(1).png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
Christmas in a Small Town and Angel Escalators
Thursday, December 19th, 2013Yesterday on Facebook I posted a youtube link to a favorite carol. Then I decided it might be fun to post here, as well, and every day for the coming week share one of my favorite carols from my Christmas Vocals playlist. I have more pieces that are instrumentals, but I’ve decided that while the instrumentals are great in the background (like at Christmas dinner), I prefer SONGS–the kind with words where I can join along (at least when alone in the car so I don’t break someone’s ears!). Today’s carol is a new one, by quilting’s own Ricky Tims. I’ve lived in small towns since 1998, and I can’t imaging going back to living in a city (even a small one) or suburbs. Love the scale of life, the pace of life, the unexpected joy of running in to someone I know.
And photos from yesterday and this morning. We have a glorious lot of snow this year before Christmas, so yesterday I walked the dog down our driveway (which is long, 3/10 mile) to the mailbox so I could shovel out the plow heap and get mail. This was the view along the way down:
Walking down the driveway. Our house is in the middle of a large rectangle. The other lots are on the outside, ours is in the middle, so we have a 3/10 mile driveway that is a narrow strip between the two neighbors, then it makes an “L” around the bottom of our lot up to the house. This is on the bottom of the L, looking to the straight part between the log house on the right and the other one (hidden) in the woods on the left. The willows had grown from shrub to Godzilla (each one) and were threatening the swallow cars on the driveway, so they got a major buzz cut recently. LOVE the look of the stubs (and fear not, they will recover and grow with wild abandon again).
After clearing the plow pile by the mailbox, on the way back up the sunlight streamed through the woods (now on the right as you walk back uphill) and lit the beech leaves. I LOVE how the leaves refuse to let go all winter, only dropping when new growth pushes them off. There is a quilt in the tenacity of the beech tree.
My favorite tree, a very old, prolific apple. It is on the right as you walk uphill (left looking down, as here). This tree is SO going to be a quilt! Maybe this winter if I don’t goof off!
And this row of evergreens (opposite my beloved apple tree) planted by the former owner on the property line. Usually we have wind with the snow, so don’t have the frosted look too often.
And taking a step or two beyond the apple tree and looking uphill, you see the big meadow, the hedgerow/stone wall in the middle left, there’s another meadow (i.e. not-mown place) and the house at the crest of the hill (just to the left of the sun). Midday in Maine as we approach the solstice.
And this morning from Route 131 in Appleton, looking southeast. Isn’t that sky and sun and rays glorious? When I was about 4, we returned to the US from Argentina and stayed with my gramma a while. I had to go to Sunday school and learned all about angels. I also saw escalators for the first time (early 60s) and was enchanted as they didn’t have those where I had lived in Argentina. I wondered how angels got from Heaven to Earth, then saw the sun rays and figured they must be escalators for the angels. So forever after, Angel Escalators–even my kids know that’s what they are.
Enjoy your holidays. Don’t let the hustle and bustle of the season distract you from the beauty around you and the joy of being in a place and with the people who make life wonderful.
And for those of you not on FaceBook yesterday, here is yesterday’s, Emmanuel God With Us by Amy Grant, which my dear friend Deborah Boschert shared with me years ago and has become a favorite.
<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/7zB8vRyv0uM” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>