My Photo Journal: A Quiet Start to January

Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too?
When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself,
it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart
and causing it to crumble into ruins.
Gustave Flaubert
A cold wind was blowing from the north,
and it made the trees rustle like living things.
George R.R. Martin
I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future
- the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there.
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape
- the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.
Andrew Wyeth

December and January have been very quiet months for us. Usually spent in celebration with a flurry of birthdays and holiday get-togethers, we were instead filled with listless introspection, downcast by the passing of my father-in-law in November while also being plagued with health/pain problems.

Christmas and New Year were spent mostly walking in woods and along wintry lanes. These pictures were taken in Darlington Provincial Park. Trudging up to the wind-swept beach, we saw this tiny little giraffe braving the cold. He did make us smile and provided a glimmer of warm-weather activities. I hope his owner comes back to collect him when the weather improves!
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,
just as things grow in fast movies,
I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Free Garden Clipart for Collage, Graphic Design, Papercrafts or Scrapbooking: Conversations in the Garden 8

Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.
Guy de Maupassant

A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.
Diana Vreeland, D.V.

Vintage illustration of two ladies having a conversation in the garden from 1857. 4.25 x 5.5" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here. Larger image size available for licensing. Please inquire.

Creative Commons Licence
From my personal collection of ephemera. These images are to be incorporated into your creative endeavors and not for resale or re-distribution "as-is". Please credit FieldandGarden.com as your source when sharing or publishing.

Printable Vintage Art: Swans by Bruno Liljefors

Swans, 1918
by Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939)

There was something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

He thought that she looked like Winter; meaning both the girl he had once known and the season. He had always believed that winter's beauty deepened further into the season, when the memory of fall and the promise of spring were stripped away and there was nothing to do but accept the day-in, day-out reality of what winter entailed. This was what he thought when he looked at her: that the embattled woman before him was a wonder to behold, and, as much as he wished he might have spared her the pain of the last eleven years, it contributed to her spellbinding presence.
Ben Spencer, Many Savage Moons

Painting originally found on Wikimedia. Digitally enhanced version of the painting as a 10" x 8" @ 300 ppi JPEG here.

Creative Commons Licence
Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: Botanical Illustration of Lonicera reticulata (Grape Honeysuckle)

Lonicera reticulata (commonly known as grape honeysuckle), 1868
by Abraham Jacobus Wendel (1826–1915)

You can download the antique botanical illustration above as a high-res 4" x 5" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here. Public domain, colours digitally enhanced.

Creative Commons Licence
Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.