Liquid Blessings

It's been raining since 6:30 this morning!  A gentle, steady, soaking, life-giving real rain, not just a misting or a few minutes of hard rain that never soaks into the ground.  It's still raining as I write this at nearly 11:00 p.m.  In addition to the sound of the rain (oh, is there any sound more beautiful?) I can hear the joyous laughter of water in the creek as it flows down to the lake!  That's a sound I haven't heard in nearly two very long years.  Amazingly, for a California mountain rainstorm, there is no wind, so the feral kitties who won't get into their houses with the others, but insist in sleeping on the blanket-padded chairs on the porches, are staying warm and dry.  I'm going to fall asleep to the sound of the rain and the creek, and I think I will sleep well tonight, something else that I haven't done in a long time. 

Bliss...

A Short Break

The cats were conspiring with the ladder to try and kill me, so I decided to take a short break from decorating and go for a walk outside in the forest...where there are bears, mountain lions, coyotes, slippery patches of ice, and giant pine cones that could, and do, fall at any time.  Even so, the forest is safer for me than my cottage when the cats are conspiring!  Thankfully, it usually doesn't take them long to remember who feeds them and the conspiracies come to an end.

I took the above photo on December 22, 2009.  There had been a snow much like the one we just had a few days ago and, while I was out walking, the late afternoon sunlight on the holly leaf caught my eye first, then I noticed the patch of ice crystals on the leaf slowly turning back into fluid water.  When I talk about magic being all around us, this is the kind of magic I'm referring to...nature's magic, so full of wonder and always there, if we pay attention.