Lifeless? No, leafless.
They hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
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Tag: winter
Last Few Nights of Old Year
Seen thru bare branches
that thrash in an angry wind,
Xmas lights shimmer.
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Icy Moods
My fingers can still press camera buttons for a few minutes in moderately cold weather, if I wear thin gloves and either lean out a window or stand in a doorway. Now and then, I can freeze a good visual moment in a winter day or night w/o freezing my fingers in the process. It’s not just about getting images like these four. It’s also about flipping the bird at the “winter of life” metaphor for old age. Winter can be so beautiful.
Twigs and Shakes:
Twigs and Pine Needles:
Twigs and Trunks:
Gold in the Cold:
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Mourning Dove in Winter
Hope at Sunrise
Patrick Jennings’ challenge #259 salutes the sun in the great outdoors. Sunlight is both a source of hope and something to hope for. The same is true in more intimate settings, and the New Year got off to a good start at sunrise on 2021-01-01.
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Hope ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #259
Morning Sun on Winter Wreath
Bird, bow, and berries
scatter rays of hope to me.
Today may be good.
Pulling a Calf
For late winter (also known as mud season), it was a nice day. A few half-hearted snowflakes drifted down. They vanished into the promise of spring wafting up from wet ground that had already thawed. As I walked past a small farm about 2 miles from home, Everett called out: “Can U give me some help?”
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I knew Everett from his being the part-time mail carrier who sometimes drove my home’s rural route. He was also a subsistence farmer who had veggie plots, chickens, and some goats who wandered at will despite attempts to corral them. While the Houdini goats were cause for resigned amusement, the predicament of a cow and her calf was cause for anxiety.
Mama was a small cow whose tryst with a large bull had produced a calf too large for her birth canal. Mama was lying on her side, with just the calf’s nose and front hooves protruding. Neither Everett nor I knew how to contact and compensate a veterinary surgeon who might perform a bovine C-section on short notice, but Everett had a plan.
He had tied the middle of a rope around the hooves. He would pull one end of the rope while another guy pulled the other end in the same direction, straight out from Mama. I would be the other guy. There was no mention of the possibility of pulling with a tractor, and Everett probably did not have a tractor anyway.
© S. Silver | 123RF Stock Photo
Was it thin rope or thick twine? Either way, it was old and frayed. (Before we started pulling, it was not quite so badly frayed as in the image above.) As we pulled, I feared that either the rope would break or some boots would lose traction. Either way, one or both of us would suffer an ignominious pratfall in the barnyard’s morass of mud and manure.
The rope held. So did our boots. Mama endured the ordeal with quiet stoicism, as her calf emerged slowly. Both survived.
My one and only obstetric accomplishment was decades ago, long before the 2016 election saw the USA’s ignominious pratfall into what passes for conservatism nowadays: a morass of mud and manure, with quicksand too.
Along with many others now, I am once again pulling on a frayed rope. Constitutional democracy has been badly frayed by dark money, gerrymandering, troll farms, and vote suppression. Will it hold long enough to extract my country from the morass? (We need two unlikely wins in Georgia on 2021-01-05 to flip the Senate.) When the future looks bleak, I think back to Everett’s frayed rope. We pulled; it held.
Winter Pavane
From late autumn to early spring where I live, leafless trees dancing a pavane is a common winter sight.
Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #63
The Quest For A New Masterpiece Continues … winter
Seen from Inside
Swaying in the wind,
bare trees dance to Earth music
not heard thru the glass.
Swaying in the wind,
bare trees dance to Earth music
not heard thru the glass.
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Winter Respite
The image from a CDHK episode inspires a haiku about winter snow.
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Carpe Diem Extra 2018-11-16
Testing a New Linking Widget
Winter Respite
Mountains hold past snow;
clouds hold threats of future snow.
Nothing falling now.
Mountains hold past snow;
clouds hold threats of future snow.
Nothing falling now.
Winter Waiting
However bleak and dark it may be, winter is unlike the bleak dark periods of history. Winter’s onset and duration are roughly predictable. Like the beavers in my haiku, those who prepare can often endure.
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A Google image search led to the images in this post; clicking on them will jump to the source credits at the end. The haiku in this post is my response to
Carpe Diem Universal Jane #8 gathering clouds
with special thanks to one of Jane’s haiku about winter:
© Jane Reichold
gathering clouds
heavy and dark with holding
unfallen flakes
Quiet Endurance
Cold. Pond iced over.
Silent snow on tomb-like mound.
Beavers wait it out.
However bleak and dark it may be, winter is unlike the bleak dark periods of history. Winter’s onset and duration are roughly predictable. Like beavers, those who prepare can often endure. Too bad history is not like that.
Sources
I wrote the haiku while commenting on a wintry post by Poet Rummager that I liked. The post did not mention snow or beavers, but inspiration is quirky. Tho I liked my haiku enough to post it all by itself, I decided to wait until I had found images that would clarify it for readers unfamiliar with the way beavers wait out winter in their lodges. Those who would like to see more detail can find it on a very readable webpage that was created for course requirements at Hamilton College.
The photo of the outside of a lodge in winter is from a well-illustrated post by Harlan Schwartz on the Canadian Canoe Routes website. The photo was shared on PhotoBucket and downloaded from there.
The drawing of the inside of a lodge in winter is from the book Why the Adirondacks Look the Way They Do by Mike Storey (Nature Knows Best Books, 2006). The drawing was reproduced in a very positive online review by Paul Grondahl and downloaded from there.
Deciduous
My response to a CDHK challenge about leafless trees is a haiku attributing lungs to such trees. Why not?
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Deciduous
Lifeless? No, leafless.
Trees hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
Mellow Curmudgeon 
