First signs of winter...

I am writing this at 7 am, watching three deer walk slowly across the field across the creek. We've had our first snow, which lasted for a few days and has now melted. The angle of the sunlight is glorious at this time of year, lending an array of colour across the hills: muted ochres, rusts, tertiary greys... 

The other evening the setting sun sent fingers of orange into the clouds...

 And a few days before, the hawk had sat quietly in the tree at the bottom of the garden for a long while.

Nicholas

Though the vast majority of leaves have fallen now, there is a stand of tamarack (larch) trees to our west which glow like golden orbs in the early morning light. The tamarack, the Algonquin Indian name for the larch, is a conifer, but in order to preserve its energy, it sheds its pine-like needles in very late autumn, prompting me to examine my own relationship to less light, cold snowy weather, and more challenging environmental factors. Directly opposite our home, are  the glistening white trunks of the canoe bark birches....absolutely stunning.

The Algonquin used the roots of tamarack to sew together their birch bark canoes, Longfellow writes about this in "The Song of Hiawatha".  In the poem, Hiawatha asks the tree's permission before he uses its roots, much as we asked permission to dig in this earth before we began to build.

There are such gifts given to us each and every day with the dance of sun and cloud, the reflections and shadows....the memories of all those who came before us, the hopes of all that are yet to come.

Daily, we are reminded of the blessings we are privileged to enjoy....

Judy