Standing sentinel…

I haven’t been getting out much, content to mindlessly ‘pace’ on the elliptical trainer upstairs while I survey the street below… so it’s slim pickin’s picture-wise, unless we fixate on buds opening in the windowsill…This one is surely morphing into something..a lilac I believe!

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But sitting here one afternoon idly looking out the front window while I chatted with Jim I spied our lone neighborhood gull looking picturesque, though out of place, on the neighbor’s roof… We have lots of crows around but only this one gull.  He’s wandered in from the ocean to join the regular flock of crows that feed on my stale bread and the quantities of left-overs I toss out as I learn (slowly) to cook for a smaller household…

lone gull

He clearly lords it over the competition here.  Perhaps that’s why he’s decided to stay.  He’d make a fine subject for a children’s picture book, about the gull who didn’t like seafood, or some such thing…Maybe we should give him a name…hmmm….gull

And such is life in the Wildwood as February runs down to its finish.

–LS

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me…” Hab.2:1

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Frosted Wonder…

It was a frosty morning, the kind that overlay every ordinary twig with extraordinary beauty…the kind where you freeze your fingers out taking pictures of frosty things…

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…and spots made mysterious by fog…

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But what’s this great white fluff that catches my eye?! It has not snowed.

Its filaments are like cotton candy, but it is ice…being spun by the night’s freeze from fissures in the bark of commonplace twigs—nature’s fiberglass!  taunting me to capture the wonder of it in a picture…

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…before heading in to homey comforts.

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[I just love my newly fashioned tea shelf. Jim concocts a custom blend every morning; I feel like a queen!]

–LS

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Lichen’ it!

P1080977Just had to grab a sunny afternoon and turn it into an exercise for body, mind and soul,

A trek up Scout, naturally.

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The old gray mare just ain’t what she used to be, but slowly and surely ‘we’ (me, myself, and my Comforter) gained the top for a quiet sit to read, pray and ponder…Nothing conspicuously photo-worthy… but the lichen is bright and fresh.

Lichen

 

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And the undergrowth is conspiring to put on Christmas cheer, already!

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This ‘shroom I espied on my careful-not-to-slip descent begged to be noticed  ( :

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The pines are healthy and vibrant, bearing abundant little ‘boy’ cones…

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But home and fireside beckon far below. It may be bright but it is also cold! Time to head home. 

[Our golden willow marks the spot. Do you see it?]

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P1090008Wind and rain are lashing the house tonight.  Glad to have gotten out while I could!

–LS

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Eph.5:15,16