29 Comments

What beautiful pictures.

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Hauntingly beautiful, Paul.

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Your home wears the colors of Christ Pantocrator!

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Thank you for sharing your lovely winter wonderland!! The quiet of early morning frost or snow is one of life’s most magical gifts…may we all be so blessed during this gifting time of year.

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This is what I see in my mind when I read Anglo-Saxon poetry (as described by Eleanor Parker aka clerkofoxford on Twitter and on her blog). She published a book recently called Winters in the World.

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founding

Your words. and even more your photos, remind me that even the coldest cold in Phoenix, Arizona, is not really cold at all. Thank you for sharing a beauty that most would otherwise never see.

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Here on the Cotentin the buzzards are swooping low because of thick freezing mist. The birds are scoffing grub almost as fast as I can replenish it. Hard pruning the hazel trees bordering my field (at last everything is dormant after the weird warmth of November) is yielding half a winter's worth of small logs for next year. The crows are quieter but the owls are noisier. The re-sowing last week of this summer's abundant crop of yellow rattle could not have been timed better. Winter contentment is every bit as nourishing as warm times.

Loved this piece and the pictures. Wishing you a toasty writing space.

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wow, yer house/property looks exactly how I imagined. so cool...

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Lovely to see photos of your local area in the snow ❄️. The silence is palpable.

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As a Canadian I think your -7 cold can be quite devastating as it is a very damp penetrating cold...our sometimes - 20 night's are invigorating for short periods.

Thanks for the Tree's in Crystal so beautiful...they have a kind of 'forever' quality about them.

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author

Very true - it is the damp here in the West that really gets into your bones, as they say. Fire is essential!

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Where are you Jerome? I'm in Elora, Ontario

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Oh, you are rivalling all the great others who put into words the beauty of the 'frozen fog'. I am Canadian and of course, -7 is a scoffable number in my experience, well, except that once upon a time I spent a week in Hebden Bridge and experienced that frozen magic. Even for a cold Canadian, with snow and ice up the ying yang, the frozen water art of the angels in those wet and northern climes is a spectacle of the first degree. You, my friend, did a mighty fine description... I hope you have the grandest of yuletides and all the trimmings in the newest year.

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Upon return from my hike in the foothills this morning in six inches of pristine new snow, I opened the interwebz and found these beautiful pictures of the silence of hoarfrost. I thought my entire Being was going to burst at a second shot of the exquisite generosity of Nature. We all get to live amongst this beauty, and it leaves me speechless.

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“K” for Kingsnorth on the front gate - very nice! :)

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Beautiful; thanks for the feelings and the sense of awe.

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So in edition to great writing your photography of the “transcendent hoarfrost “ is utterly celestial Paul. Amen!

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There's something special about winter. The quiet. The beauty. It's a time to gather friends and family together, and enjoy the warmth of a fire or a hot cup of glögg. (Or under a blanket with one's favorite Substack, as the case may be.)

Thank you for sharing those pictures with us. No snow here west of Chicago just yet, but soon enough we'll be covered in it.

I'm very much looking forward to Part Three in the new year. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

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