Tag: winter

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#VerseLove Day 24 with Larin Wade of Oklahoma – Seasons in Syllables

Larin of Oklahoma is our host for the 24th day of VerseLove2025. She inspires us to write Etheree poems about a season of our choice. You can read her full prompt here.

An Etheree poem consists of 10 lines with the number of syllables of each line order as the count.

I know everyone is tired of winter, but here in Georgia it only takes a couple of days of the heat to be ready for winter again, and I’m already there.

Winter Chill

wintertime snowdrifts on the windowpanes

thick quilts piled high on a soft king bed

schnoodles snoozing by the fireplace

six books stacked under the lamp

cabin socks snug on feet

plush fleece pajamas

a day off work ~

I’ll take my

chai tea

HOT!

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#VerseLove Day 15 with Brittany Saulnier – Colors in Nature

Brittany Saulnier, our host for Day 15 of VerseLove2025, is the author of the short story LIGHT OUT in the anthology Just YA: Short Stories, Poems, Essays & Fiction for grades 7 -12. She is the co-creator of Read to Write Kidlit, a podcast dedicated to improving writing craft by talking with authors about their books.

She invites us to think of a recent memory where we were “in nature” and write a poem that highlights the three colors from our memory. You can read Brittany’s full prompt here.

All the Colors of Sunset

what do you call the shade of sunset?

sometimes it’s 14-carat gold

other times, it’s tangerine

or pink cotton candy

sunflower yellow

or lilac storm

….the best nights,

ruby

red

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A Calm Christmas on Winter Solstice

This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), and in Chapter 9, Kempton encourages us to consider a vision for the year ahead with intentionality.

Today was a slow-to-rise day, a day that started with a bit of a Netflix binge to get a few more episodes of the latest season of Virgin River in, sipping coffee and nibbling pumpkin bread in bed with the dogs asking for one little bite – and we did share with them. We have finished our stocking shopping and grabbed the last few items we needed from the grocery store, so now we are home and happy to be in for the day.

On this Winter Solstice, we got out into nature by taking the dogs on a walk down their favorite trails in their Christmas sweaters, since it is cold here today on this first day of winter. The time outdoors on the day when the Earth finally has its eyes closed all the way is a gift, especially since it is a Saturday when we are both off work and can amble leisurely in the greenery. Tomorrow, the eyes of the world begin springing back on their way to wide-open life again, a little at a time.

This is my day to think about my One Little Word for 2025 – it’s decision day for me.

As my One Little Word for 2025 continues to knock, I haven’t fully given it the time to visit me and chat with me in some sort of a job interview like I’m looking to hire as I normally do with the words I choose. This one just came to me and continues to rise to the top.

This will be the first year I haven’t chosen an actionable verb and will instead take an adjective if I choose the one I think will become my word. And I’m not abandoning PRAY – it still begins my day each morning as I drive to work. No radio, no audiobook – – my car becomes my prayer chamber, and that is an established habit that will not take a detour in place of a different word.

I will have a challenge for myself, too – an actionable verb I do weekly to go along with my One Little Word. More about that in a later post.

What’s your word for 2025 going to be, if you know yet? I love how people and their words choose each other.

Photo by Mareefe on Pexels.com
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A Calm Christmas: Comfort and Joy in Contemplation of Spirit

Photo by Bianca Debisko on Pexels.com

This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2020), and in Chapter 3, she presents ways to seek comfort and joy in winter by seeking our natural rhythms and learning from nature.

To contemplate ways to simplify and nourish our spirits, Kempson encourages us to go gently into winter mornings by tiptoeing to the kitchen, light candles, meditate, or write as self-care measures. She asks these questions:

How could you simplify your home, schedule, digital life? How can you nourish your mind, body, spirit, and loved ones, and what rituals will see you through winter?

So much can be simpler. I once heard that if you feel stressed and need to hit the reset button, spend a half hour in nature. But those who are really busy should spend an hour. Sometimes we don’t have control over simplifying our work schedules or the digital life that work requires, but when home is the haven that allows the respite at day’s end, there is much to be loved. I walk my dogs along a path my husband keeps cut on the farm…and would you believe I go in my flannel pajamas and boots, praying all the while that a delivery truck doesn’t come calling while I’m out in my loungewear? We drink cinnamon orange tea in the evenings in winter, and while we don’t have a real log fireplace, we keep the gas logs going if it’s anywhere below 60 degrees outside. These are the ways we nourish ourselves, and the simple rituals are what will take us through winter. Sometimes, doing as little as possible on weekends is the order of the day, letting the book stacks speak their stories to us as we read the day away.

One of my favorite thoughts in this chapter is “the sounds of winter are cracking in poetry, wind in the trees, rain on the roof, a spitting fire, the thump of a log falling away from the flames, rustling paper, mulled wine poured steaming into a glass, the rhythm of the weather forecast calmly announcing that the storms will rage on.”

That’s the epitome of hygge at its finest – in its best season to be fully experienced as a way to embrace the season of winter.

Photo by Valeria Boltneva on Pexels.com
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A Calm Christmas: Comfort and Joy in Winter

This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), and in Chapter 3, she presents ways to seek comfort and joy in winter by seeking our natural rhythms and learning from nature.

She shares her experience searching for deer with her father when she was nine years old, hoping to capture photographs of them at dawn when all the rest of the world was still sleeping. Through this experience, she is certain that she finds her spirit animal and holds to the belief that the fallow fawn shares secrets that lead to discovery and strength, even still through the memories she made that day.

Another reflection she shares is her rhythm of childhood winters, with such predictability that there is great comfort in the daily routines and patterns of familiarity – getting dressed by the heater, pressing her nose against the window of the toy store, eating porridge each morning, caroling, bedtime stories. What can seem humdrum has roots of dependability in the knowing that things are the way they are and taking a deep sense of certainty in the simple, mundane living of days.

Kempson writes in Chapter 3, “At this time of year, it’s natural to slow down, prune our lives of extraneous details, reflect on past events, and tend our hearts, minds, and bodies so we are ready to flourish again.” There’s a quietness to the process. To contemplate our winter rhythms, Kempton encourages us to find a still, quiet place and think about what brings us comfort and joy at this time of year, and throws in a glimmering question to chew on: what would radical winter wellness look like for you?

Radical winter wellness – what a concept! At first thought, a cup of steaming hot tea with local honey and fresh lemon come rushing to mind. Long walks with the dogs across the farm, breathing plenty of fresh air deep into the lungs seems like ultimate wellness also, along with simmering soups chock full of fresh vegetables with bright orange carrots just right. Zesty navel oranges and cinnamon oatmeal with brown sugar, and quiet moments of reading by the fire all proclaim wellness, too.

And radical wellness for the mind. That is found in a stack of delightful reading and a crossword puzzle – and I’ve ordered a calendar with them so I have a short puzzle each day to chew on – – a mini crossword like a small piece of chocolate from a candy jar – just enough to satisfy. Just enough to bring comfort and peace.

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Hygge Pantoum – Stafford Challenge Day 14

Photo by Ioana Motoc on Pexels.com

Today’s Pantoum poem celebrates warmth and comfort in these cold, wintry days leading up to mid-winter. I have a little faith in our southern groundhog, so I’m holding out some hope for a thick blanketing of snow to keep us home for a few days, snuggled fireside with books and dogs, before warming up and staying warm so the peaches will survive. Georgia lost 90% of its crop last year to a late freeze, and what few I was able to find locally cost a fortune and ended up in Mason jars as preserves so we could enjoy them all winter.

For today, though, there is hot tea with honey ~ and so begins my poem. Stay warm, friends.

Hygge Pantoum

chamomile tea with honey
warm blankets, heated throw
sherpa slippers (ears of bunny)
beeswax candle's ambient glow

warm blankets, heated throw
heavy quilts of rag-stitched flannel
beeswax candle's ambient glow
flickering shadows on the mantel

heavy quilts of rag-stitched flannel
heirloom warmth of hand-stitched hugs
flickering shadows on the mantel
cotton-braided oval rugs

heirloom warmth of hand-stitched hugs
sherpa slippers (ears of bunny)
cotton-braided oval rugs
chamomile tea with honey

Special thanks to Twowritingteachers at Slice of Life for giving writers space and inspiration!

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May 24 – Handwarmer Pottery Mugs

Many moons ago, I taught with a colleague who drank coffee from the most unique mug I’d ever seen. Aside from her coffee mug in the shape of a Zoom lens that proclaimed her love of photography and led to conversations about her sideline photography business, she had one even more intriguing, but she only drank from it during the winter time.

The mug had no handle. Instead, it had a nestled crook, much like a ceramic mitten. It was made of pottery, and she called it her handwarmer mug. My English classroom at the high school had erratic heating and cooling. I’d sweat and shiver in the same class period all year long, so I made a mental note to pick up a handwarmer mug the next time I saw one.

Trouble is, I never saw one.

I forgot to share it as a gift idea for all those Christmases that have come and gone.

Imagine my surprise when we stopped in to have a glass of wine in Ball Ground, Georgia at the Feather’s Edge Winery, where there is an art gallery connected to the tasting room. There on a display shelf was a sign proclaiming The Original Hand-Warmer Mug, and several variations of pottery mugs to choose from – and there were mugs for right hand mug holders and left-hand mug holders. You slip your hand into the crook of the mug on the side of your handedness and nestle your other hand around the mug on the opposite side. These are made by Clay in Motion Pottery Studio.

Instant warmth! Rustic beauty! Inviting aromas, inspiring the desire to put on a sweatshirt and sit by the fire in a pair of woolen socks, watching snowflakes pile up on the windowsill of a woodland cabin.

Oh, yes. Winter has just finally finished all its antics, but already there is the promise of the next one waiting in these spectacular mugs, where visions of campfires outside the Little Guy Max are also taking center stage in my daydreams.

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Creativity: A Jar of Snow Memory Preserves

Daughter clicking her heels in the snows of Kentucky on Christmas Day

One of my creativity goals this year is taking more photographs. I’m not a talented artist who paints and draws, but I enjoy images and words. My daughters have always kept sketch pads and art projects going ~ they appreciate the spontaneity of lettering a Bible verse or sketching a face or landscape. I think “capturing the moment” is the artistic approach that appeals to me most. Life sometimes begs to be captured.

My daughters sometimes just doodle. They fill entire sketchbooks this way, savoring spontaneous bursts of creativity.

On a recent visit, my daughter asked me to share the photos we’d taken while we were out exploring in the snow. We’d worn our pajamas and snow shoes and had taken pictures of sunsets, snowdrifts, and squirrel statues. It’s the ultimate happiness for a mother, really, because pictures aren’t just pictures. They’re memories. That’s what she was really asking for ~ a jar of snow memory preserves. She wants to come back to our moments, just as I do. Score!

I’d given my daughter the camera and later looked back at all she had captured, like this birdhouse.

Something I hadn’t expected was the surprise of discovering photographs she had taken after I’d handed the camera over to her when I’d gone inside to thaw my toes. Scrolling back through these images, I found pictures I didn’t recognize. And then it hit me: these were images I was seeing through her eyes – the gift of glimpses that weren’t mine in the moment, but shared even now.

A favorite photo taken that day – sunset over the snow, and I think we photographed it at least three dozen times as it tucked itself into bed in the rolling hills.

And so I logged in to my photo processing account and ordered some snapshots on real photo paper. Over the next week, I plan to send her three or four each day to bring smiles and memories. She’ll make a photo collage that will keep this day, these special shared moments, forever etched in her heart.

I will, too.

Sunset over Burdoc Farms in Crofton, KY – White Christmas Evening
Assortment of photographs I’ll send this week – making my creativity goals happen through smiles!
The start of a snowball fight……..I passed the camera off to Briar and launched an invitation to fun….