Last Work Day of My Year

Nothing special about this morning's woods.

This morning I got out of bed and tried to remain as quiet as I could.  School is out for the Christmas holiday so Dre' and the boys didn't have to go to school.  I made coffee and piddled around.  (For those of you that are from countries other than the United States, piddle has more than one meaning.  Piddling in this since is to "waste time" doing meaningless, useless tasks and this morning was a great morning for doing just that.) The morning weather was perfectly clear and I drank coffee on the porch while waiting for the sun to rise.  It got cold last night but not as cold as was predicted.  After the sun rose I got myself ready for work and then went for a short walk down the drive and to the edge of the woods.

The lane that leads to our house
winds through the pines

There is still a fair amount of green scattered
around the forest  floor  where the frost
finds it difficult to penetrate the shade to the forest floor.

 The woods were very quiet this morning.  There was almost no wind and even the birds seemed to be clinging to their roosts as long as they could in an attempt to stay warm.  As I walked I snapped a few photos of the beautiful day getting started.  I look at these and I noticed that the morning appears in the photos to be a totally nondescript morning. The sunlight shined brightly through the boughs of the pines as well as the leafless limbs of the hardwoods scattered around the wooded acreage and could have been any morning of the year.  Because the frost finds it so difficult to settle on the forest floor, there is still a fair amount of green scattered around as I walk from place to place on these early morning jaunts.  This is the first day of winter so it will not be long until all that is not evergreen will be faded or gone until spring, but for now shoots of grass and vines remain green until the frost falls hard through the trees and finds them hiding below.

Today, as I started to leave I stopped and snapped a couple more photos before I loaded up in my old Jeep to head for my last official day of work in 2012.

My 18 year-old Jeep waits, like it does every morning, as I ready myself for the commute into town.

Until next time....John