Winter sky.

I heard this quote on The Writer's Almanac this morning and liked it:

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing." -William James.

It was a bitter cold day here--19 degrees when I left the house at 7 AM--and I feel like I never did get warm today. My feet, especially, have just been freezing all day. I do like the clear sky when it's very cold, though--shades of blue and lavender and gray, with pinks in the early morning and early evening. You can see the lines of the tree branches against the light sky, it's so beautiful.

We have a small hawthorne in the front yard that shot up from a dropped seed several years ago, and it has become what I think of as "the bird tree" with anywhere from three to thirty birds on it at a given moment, all perched with their feathers puffed up like little pincushions. Since the tree is completely naked and the branches are very straight and streamlined, the birds really stand out. I suppose I should scatter some seed for them, but then I'd have sunflowers coming up in the flower beds all summer long.

I didn't take the above picture, I found it on Flickr, but it does look a lot like what I see in the neighborhood every day. Maybe this week I can get a good shot of the bird tree, if I bundle up and sit very still on the front porch!