It's white today

Hope this is an indication of the Winter to come. A couple days after the Winter Solstice and we have a nice covering of snow down here in the valley.  I love Winter. Tomorrow the sun may come out.


And there is quite a different sort of conversation around a fire than there is in the shadow of a beech tree.... [F]our dry logs have in them all the circumstance necessary to a conversation of four or five hours, with chestnuts on the plate and a jug of wine between the legs. Yes, let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. ~Pietro Aretino, translated from Italian


[W]hat a severe yet master artist old Winter is.... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel. ~John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers," 1866


Winter is a time of promise because there is so little to do — or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. ~Stanley Crawford, A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm, 1992


One kind word can warm three winter months. ~Japanese Proverb