rural life

Less than sixty minutes remain of the winter solstice. I don’t celebrate Christmas or New Years. I’m among the group of people in which holidays hold nothing but bitter memories. As mid-summer passes into fall, I count down the days until December 21st of each year. I’m starved for the individual flavor each additional minute will bring to my evening table.

The solstice means I’ve made it through another year. I’ve survived the worst of my imagined and real terrors. Except for the weather, hopefully everything will continue on for another year. There was a time in my life when yellow was my favorite color. I couldn’t be miserable wearing yellow. My living quarters, even without southern windows looked sunnier with a touch of yellow on the walls.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I really don’t look good wearing yellow. Decorating with yellow looked dated past the 1970’s. As life moved on I shifted my love of yellow to flowers, admired golden sunsets on the prairies, and on rare days when I woke early, appreciated the butter soft glow of a misty sunrise.

Today I’ve taken time to break all the rules about photographic placement, color, form, and size. I’ve gone back into my vault and overhauled a few old favorites taken at a Pow Wow in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin several years ago. The yellow were everywhere. I stopped short of pulling out the yellow-green. It was a close call, but I’ll save those for another day.

Feel free to let me know what you think of my solstice madness.Enjoy your own mid-winter, or mid-summer holidays, depending on which half of the planet you live on. Thank for stopping by. See you next year!

Weekly Photo Challenge:Yellow

A Wisconsin winter woodland and prairie are rawboned, gaunt, and sharp. Summer’s soft mantle of leaves, drape of morning dew, and distraction of bird song are gone. Autumn’s fragrance of parched leaves has become frozen nose, sharp cold, and biting wind. Only in the first few hours of fresh snowfall, or complete oblivion, are the skeletal, angular, bent, signs of aging unnoticed on Mother Earth.

The softest of summer’s grasses are brittle, cracked, and snapped to the ground. Snow covered branches rest heavy burdens on frozen ground. All around me, I see chaos, disorder, geometric, shadows, and little of the softness of winter’s first snow. My backyard prairie, woods and garden are certainly full of angles, and one Angel.

Thanks for passing by The Road Less Paved. Hope to see you again.