A new day 12-26

For me Christmas has always been a celebration of giving and I have always been sensitive to its connection to the shortest day of the year.  Once Christmas day is done it is time to get all the decorations put away that brightened the shortening days and now that the days are getting longer to get ready for the new year.  Having an artificial tree there isn't the raining danger of needles littering my home so I didn't have the driving need to get it out of my house.  In years past I have even taken the tree down on Christmas day.  As the box for the ornaments was way, way, w-a-y out in the shop I didn't feel compelled to do anything about the tree today. 

I did have a fresh outlook on the state of my art room and spent the day in there moving the table into a more favorable position, cleaning out drawers and emptying the last boxes from storage.  I reacquainted myself with old unfinished art projects and supplies that had gotten buried and found everything its own niche.

I entertained the idea of taking a walk, but that breeze that was blowing out there was too brisk to entice me out there.  At one point one of the coffeeberry shrubs was attacked from the air today instead of by the usual hoofed grazers.  A large flock of robins and others that I couldn't identify until I took a picture and zoomed in on the computer.  The other birds were cedar waxwings and even a flicker or two were chugging down the ripe red berries.  The quail were scuttling around too....it was a feathered smorgasbord.

It saddens me how we humans take for granted the indigeneous plants in an area that we move into.  In our frenzy to protect ouselves from fire or to mold our plot of land into an english garden we mow down every plant that has fortified the wildlife for lifetimes.  As much as we disliked the weeds...because we waited long past the seeds ripened before we obtained our mower the birds and squirrels were busy all summers end and fall eating the fallen seeds, which in turn we enjoyed watching them do.  Same with the coffeeberry shrubs...the berries are bright and beautifully "christmassy", the deer eat the leaves and the berries and even the bark.  Yet people will cut every last shrub off the land.  I noticed these shrubs growing all along the freeways in the bay area when we were through this last time and I had never really given them much notice before. 

This evening we have been getting heavy rainfalls again and later this week we are going to get very cold again...yuck.  Good thing I have gotten my studio in order...