Winter is definitely upon us here in Western Washington. The weather is our standard winter weather: cold but not freezing, wet but mostly slow soaking rain, and cloud covered skies. We have been fortunate that we have had a few clear days although they are a bit colder.
As I sit in our dining nook looking out onto the ravine behind our house, I am taken by the strange beauty of the bare trees and the tall trunks of the giant firs that populate the ravine. I can see Silverdale across Dyes Inlet. During the summer the foliage hides this view. I also get a glimpse of the house across the ravine which is also hidden during the summer. Last week we had a clear day that started with fog filling the ravine giving the trees a surreal appearance and made me feel like I was trapped in an alien landscape where the only life I could see were the birds and the squirrel at our feeders which were the only other life forms within my world.
Our yard has been raked and lies barren with clumps of brown or green vegetation hugging the ground like they are trying to stay warm while waiting for spring to bring them back to full life.
I do have work to do to continue building the raised bed gardens that Cece wants to line the paths through the side yard. I have a stack of broken concrete that needs to be broken into smaller workable pieces that I can stack to form the borders that hold the soil in the raised gardens. I don’t know if it is mostly the holidays or the cool, wet weather that keeps me from wanting to work outside. I suspect that it is the weather that gives me an excuse to work indoors. I do know that I need to get started preparing for spring or I will be playing catchup throughout the growing season this next year. But, at least through tomorrow (new year’s day) I will claim it is the weather and will kick back and enjoy the comfort of the house.
I have been side tracked for several months due to life catching up with me. Now I am back and trying to to get a handle on my life and on my blog/website. In October an unfortunate lightning strike affected the host and caused my site to crash. I was on vacation (I actually allowed myself to take a vacation and not do anything of a business nature which includes this website.) I have been working on and off since late October to get the site back to the condition it was in when I went on vacation in late September. I am not there yet, but it now resembles the former site. Now I have to take it to new heights.
Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. Here in western Washington that meant a very short period of daylight. Fortunatelyey not a short as Anchorage, Alaska. I spent a bit of time looking at our yard and garden and the strange beauty of the liveless trees with no leaves and the garden plots of stubs of plants and bare ground waiting silently for the spring. Of course I know that the plants are busy growing their root systems to enhance the start of the new growing season. I guess that is what I have been doing for the past few months. I feel a lot calmer and I am trying to take one thing at a time without worrying about the things that I am not working on (real estate, ebay, family projects, and church planting).
With Christmas just days away, I have been taking stock of my life, my family, and the effect the economy is having on us. I would like to believe that all is well, but like so many others, our lives are definitely affected by the economy. Years ago Peter Sellers starred in a movie, the name of which I cannot remember, where he played a simple minded man who was turned out on the street when his father died. Through a series of events he winds up as the house guest of a very wealthy person who is frequently called upon by the president for advice. His simple mind cannot see beyond the garden he had spent his life in. The irony of the story is that he makes very simple statements like the one I did a moment ago about the plants being busy growing roots during the winter season and Peter Seller’s character is credited with deep thinking and great foresight concerning the economy and the state of the government. Perhaps that is where I need to be. Keep it simple and straight forward and keep minding the garden so it can flourish when spring brings back the growing season and the beauty of the garden plants. Perhaps the spring of the new economy is just around the corner and all is well.
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