I Love Winter

One Of the things I love about Winter is that when it gets dark so early-by 4pm where I live- I like to snuggle up at home with my warm PJ's on , a big mug of hot chocolate or a glass of mulled wine depending on my mood and snuggle up with our big furry blankets to watch a great film.

Of course we have the fire roaring and the flames are soothing and warming. I always have candles lit in winter, it just adds a glow and warming feeling to out home. Essentially we lock the door and are cocooned in our warm as toast home :)

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

William Carlos Williams

When you have a dog you are outside in winter more than most. What I have missed since Goldie passed away is the winter walks we used to take....Admittedly I used to moan a little about going out in the cold but you know once out there in the fresh air and all wrapped up in lovely layers with a bounding dog at your feet, it felt good to be walking and getting good exercise.

I also noticed more about the changing face of nature and seeing the woodland creatures that are around in winter, the stunning starkness of bare branches silouetted against the sky and the amazing tenacity of the few flowers that captured this time as their own. We often had the fields to ourselves in mid winter and except for a few other dogwalkers it was peaceful and calm.

I Love being at home for Christmas. I doesn't really matter to me if it is just a quiet time just me and hubby or whether we have family and friends as guests for dinner or for the whole week! We have done it differently over the years and I just like it.

We have also spent Christmas away from home with family and that is lovely too.

As we have family and friends all over the world one of the things is that we cannot all get together at Chritmas and that means a lot of international phone calls that day!! It is also lovely to give and receive pressies and it is great when those international parcels arrive!

This one from my wonderful friend in US was especially lovely as she had hand made a quilt for us! A truly treasured gift :)

Mostly for me it is a time to chill out, eat nice food and retreat from the pressures of the world, spending time with people I love. Crisp winter walks, warm mulled wine, the pleasure of giving and receiving gifts. The lovely Christmas dinner, I even enjoy preparing that and I adore decorating our home to make it look special and inviting at this time when we have the shortest of days.

I always find it stunning to see the outline of bare branches against a crisp winter sky. There is something hauntingly beautiful about it.

Many things can look dead in winter yet they are not. It is like they are just watching and waiting for the time to be right.

Some of the familiar creatures hibernate and rest. I sometimes wonder if we should do the same sometimes, instead of rushing around our busy lives, should we too take some time to watch, recuperate and heal?

One of my great pleasures in the winter is to feed the birds. I just love it when they fly in and twitter at me as I fill up the feeders then almost as soon as I am gone swoop down to feed. They love all kinds of seeds and nuts but probably adore the sunflower seeds the most-they are the ones which go most quickly anyway!

We also have a birdbath which is much used all year round. It is important in winter to go out daily and check that it is still useable as it can ice up very quickly. Recently I had to bash through several inches of ice there as the birds could not drink at all.

I am always so grateful to the birds as when for a year I could barely move with my back pain I could watch the birds and they kept me sane on long days alone when my husband was out at work.

Birds are incredibly entertaining in the winter time and I love to see that first cheeky Robin!