New Year Photos
Inspired by Mike's 2008
summary photos, and by Mark's notion that we should take New Year's
Day as a holiday, I set out Thursday afternoon with our camera in
hand. It's harder to find color in the winter, but the stark
shapes and lines can make up for the lack of color. First I got
caught up in the shadows cast by the bed springs we'd dug out of the
garden. Spiralling
circles --- I almost got lost right there.
But I really wanted to visit
my favorite sycamore grove. Down in the floodplain, several large
sycamores grow in a ten foot in diameter ring. They clearly mark
the borders of 
an ancient sycamore's root
mass, and I can almost see the parent sycamore in my mind's eye.
I lay down between them and looked up, just in time to catch a photo of
a sycamore turned human.
Holidays evade me
sometimes. Thanksgiving and the winter solstice I can wrap my
mind around. I'm so used to the family elements of Christmas that
I follow through without giving it much thought. But the other 
holidays that Mark named off
when I dubiously asked him which ones he's used to celebrating --- New
Year's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day --- are blurs in my mind.
What do they mean? How do you celebrate a holiday you don't
understand?
I'm afraid I bickered with Mark before agreeing to take the day
off. Now I'm glad he perservered --- so I cooked him up a pound
of bacon and a double recipe of the fluffiest white pancakes in my
cookbook as an apology. You're right, Mark! No matter what
the holiday means, it's worth it to spend time in the moment.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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....and pancakes. Don't forget the pancakes;-) Thank you for the cookie treats. They got here a couple of days ago, but I've been pretty busy since. Yum!