Winter on the Internet

It's December 15th today, and the high in our corner of Virginia is an annoying 66 degrees. To drum up some Christmas spirit against the unseasonably warm, rainy weather, here:

A Brit's reverent take on winter and Christmas in America's Little House books.

A teaser and a trailer for an upcoming BBC nature series. Don't miss the teaser, which features Attenborough reading the lyrics to "What a Wonderful World" against some really fantastic animal kingdom visuals. Though if you're looking for inspiration in a more chilly-weather vein, watch the trailer. Frozen Planet! I shiver deliciously at the thought. I've always had a thing for icebergs and whales.

Images of Christmas via food, tree ornaments, and - my favorite (also below) - cinnamon crisp winter leaves. I don't bake in this woman's style, so I rarely read her prose or recipes. But my goodness! Her photography. Christmas spirit, indeed. In addition, the deliciously foggy images over on this gorgeous blog (of felt ornament fame) today.

And what is a December without hand-crafted wood items and books? Everything in these pictures makes me happy. All of it wants to find a home in my house.

Perhaps most inspiring and lovely of all, Kirsten Dierking's poem "Shoveling Snow" on today's Writer's Almanac. Read it slowly in a hushed moment. "how radiant snow is a dream / like leaving behind the body / and rising into that luminous place / where sometimes you meet / the people you've lost."

Happy mid-December morning to you all!

 

                                            "How

silver branches scrawl their names

in tangled script against the white"

~ Kirsten Dierking, "Shoveling Snow"