Warm Thoughts on a Cold Morning

November 20, 2022

Hello friends! It’s been a record-setting cold week here. I’m looking for some feedback on new Substack features today so please let me know if you have opinions on any of these items!

As it’s holiday gift-giving time, I wanted to let you know gift subscriptions to the paid version of this email (which includes additional photo posts 1-2x each week!) are available here. Give them to your friends and family or ask someone to give you one!

I’ll be raising the annual subscription price at the beginning of the year but once you’re in, you get to keep the price you subscribed at forever - now is a great time to subscribe!

Sunrise 11/17/2022

Cold mornings, north winds, 
heavy coat and mittens.
Deep pinks of winter
light the morning sky.
Rain and snow refresh 
lake, trees and spirits.
Warm tea, cozy blankets
and a promised reprieve for the week ahead.

Thick fog well below freezing makes everything temporarily into fancier works of art.

Hello friends! It’s gratitude week here so I am thinking about the many things I am grateful for, including:

• Friends, family, sangha, community and the promise of long-missed hugs this week

• Warm wool sweaters, flannel sheets (why didn’t I splurge on these sooner?!?), warm blankets, hot flaxseed packs and herbal tea

• Fog that coated everything in frost, creating works of art every way the eye could see

• North winds blowing more of our winter friends into the lake - which has been replenished with rain and is providing a better winter home for the birds!

• For my amazing farm share full of fresh, locally grown vegetables. This week (in November!) it contains spinach, radishes, turnips, carrots, potatoes and fresh ginger.

• All of you dear friends, with whom I can share the beauty and the challenges of life.

• Birds! All the birds. Summer birds, winter birds, shore birds, ducks, herons, owls, loons - all the birds! Thank goddess for things with feathers.

Tell me what helps you experience gratitude if you are inspired. I know for some it’s a tough week and gratitude can feel far away, sending warm hugs to all who need them.

Downy woodpecker looking for frozen bugs

Mother Earth hung her holiday lights a wee bit early but they sure are beautiful.

Substack is adding new features and I am contemplating if they make sense for this newsletter. Please let me know what you think of these three new items!

• The Substack app (get it here) now has a chat feature that can be turned on for each newsletter. Is this interesting for this community? Ongoing chats about the various topics I might write about? Nature? Birds? Other ideas? Everyone or paid subscriptions only? I’m not sure if this is a great idea or just one more thing to have to keep up with so I’d love your input. (If I turn on chat, you will all get an email so this is also my fair warning!)

• Substack now allows us to forward a newsletter from another application to our readers. It’s a way of “sharing” outside of our weekly posts and would come in your email. I want to use this very carefully but I wonder if it would be appreciated (wow, something else inspiring to read!) or just create too much email (we’d rather you keep those shares inside your regular posts).

• Substack now allows “gallery view” photos. I can’t decide if it’s a lovely way to share multiple pictures of something or if it will be hard to see the photos on your phone or whatever device you read on. I’m also not sure how they will come across in email. What do you think? I’ve got four photos of my song sparrow friend below, one the way I usually do it and three in “gallery view”.

Reflections of a song sparrow

More photos of my cute little song sparrow friend climbing on the rocks in the first light of the sun.

Meanwhile the season rolls on. The weather has said January but the sparrows have said November. I’m hoping the drought didn’t reduce their winter food stores too much.

The fox sparrow who is very adept at hiding in the underbrush. I see them rarely and get a decent photo even less often.

Swamp sparrow giving me quite a look!

Our most ubiquitous winter sparrows have returned, the dark-eyed juncos.

Wishing you all the warmth that comes from the best moments in life. Be well friends!