A Belated Happy New Year!

Spent a wonderful New Year's Eve in London Ontario visiting friends - only to return home to be smacked with fever and various symptoms. Glad to say, I'm well and truly on the mend and back catching up with blogging and work. OpRAH will just have to have her Best Life without me today.

I can always tell how sick I am, by my enjoyment level of vast quantities afternoon television. Knew my immune system was making progress at the very moment I saw two perfectly normal looking women in their mid-forties (albeit in need of some general maintenance - hair cut and colour) going through a series of steps that included having their mid-sections magically melted with a rather rude looking object hooked up to a computer, followed by a visit to two doctors who were going to top up all their hormone levels with "safe chemicals made from plants" (can you say turpentine?), and the excitement never ends, a fitting with Cujo who has found all sorts of lovely items from Target. Between Dr. Phil mouthing Robin's cue cards, the lipstick called 'Ageless', I could feel a certain rage starting to boil - ah yes, we must all be eternally youthful, chemically enhanced and provide a perfect visage right up to and including that open coffin moment - and I knew tomorrow, I'd be off the couch and back in action. Thank you Dr. Phil.

We're in the middle of a storm system that has swept up from the Tennessee Valley bringing a wide variety of moisture and another from the west - so it will be a day of dark, snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet, and a little more snow. Saw how pretty the Japanese Maple looked from inside so had to go out to see if I could capture more. A quick run outside, only to come back to retrieve my bumbershoot - these giant snowflakes are absolutely full of water - camera-deadly.

Little did I know my favourite stalker was inside chronicling me, chronicling the plants in the snow.

Can you believe these light levels? Doesn't it just make you want to swallow a bottle of Vitamin D? (Plant-based of course.)

Can't remember the last time I took a photo of new snow and the light was so low mid-morning that it looked just like I'd just photo'd my battered old Grey Card.

The Japanese Maple from the outside.

Echinacea alba....really alba today.

Poor sad little red berry. But while I was strolling around the garden, heard flock of Canada Geese overhead. They looked like white ghosts crossing the sky above the large pines. Alas, no photo, just memory.

So, here I sit and wait - no worse for wear, back at my desk with Papillio close by - photographed wide open at almost half a second - computer screen standing in for tripod.Just waiting and anticipating the return of Monday's sunshine.

What a tonic the winter light is.