Winter afternoon

 This winter afternoon, short but beautiful...

 

...our everyday walk,

packed with the familiar sights, smells, sounds... 

The ordinary beauty of the barns we pass every day...

skeletons of trees whose bare bones and subtle coloring show a stark delicacy

against the quiet winter sky.

And overhead, the honk of geese, the flapping of hundreds of wings and the amazing beauty of big birds landing, coming to a halt in the muddy fields puddled with rain water.

In silence, I pause to ponder sheep in the fields, moss atop a worn wooden fence post.

Winter afternoon.

Small pleasures.

The joy of changing seasons and the pleasures of home and farmland.

The sun sinks as I close the door of the little house and turn on the light.

Home.

Borrowing (from) the neighbors

We live in the best neighborhood anywhere.

It's the kind of place where we do a summertime barbecues together, autumn bonfires, and warm pies left on the doorstep across the street. 

(Yes, really!)

We borrow cups of sugar and canning equipment.

And now, when it's Christmas and there are no children in our house, we don't just borrow from the neighbors, we actually borrow the neighbors themselves.

Which explains how we came to have a loud ruckus, complete with gingerbread houses and sticky fingers and all manner of happy chaos.

After the gingerbread houses were decorated, when the children were still shouting, "ho, ho, ho!" they redecorated the tree and then moved on to the dog.

Oh, what a long suffering pet our Penny is! She actually enjoyed being strewn with ribbon and ornaments.

Oh, the merriment of having children next door 

and sticky fingers in a Christmas kitchen...

The blessing of laughter all through a neighborhood!

Ta-da!

It's been busy-as-the-bees work in the studio this month and a fair bit of Santa's Workshop as well,
but we are thrilled to share with you at last the first of what we're hoping will be a series of videos.

Click here to watch the video

You'll see my work and hear the voice of my delightful agent, Alicia Dauber.

Hope you enjoy the peeks into the studio with me!

Listen

On clear nights, I almost think I can hear the universe singing.

Sometimes it's soft as fog.

Sometimes brilliant and deafening as thunderclaps.

Mornings when the rain drips like music on the roof,

or those moments when you hear the call of a blackbird

or the snap of an ordinary dry twig

it seems like the whole earth,

everything from the great wide sky

to the tiniest mushroom

The whole earth is singing a song of gratitude and joy.

It's the music of life, the rhythm of the seasons, the vastness of the globe swinging on its axis.

Stop.

Listen.

Can you, too, hear the whole earth singing?

All images © Sharyn Sowell. Please do not copy or use in any form without permission.