Snow Day Walk

A kiss and a hug (xo) from my snowy walk yesterday in the arboretum.

I had the entire arboretum to myself yesterday. My footprints were the only ones I saw. The roads are not being maintained during the winter, and yesterday was quite snowy. Consequently I think most folks stayed home snug and warm in front of their fire.

This is my favorite tree in the arboretum, sweet Tilly. Her low branches create a green cave in the summer time, sheltering birds and other wildlife. I love how messy and sprawly she looks.

I had never seen the horses active at the Equine Genetics Center barn, but two of them seemed happy to see another creature out in the snowy weather.

I wanted to share a very inspiring quotation from The Accidental Masterpiece; On the Art of Life and Vice Versa, by Michael Kimmelman, which has helped me to open my eyes a bit more to the accidental masterpieces I see around me:

"Art provides us with clues about how to live our own lives more fully. . . . Creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make living a daily masterpiece. . . . Everything, even the most ordinary daily affair, is enriched by the lessons that can be gleaned from art: that beauty is often where you don’t expect to find it; that it is something we may discover and also invent, then reinvent, for ourselves; that the most important things in the world are never as simple as they seem but that the world is also richer when it declines to abide by comforting formulas. And that it is always good to keep your eyes wide open, because you never know what you will discover. The drive to live life more alertly being an instinctive need, whether you are an artist by trade or by desire, the art of seeing well is a necessary skill, which fortunately can be learned.”

I'm going to keep trying to keep my eyes wide open!