Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle–
a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl.
And the anticipation nurtures our dream.
~Barbara Winkler

I’ve heard it said that “the color of springtime is in the flowers” whereas “the color of winter is in the imagination.”  I’ve got a very good imagination, but in case it should somehow fade as winter deepens, there’s a local nursery I frequent where there’s a host of colorful seed packets, an old oak cabinet filled with even more seeds, and a large assortment of gardening books and tools.  So between the mail-order seed and plant catalogs I get after Christmas and my visits to this nursery, my passion for gardening is kept alive even when January’s busy-under-the-surface-but-ravaged-atop-the-soil garden gives the appearance of nothingness.  Also I’ve taken lots and lots of photos in my yard and elsewhere, and they are full of the “stuff” it takes to remind me of what gardening dreams are made.  Thus the spice of life, winter’s dreamin’ and schemin’ provides the “fix” I need until Spring fills the earth with it’s color and poetry once again.

Never lose an opportunity
to see anything that is beautiful.
It is God’s handwriting – a wayside sacrament.
Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a loss it would have been to have missed the spectacular “wayside sacrament” in this photograph, and had I not been called by some inner voice to go outside that afternoon, I would have.  Recent days had been dreary and the temperatures so cold that I’d not been venturing out late in the day.  Neither would I have seen it from inside the house because the windows in the rooms where we spend most of our waking hours look eastward.  However on that particular day, I’d been cooped up inside for so long that, in desperation, I grabbed my coat and braved the cold to get a breath of fresh air, to loose the stifling grip of incarceration, and to get the mail.  I didn’t see the stunning sunset right away because I’d gone eastward out back where I wandered around in the gardens a bit and checked on things in the greenhouse.  It wasn’t until I headed to the front of the house and turned west at the south corner that I was met with the incredible drama of that day’s setting sun.  When it did come into view, the wondrous sight immediately expanded my soul into “worship of the Creator.”  After I caught my breath and offered up praise, I dashed back into the house and grabbed my camera so I could capture what remained of it’s magnificence.  By the time I returned to my vantage point the branches of the trees were no more than blackened silhouettes, but there was enough of the spectacle in the sky to get a few good shots before night’s fingers snuffed day’s candle out.

What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
~Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot,
a chief of the Siksika First Nation

I had witnessed a wondrous sample of “life “that day; in fact I’d seen a part of the holy core of it streaking the sky in ribbons of fiery red.  There were no fireflies nor the breath of a buffalo; the only breath I saw and felt in the cold was mine, but I knew that all life-sustaining breath was of and from the Holy One.  I was also aware that He had invited me to witness the day’s sacrament on Heaven’s altar, and it was only after the “little shadows” had lost themselves completely in the sunset that I withdrew to the warmth of the house with my cup full of blessings.