This is why I don't complain about winter.
Last edited Fri Feb 14, 2014, 08:34 PM - Edit history (1)
Because it is simply and completely beautiful.
The woods that verge my home, after a blizzard that dropped more than a foot of snow:
...and the front of the house:
...and also this: Yesterday morning, just as the snow was starting, a flock of cedar waxwings, maybe 40 strong, descended as one on the cherry tree outside my office window, and began to eat the remaining berries. It was like a cloud came down, foop, and they were there. They ate, cascaded up to a high branch of a tree at the edge of the woods, and came down in teams to eat the berries...until the wind picked up, and they were gone.
I caught a picture of four of them, and was reminded of a Robert Francis poem.
Waxwings
Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berry bush
in sun, and I am one.
Such merriment and such sobriety--
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk--
was this not always my true style?
Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?
To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together--for this I have abandoned
all my other lives.
- Robert Francis
Why do I love winter?
Because it is beautiful.
Period. End of file.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's nice to see natural beauty here.
That's why I live where there's a good six months of it every year!
Thanks for the pictures, William, I love waxwings too... they're like magical birds. I once lived in a place where there were Siberian Elm trees in the yard, several big ones, and they all were infested with bark beetles that also infested my little home beneath the trees. Little green beetles in everything inside and outside the house. I moved in during the spring and suffered these little invaders through summer and fall not knowing how to be rid of them. The next spring I built a huge garden that took up the whole property but I was not able to do anything about the trees being a renter. One day, early in the gardening season I was out working in the yard and suddenly I heard singing, it was waxwings!! About a hundred of them all in my trees!
They started eating those nasty little beetles and were with me in the garden every day. I watched their mating habits, I heard their singing and twitterings all day and all night in my sleep... very pleasant sounds. And somewhere in the middle of July they were gone, and so were those nasty little green beetles, I never saw another in my yard or house the rest of my time there, several years. I was so thankful, it was as if they heard my laments over the beetles and came to rescue me and my garden.
So I learned to love them even more when they came and relieved me of the Siberian Elm bark beetles.
give in to despair because the rest of life is falling apart does not cause comfort to the soul. Looking out to find some small good ...no matter whether a leaf on a city street of unusual color or a gust of wind that blows something you discover in your path that you never thought of....or you begin to see small joys in new surroundings.
There's just so much outside that we can try to cope with without refreshing our spirits.
It's nice to take that break wherever we can find that space for the "small things...quiet time."
Thanks Will.. Lots of bird Winter refreshment here in NC in our latest snowstorm. they are one of our joys...and our indoor cat's constant entertainment through the window.
's
given where I live!! 