We wish you a Merry Christmas

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
~Norman Vincent Peale






Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.
~Mary Ellen Chase

It's out here somewhere

We always go to a cut your own tree farm for our Christmas tree. Usually we go on the first weekend in December - but for various reasons that didn't work for us this year. So we set off on Sunday for a tree hunt.
Our usual places hasn't planted new trees for years, and the pickins are getting slim. So we thought we would try a new place - which is lovely and just down the road.

It's also pretty new and the trees are pretty....short.

We thought we would try to get one at the old place. Except that by then it was past 4:00 and it was cold and a few of our elves were feeling peevish instead of elvish.

So we can home treeless......

Can we just push Christmas back a month or so?

Christmas crafts

We've been busy.

A winter walk

After being basically cooped up for a week for various reasons we got out for a walk in our woods. The light was beautiful and the woods felt like home. It was so good for all of us to get out for a walk by the river. There was even a happy face smiling in the snow by the path as we left.

Hands on learning

I am grateful for the incredible amount of hands on learning my kids experience as homeschoolers.

Photographs from the trail

We will remember

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
~ Laurence Binyon

Mushrooms and moss

October colour

October's Bright Blue Weather

O sun and skies and clouds of June
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fringes tight,
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks
In idle, golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunt
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers hour by hour
October's bright blue weather.

O sun and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.

by Helen Hunt Jackson