The Christmas tree

I’ve been dreaming with a new Christmas tress for a long time.  My last one, that one I transformed from a traditional green to a flocked white tree by spray-painting it in white, was left behind somewhere in the south...  

Thus, the windows in our living-room were desperately asking for one.  Of course, it had to be a special kind of a Christmas tree—slender than the usual tree, because it had to fit between both of the chairs crowding that small space by the bay window, where I wanted it to be.  That is one of the reasons why I'd delayed my dream a bit.  I had to find the perfect fit!  And I finally did.   

This tree remains lighted up 24 hours a day, and I just love its glossy glimmering, the warmth, the magic, the small candy colored glowing to it, and that kind of glory that exceeds everything else and always speaks to me of love and forgiveness and hope for our humanity… 

And what is a Christmas tree, but the metaphoric light by which we live our lives?

I love to see my Christmas tree reflected on the mirror across from it... It creates the perfect magic, flooding our living room with dreamlike daintiness and delicate shimmers… 

I'm not one for an over the top decorated Christmas tree.  I rather see something less pretentious or simpler; a less crowded tree only embellished with a few ornaments and just clear lights.  It looks more sophisticated decorated that way to me.  The few vintage baubles I have are in antique pink and the stars are those same ones I spray-painted pink years ago.

I don't decorate a lot for the holidays, but I still love light... lots of little lights! I think this one looks cute here!

I may have to leave it here all year!

Christmas is one of those holidays that is all about light. It’s spiritually illegal to have any darkness in it!

The magic of sunshine and warmth

The world woke up wrapped in fog this morning… fog that made ghosts and apparitions out of trees and shrubberies; fog that covered rooftops and neighborhood houses in layers of pale white sheets.  The garden, too, was a quieted miasma where birds, naked branches and dead leaves where one and the same thing; a place with no sun, where light shone in a polished hue; buffed, and dark… and perhaps... perhaps this was just how my heart felt, and how I perceive life around me.  But oh, how can one feel otherwise after having spent those past few magical days in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico where sunlight and warmth are the umbrella that heal its people and mend sad hearts?  

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise sometimes, but the magic resides in that it is not that we seize them, but rather that they seize us...

It was magic all around under the warmth of the December sun and sea breezes.  Oh sun, yours is the light by which my spirit's born.  Let us dance under your warmth, wearing wild flowers in our hair!

And thus, we are home to our northern ashen winter days again; home to our snow-covered mountains—always drained of color and ices blinding our horizon in pallid sheets, and sometimes I just have to wonder how a sun loving soul such as mine, always yearning for warmth and brilliant light was so blinded as to say ‘yes’ for a return here… and how was I even able to quieted all voices inside me screaming to just follow the sun and stay where we were?  I just have to wonder.  Oh, it must had been love the motive behind all.  For only love could had been able to moved me the way it did. 
  

Our home has been decorated for Christmas as much as my heart can bear to it concerning the usual Christmas décor; but lights—light are never enough around here, never as much as necessary. Thus, lights are everywhere in our home this year. Even the outside, which in years past for whatever reasons it had always been the darkest corner in the neighborhood, it now has been illuminated and embellished with lights, and a new Christmas tree it’s the lighthouse to our home behind the windows…

I’ve been thinking a lot about mom these days and it is hard to believe that tomorrow will be a year since she left us.  My heart keeps asking questions, and pondering; remembering and yearning... yearning upon a dream to come true one day.  Time moves so fast, people come and go out of our lives. We must never miss the opportunity to tell the people we love and care how much they mean to us.

On a snowy day...

On a day like this... 

What is there better to do than this...

And my little garden friends?

There's nothing quite like that first crunch in a fresh, untouched layer of snow, and it seems I’m not the only one who takes pleasure in a snowy day. Mourning doves, chickadees, nut hatches, juncos—they are everywhere, dashing from tree to tree; from snow clump to snow clump.

Mourning doves; those permanent dwellers of the garden came wearing new puffed-up exuberant coats of feathers

Filling the garden with their magic, and in their flight bringing wishes of peace and the beauty of life, the warmth of the sun, the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family and the triumph of love.

It is the flight of winter and its magical song...

And it is like a fantasy kingdom of ice out there... It is like going through a magical doorway to find yourself stumbling into this enchanting place where every tree branch is an icicle beaming magic under fair rays of light…

Squirrels have gone mad attacking the birdfeeders and quarrelling among each other.  Four of them were feeding from one same feeder at one point!

Of course, snowy days are perfect for cocooning yourself in your favorite room with piles of colorful pillows and favorite books!

A time to fill your room with pretty things too!

And I don't know about you, but when it snows I feel this magical desire in me to bake!

So I baked an apple tart and ate it too!

With my favorite cup of coffee and a book to read.

Bad or good, these are some of my favorite things to do on a snowy day...  Do you have a favorite pastime you like to do on a cold, snowy day?  Whatever you do, or like to do, make sure you enjoy each moment of it, for that's all we have in life; moments.  Everything else is uncertain.

See you soon Friends!

After the holidays

And where has time gone? A whole week without coming here is like an entire week sleeping. Or being without food, or water.  And all those dear people we looked forward to seeing and spend time with them, and all those things we planned to do and all that food I wanted to try and make, and all the places we wanted to visit—everything, is in the past now.  Time. Like a petal in the wind, flows softly, and yet it disappears so quickly.  Every life is but a minute in time, but each so important. And the garden—the garden is a myriad of leaves, and petals immutable in the rhythms of time.

Everything speaks of decay and death, yet there's so much beauty in it, so much life in all death, and I find my spirit soaring above all... in faith and hope and all good things.

I sit outside under the chilly morning, and wait for the Mourning doves to come...

...and they do! They'd always come and ignite the magic...

I find so much solace in my special place; my garden, my sanctuary... always an evidence of faith, linking us with all the misty figures of the past who also loved Nature and nurtured it and planted it and were nourished by the same emotions that sustain my soul today...

We got a new Christmas tree today and now, hundreds of miniscule lights light up our front windows and embellish our living room, filling it with magic and dainty delicate light… I love it so much!