One thinks of winter here as comprising every shade of brown and grey and little else, and although it's not technically winter until next week, prevailing temperatures are a good enough measure for me. Failing snow cover, the woods are yet astonishingly verdant. I could almost confuse it with early spring (and some mornings are so gentle, the air rich with the smell of earth...).
My mind is so restless these days, hard to say quite why. Sleep is a welcome relief, but hard-won – dependent on careful doses of bourbon, boring late-night reads, and focused meditative eyelid watching. My finest remedy is my daily wander in the woods, turning my attention to every little wonder. So much activity out there; I'll welcome a healthy dumping of snow when (if?) it comes, but for now all that lively beauty keeps the crazy world-out-there at a manageable distance.
Mosses abound.
Wintergreen, Foamflower foliage, lichen, and a tiny fern.
The spectrum on an old stump.
The brilliant blue sky reflected in ice.
Fresh fungus even this late in the season.
Viburnum (left) and blackberry already budded out for the spring.
And my indoor hedge against the impending bleakness: paperwhite narcissus, which will probably bloom on the day the snow flies.