winter evening drive

There's always a heightened sense of anticipation as Christmas nears. Sometimes it takes an extra effort as one gets older to keep the spirit of Christmas intact. It's been a discouraging year in many ways, but there have been wonderful highlights that have rekindled my faith in human nature and reassured me that good prevails.

Wally had a day off on Wednesday and unearthed me to go to Greenwood to top up our health food supplements, most importantly magnesium  which we all, cats included, take. A trip like that would leave us free to enjoy Wally's coming 4 days off.

I really mean it when I say "unearthed" as we left quite late in the afternoon.

I didn't find out til later that evening that the reason I was feeling so sluggish was because I was fighting a low grade cold. Still I enjoyed having some clear weather for this trip - a change, as it always seems to be crummy weather on the Saturdays that we've gone.

Clear weather aside, the light was already getting low and I lost quite a few shots taken from our moving car. This is a little farmhouse scene with a barn in the back that has a roof so low it appears to touch the ground as the property dips downhill also indicated by the addition on the garage in the foreground.

This was a sad little blue house that sat for sale since before we moved here over 5 years ago.

This summer new owners repainted it and put new windows and a driveway in. The wind has clearly played havoc with their Christmas decorations, but it's nice to see the house being cared for again.

This has been a treacherous week for ice with some awful accidents on the highway. I nearly fell a few times myself.  Wally slowed here as he negotiated this icy on-ramp where one is normally obliged to speed up. This is the highway on which he might normally come home on a good day, but he always takes the slow and easy route, knowing what goes on out there.

The early evening light (it was almost 4:30pm) made even this industrial area not so bad. You can see the range of the north mountain (beyond which is the Bay of Fundy) in the background.

Heading northwest here, you may be able to see all the black specks in the sky, a small indication of the thousands of crows that do an evening migration around here.

Dressed in peaches and mauvey violets, the clouds were almost iridescent.

more crows flying over this snowy cornfield.

the sun going down and it's not nearly 5 yet.

Backlit by the sunset, I suspect by the size of it, that that's a raven in the uppermost branches

of that tree to the right.

I was lucky, for all the shots I lost, to have a few decent ones of the sun setting over the farmfields.

the clouds backlit in mauve in a peachy sky

You may remember this wonderful farm scene with the 3 silos from past trips.

Though blurry, the colour is so painterly that I had to share it with you.

So many shots lost in a blur on the highway, I just barely caught this favourite house of mine as we slowly came to the corner in Kingston, Greenwood's sister town.

Looking closer, we can just make out the choirboy on the front porch. 

The eagle emblem over the door makes it look somewhat American.

Like a fuzzy1940's Christmas card, I'll end here, with more to show you over the weekend.

Have a jolly old time of it dear ones.

This festive season takes some careful negotiating sometimes. That's easy to do when we set our expectations aside and remain present to the wonder and glory of what IS.

breathing gently into this moment

remembering that the best present is presence