Go to the winter woods: listen there; look, watch, and ‘the dead months’ will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest. ~ Fiona Macleod

True, not much blooms in December in northern New England (witch hazel is an exception), but there is still a lot to notice in the winter woods — and in the winter fields, streams, lakes, marshes, hillsides, town landscapes.

Some photos taken in the garden, on a walk in Concord NH, and at the nearby lake, from 1-10 December:

In the garden …

Pieris japonica by day and night (5 December) —

Animals on the motion camera —

Fox (2nd, 4th, and 6th Dec)

Deer (1st, 3rd, and 7th Dec)

Birds (mourning doves, blue jays, cardinals) and Squirrels (2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th Dec)

Other garden photos —

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On the Winant Trails, Concord NH … 3rd December

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At the lake …

Stump cairn (1st and 10th Dec) —

Water inflow (1st and 10th Dec) —

Other lake photos —

 

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It was beginning winter.
An in-between time.
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow.

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It was beginning winter.
The light moved slowly over the frozen field,
Over the dry seed-crowns,
The beautiful surviving bones
Swinging in the wind.

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Light traveled over the wide field;
Stayed.
The weeds stopped swinging.
The wind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.

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— “It Was Beginning Winter” by Theodore Roethke