All Year

Well, my plan to go to bed early tonight was derailed, again (by me). So, why not post on my blog since it will count for Monday? So far my November posts have been between 12-4 am, why break the run now?

So, as I mentioned, I love trees. They are so beautiful, most of the year. But then they lose their leaves and look sad and ugly. Of course I notice the beauty of the evergreens more during the winter; that's one benefit of the other trees losing their leaves. And all snow-covered trees are gorgeous, but that's relatively rare. So I have been sad thinking about the pending winter and the pending ugliness of all the trees. I was supposed to be in Houston by now, where trees don't look barren and sad all winter long. That makes facing this winter all the more difficult. But then I thought, hey, why accept the loss of tree-beauty during the winter? Why not learn to find beauty in leafless trees instead? So that's what I've been doing. Most of the trees are still fiery and beautiful with their rainbow leaves, but a few have lost all their foliage already. I have tried looking at them with a new eye, trying to find the beauty in them. You can see their lines and shapes easily, now that they aren't covered by leaves. They are fairly monochrome, which is actually quite interesting. I suspect that now that I've decided that leafless trees are beautiful, I'll begin to see them as such.

(Unfortunately my 'appreciate what God/Nature gave me by not shaving' experiment isn't going so well. I still gross myself out occasionally. It's only been 3 months; I'm not sure if I should stick with it or say 'hey, at least I tried!')