January Shades of Blue

Pebbles stands at the boundary fence just before sun up on Sunday morning. She goes there to commune with the neighboring horses.

Sunrise color hasn't yet touched the west yard and the foothills.

We were delighted to see bird activity on Sunday morning after several weeks of their absence.

There are the inevitable sparrows, rosey finches and a pair of quarrelsome chickadees.

Even at mid morning the shadows on the snow are blue.

The pot of paperwhites in full bloom in the east window.  They grew at the same rate and blossomed all together.

View of the foothills through the clean [!] west window. No frost on the clothespins.

Charlie has appointed himself keeper of the newly constructed stairs. He grants permission, when in the mood, for the other cats to go up or down. He leers down at me when I pass by and sometimes takes a swipe at my head.

Chester, caught in a yawn.

Eggnog, who is placid and dear.

Sunrise on Monday morning.

Rosey heaps of clouds have made a new "mountain" across the pond to the south east.

Within moments the dawn flush faded to a grey that forebodes storm.

Grey, blue, and pink.

Clouds hover over the foothills.

I think we shall have snow.

From one of the winter-themed essays in Henry Beston's "Northern Farm."

"What has today taken my interest are the colors in our winter world.  There is color seen and unseen everywhere about: the unisverse is no duality of white and blue, and were I to stop and stare about awhile, I know that I should see more than I now see in a casual glimpse.  In the landscape near at hand both grey trees and brown together with white birches rise above the snow; between me and the sun are faraway stone walls whose shadows are almost black; to the west, the pines stand dark, and withered and rusty autumn is still discoverable along the borders of the fields. At a turn of the farm road, moreover, I know there stands a copse of brush which during the deep of winter has turned itself into a thicket of red twigs whose color becomes a strange coral after a night of ice and freezing rain.

Surely the most beautiful of all colors of winter is the blue of winter shadows on the snow!  It is a blue which varies with the day and the light, but whatever its tone, is both tender and delicate, and to see it is to be reminded of the purity of certain blues in flowers."