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or rather, past the swingset and trampoline into...
...our own private Narnia.
Then, back home again, just before dark.
Then, the 'putting to bed' of the animals, a quick dinner, the popping of corn, and a stoking of the fire,
before heading off to our little theater to see the 'real' Narnia.
This was last Friday. Yes, movies arrive that late in this town. : )
Those are some of the lovely winter greys that have me adoring winter, the ones that make me embrace it wholly.
Unfortunately, much of the greys this year have looked a little more like this:
rainy, muddy, treacherously icy, oppressively cloudy, and even green:
(This is the hillside that, when it greens up, usually sometime around april or even may, then I consider spring to have officially arrived.
Last summer was so rainy the grasses never fully dried out, and the snow/freeze/thaw cycle has left it bare one day and white the next, repeatedly, these past few weeks. To look on the bright side, the horses and cows -and deer and wild turkeys - that graze here must be enjoying it.)
Ah well. What can you do? Not much other than try to adapt, and adopt those greys, as always. It's that time of year when most mornings I'll reach for one of the grey shirts on the pile, the grey hat, the grey sweaters....and the grey yarn in the stash.
These socks were knit for a good friend who, if it weren't for he and his family we might not even live here. He's one of the first people we met here when we came. We were camped in our truck on the side of the forest service road which was essentially his driveway. He invited us to follow him up to their place, their handbuilt home, deeper up into the woods at the base of the mountains. They fed us dinner, gave us a place to stay for the night, and then a place to park the snailhouse of a home, a renovated 1950's trailer, we'd dragged behind our old truck all the way from Colorado, for the winter. A true friend who was there with us through thick and thin when Chris was ill. Anyways, these socks are for him.
But, back to that first winter here, the winter of the big snows, nearly every day and night, from the first week of November and forward, that piled up around us, often faster than we could shovel, followed by the bright, sunny 35 below zero temps of January. We loved it all, that winter that fooled us into thinking winters were always like that around here. We didn't believe when the old-timers said they'd never seen anything quite like it in all their 80 years. Now we believe.
The winters aren't all that hard around here, but they are awfully grey,
except when it's blue:
One more from today, just for the fun of it:
lanterns string made with the plastic leftovers of new year's confettin poppers.
gumdrop/toothpick creations, by the boys.
paper stars.
a set of preemie-sized hats for a friend's new baby boy.
Socks, darned for a friend (same socks that I knit about 5 years ago, donating them then to a fundraising auction for the local art/dance studio).
Speaking of color, it is Poppytalk's winter color week over on Flickr this week.
Today's color is RED:
1 evening. 2 parties. A pile of friends and family.
It was bitter, bitter cold and yet, we still spent a fair amount of it outdoors skating, playing in the snow, lighting up the night and just enjoying the last few hours of the year, the beginning of the next, and the last few days of grand-mama's visit.
Happy 2011!
