this post so that other strollers may walk through your garden too. I'll check back as often as my day allows and try to keep the list updated. Enjoy the day!

Look who is strolling:
Margaret at Periodic Pearls
Cloudhands at Uncarved Block
Me here at the Quiet Country House

A Little Quote and a Little Note: Nurture

"Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.

Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest.

The blessing is in the seed."
Muriel Rukeyser

I love this quote found today at the beginning of a new year which is attributed to Muriel Rukeyser, who is also responsible for one of my favorite quotes ever, "The universe is made of stories, not atoms," which you will find as a permanent feature of my sidebar. The idea that the blessing is in the seed speaks to me of nurture. As gardeners, we nurture. As parents, we nurture. As friends, we nurture. It is so elemental a component of who we are, or who we strive to be.

Let us nurture this seedling year, which is unfurling before us, a tender, sweet miracle of possibility.

Poetry Thursday - Year's End

As a blue moon rises over the waning year

spilling soft light through cloud-lace,
and tree shadows,
we burrow into the comfort of home.

Warm air from the woodstove
curls through hallways,
through doorways,
through the memories of bygone days.

Stories rise like the moon,
up through gales of laughter,
up through tears of loss or longing,
like ribbons, weaving things together...
weaving us together.


~ a poem for New Year's Eve, by aisling, 12/31/2009

The Year in Review

I'm borrowing this idea from a couple of different sources. My friends Nan, at Letters from a Hillfarm and Abbie, at Farmer's Daughter have recently posted the first lines of each month's first post from the past year. I really enjoyed reading their review of the year, and have done a similar post. So without further ado, here is my year in review.

January

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

Sunday Stroll - Once More With Feeling

Maude and I headed out into the brisk afternoon for one last stroll of the year. The cold wind tugged at our hair, and a bittersweet ache tugged at my heart because I know that Maude doesn't have many more strolls to take through these gardens with me.

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.

The wind pushed us toward home. The front garden, a mass of untrimmed stalks, frames the hills, fields, and the lake where Maude has run and played for most of her years.

Looking back over my shoulder at those familiar hills, I walk back to the house with Maude at my heels and together we move into the warmth and comfort of our home.

Where ever you are, whatever the weather, I wish you good company.

To share the strolls of other bloggers, please scroll down to my previous post where links are provided.

all photos by Aisling, December 27, 2009