New Urban Habitat

From the rocking chair, I have a perfect view of the tree in our front yard. I’m spending quite a bit of time in this rocking chair lately, sitting next to the fire, and reading books, singing, snuggling, and comforting.

So I’ve watched this tree’s leaves change, day by day, from green to fiery red to shriveled brown crisps. And now the tree is barren – twisted branches reaching toward the white sky.

“It’s perpetually 4 o’clock for half the year,” my husband and I joked when we moved to Oregon. We came from Colorado, a state that boasts 300 days of sunshine a year, and we’d been living in the high, mountain desert.

Everyone warned us about Oregon’s dark winters and relentless rain. A friend from Bellingham, Washington shuddered when I said we were moving to the Pacific Northwest.

But I knew I’d love it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Some people walk in the rain and others just get wet.”

I walk in the rain. I love the sound of it pattering on the metal roof and the way it smells in the morning, and how the drops cling to the ivy, and the way it turns the grass almost neon green by the end of December.

I love that the weather men here have dozens of ways to say it’s going to rain – showers and mists, drenchers and drizzles, spates and sprinkles.

And I love winter – bundling up to go outside, eating soup, the smell of bread baking, the fire crackling, the long evenings and still afternoons.

So I’m enjoying this first cloudy, drizzly day of December.

But, I must say, that tree would look lovely with a layer of Colorado snow.

This post is for Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blog Challenge.