Remembering the Green

It hasn't been long since the forest floor looked like this, with an obvious absence of the white stuff called snow that now covers everything.

Seeing all the beautiful green moss on that day suddenly reminded me of a terrarium I'd made years ago when I was living in a college dormitory my freshman year. My little terrarium was a low budget  operation, made with found items and plants gathered from the surrounding woods, but it was beautiful in its way. The plants lived and flourished all through that cold winter and even longer if my memory serves me.

So, skipping ahead a few years (ahem) to the fall day in the picture here, I decided then and there to make another terrarium and gathered some moss, lichens, wintergreen and partridge berry. Here is what came to be!

 

 

 There are many types of terrariums and they can be made quite easily if you would like to make one. There are lots of sources online for instructions and I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any.  Try this out, you might be surprised at what good medicine lifting that lid can be for someone who is already beginning to long for springtime. 

        

dining out...walking...home again

It's been a nice first week of January, no complaints. We have managed to make it this far into the depths of winter without any snow to speak of, which I like, and even better, temperatures have been mild in comparison to other years. 
I've been sticking pretty close to home these past two weeks so it was quite exciting when our daughter, Alex, called to invite us to lunch at Long Grain, a favorite local restaurant. Six for lunch and everything was superb, only wish that I had remembered to get a picture of my ramen bowl before it disappeared! Such a nice afternoon it was!

This time of year always finds me making to-do lists and visiting the library more than usual for inspiring reading material. I've been getting some new ideas about how to make exercising a bit more fun and varied in this book and like one of the suggestions for winter walking. The idea involves an occasional visit to the local shopping mall for indoor walking on the coldest of days. The only problem, in my case, is that the closest mall is over an hour and a half away, ah well.

I bundled up this afternoon and headed out to our neighborhood for a walk. Instead of mall shoppers I ran into quite a different sort of throng, you can begin to see them on the crest of the hill in the above picture.

Wild Turkeys!

 I don't think that they were as happy to see me as I was to see them!

In moments they had all disappeared into the woods and I was left alone in a silent field.

I love these little adventures but it's always good to return home afterwards.

Home again!

Clouds

The sky was so beautiful and unusual that day, thank you Cecile for taking these beautiful pictures and to Carol for the lovely stone arrangement. Love the little hearts in the lower part of the picture.

Lettuce and Roses

I know I'm a bit of a dork when it comes to certain things, well, probably most things, but it seems that I'm in a state of constant amazement when it comes to the beauty I see outdoors in the garden. Today it's the beauty of a simple head of lettuce and a perfect rose, can you see what I mean?

Today's Walk

I always appreciate the chance to walk in this special place.  I'll bet that all of the people that I meet on this road...the walkers with their dogs, the joggers, the nature lovers, the adventure seekers...would agree that we are pretty lucky to be here. The wonderful combination of unpaved road, ocean views, birdsong, fresh ocean air and overall peacefulness, always does a world of good for my state of mind.