During January, February, and the first week of March of last winter, I was surrounded by lovely people, tropical hummingbirds, butterflies, bright flowers, and the Caribbean Sea. A few days ago, when snow was falling all around Flower Hill Farm Retreat, I was not longing for the beauty and warmth of Treasure Beach, Jamaica. Being home is inspiring. The beauty of snow fog adds a mystical and mysterious element to being out in the gardens and landscape. The leafless trees and shrubs are like the bones of the gardens. Living sculptures and forms that hold promise.
As I walk up from the forest edge into the North Field, I always enjoy this composition of trees leaning towards the gardens, my old farmhouse, and barn studio. I love seeing skeletal branches reaching into the air with feathery fine lines as they stretch to their tips. Here White and Gray Birch frame my favorite serpentine Black Cherry. I cannot see or hear it, but I am certain there is a subtle dialogue between these trees. They are closely interconnected below. Sometimes I am able to sense and feel inside and a part of their tender world.
Naked giants with white laced edges stand solid between an old, sad shed and the farmhouse. I imagine the mass of life beneath the trees entwined and securing their hold in and above the crust of earth. These Rock Maples are over two-hundred years old. I have known them for nearly forty of those years. They are old dear friends to one another and me. When they are clothed in viridescent canopies, the farmhouse stays cool. Now, the sun streams into south facing rooms offering warmth and light during the darker days of winter. I love the poetry in this photograph. The vulnerable shed like the human condition overshadowed by the monument of Mother Nature. We humans are nature. In our blind attempts to destroy and exploit the core and health of nature, we will destroy ourselves.
Forms of tree trunks and dancing branches are revealed in absence of green. Fluid, flowing lines intertwine between spaces of white. Required pruning is easily noted during the dreaming months of winter. Considerately cutting, while the trees sleep, shapes become animated and seem to communicate with each other and me.
Boulders under blankets of snow also offer shape and interest to the garden. Beautiful when juxtaposed with the dark trunk of a bonsai-like apple tree.
Other apples join to create a gateway into the blueberry fields. I brush up against many memories of wildlife encounters each time I pass under the arching branches. Suddenly, a green apple in the mouth of a female porcupine enters the black and white realm. Summers ago, I observed her in the connected canopies lounging and dining on the apples and lithe limbs.
I often imagine my Black Cherry tree as a stately stallion. Especially when he wears a saddle of snow. For years, I enjoyed watching the Baltimore Orioles raising their young high in this favored native. Blasts of bright orange coming and going while weaving nests and harvesting food.
With more snow this will be a great sled run. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, our calendars tell us what we have been experiencing for weeks now. Winter has officially begun. Today will be our shortest day of light. Tomorrow minutes will begin to pile back on towards spring and the return of more colorful landscapes.
Wishing all a Happy Winter Solstice.
Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year and all the challenges in store for us, as individuals, as families, and as a country and world community. Blessings and Peace and Justice for all.
such a lovely post Carol
photos and words took me there
when do you prune your beloved trees? I only have two wild apple trees, each have been abused by deer and more. I want to learn more about caring for them.
Lovely solstice and beyond to you~
Thank you Tammie. I did send you an email about when I prune the trees here at Flower Hill Farm Retreat. Mostly during the winter and early spring. For apple trees, the rule is generally to cut out vertical lines. Best Wishes for the New Year.
So good to read a post from you and to see your beautiful winter wonderland that surrounds you.
Have a lovely Christmas and a great 2017 ~ FlowerLady
Thank you Flower Lady! Wishing you many blessings for 2017.
It’s good to hear from you again! I’m wimpy in the cold, but when I do force myself out for a winter walk, I’m always so glad to see its beauty. I’m glad you’ve shared your winter walk with us here, because it’s lovely!
Thank you Robin. The winter can be cold but as you say, when we do get out the beauty and exercise warm us up. Happiest of New Years to you.
I would like to observe that female porcupine with its green apple, Carol! Such a beautiful, poetic description. Lovely and enjoyable to read. I look forward to a return visit to Flower Hill. Thanks for sending this along.
Thank you so for visiting and sharing your thoughts with me Lynne. You would have loved that green apple and the moma porcupine.
As I sit, thousands of miles away from your beloved Flower Hill, I share in your reverie of past images and encounters. I am so moved by your evocative words, on a backdrop of black and white. Like an artist’s gesso, or a writer’s blank page, you used the winter scenes to invite the viewer to see the power/potential of the life beneath.
Before I read “sad shed” I looked at the photograph and it was a poem without words. I saw your shed, with its missing windows, as strong . . . still standing. Had I never lived in New England, I would never have known so viscerally what you mean by “skeletal,” “bones” and “promise.” I believe that you are able to sense and feel “a part of their tender world.”
Thank you for this “song of praise.” Sending wishes, in return, for a Happy Winter Solstice and an illuminating Season of Love.
Dearest Eva, You are missed. It is snowing as I write and I look forward to going out into that world in a while. Not just to shovel snow but to tap into the realm of silence. Thank you for your kind words of support, and, as always, I learn from your comments. Very best wishes for the New Year.
So beautiful, reading this alternative to snowbird urge I am feeling this year when I too will stay north. Peace and happiness to you this solstice during interesting times. The
CD, thank you visiting. It is easy to stay put. And really there is so much beauty around us. Like now, with the snow storm. Blessings for the New Year!
How perfectly lovely and rejuvenating, Carol. Living, as we do, in a very rural hollow here in Vermont, surrounded by meadows, fields and forest, I can identify completely with the power and potency of your descriptions. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep . . .” tolls like an ancient bell in my head during these months of winter. Peace to you, as ever, and warmest wishes for a happy new year. XX
Bruce,
Thank you so much for visiting and taking the time to let me know your thoughts! What a lovely comment. Happiest of New Year to you and yours.
Your Winter Wonderland is so beautiful, Carol! I wish we could be there….if just a ” twinkling of our noses” could make it so!
Wishing you and yours a blessed time of celebration…..fun on the sledding hill…..and sweet fellowship around your Christmas tree!
Loving you from the deep South!
I wish you could be here too Mimi. Thank you for visiting and wishing you many blessings for the New Year.
Carol,
What a lovely and poetic series. I love the sepia tones of the photos which add to the beauty of their form. You are a truly gifted photographer. We are missing you here in Treasure Beach as Xmas arrives. I will call soon. Happy Holidays and One Love
I am only just seeing your kind words today Josh! It was great to hear from you and learn about what is happening there in your paradise. I hope your are continuing to enjoy the holidays and best wishes for the New Year. One Love.
Hello Carol, Happy New Year as well. Those photos are surely beautiful, most probably when you personally view them in extended vision. But i cannot fully appreciate the seemingly dead environment, being from a world with literally growing and moving lives throughout the year. I haven’t experienced winter, not even autumn but maybe i will get depressed, hopefully not. Utmost i would love to experience Fall, walking barefoot on dried leaves hearing those sounds. That i dream often. Keep warm Carol.
What beautiful views on your farm. I cannot imagine leaving such beauty for the warmth of a Carribbean beach. Well, I can imagine it but I also understand why you would want to stay home for the winter. Beautiful.