winter in the garden

Yesterday we went to a winter craft market at the botanical garden and of course I couldn’t resist getting a few pictures outside. It finally feels like winter here, with low temperatures some mornings in the 20s. But it was a warm afternoon and it felt good strolling around, even if a host of white-throated sparrows foraging in the brush wouldn’t come out for a picture!

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it — the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it — the whole story doesn’t show.
~ Andrew Wyeth
(LIFE, May 14, 1965, “Andrew Wyeth: An Interview”)

Winter under cultivation
Is as arable as Spring

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1720)

The Winter, most commonly, is so mild, that it looks like an Autumn, being now and then attended with clear and thin North-West Winds, that are sharp enough to regulate English Constitutions.
~ John Lawson
(A New Voyage to Carolina, 1709)

the warmth of the sun in winter
Carolina buckthorn
seasonal decor for the shrubs

Lots of folks are rushing around getting ready for the holidays, but I like to stay quiet this time of year, snuggling under my wool throw with a good book. I’ve started reading Clover Garden: A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir by Bland Simpson. The author lives not too far from us and I’m enjoying reading about the natural history of the local area.

beneath the snow

“Village in the Snow” by Paul Gauguin
“Village in the Snow” by Paul Gauguin

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future – the timelessness of the rocks and the hills – all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape – the loneliness of it – the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it – the whole story doesn’t show. I think anything like that – which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone – people always feel is sad. Is it because we’ve lost the art of being alone?
~ Andrew Wyeth
(LIFE, May 14, 1965)