Ciao Tutti,

     Come walk with me in winter's garden.  Grab your coat and scarf, and your wool hat if its handy.  Bundled up we'll slip out the door into the frosty air, and head down the road until we come to a little gate in the hedge.  Lifting the latch we enter the magical world of the garden in a season that many forget to come and visit.

     On first glance it might look as through nothing is alive.  That all that exists within is brown, dried, and dead.  But that is one of the secrets of the winter garden...there is a stillness to it, a pause between what was before and what has yet to be created.  The beautiful blossoms and leafy trees and shrubs have all become bare...been stripped back to their essence, but still they remain.  Held in seeds scattered on cold soil, or retreating into the roots beneath the fallen leaves.  Their presence is still there.  The promise of new beginnings is still held.  But first we pause.  Us. And the Garden. In the cold stillness of winter, we stop and listen.  Waiting for the quiet voices to speak from deep within.  Those voices that get lost in the abundance and and colorful displays of summer, become heard in this time of quiet.

What is speaking to you now, in this time of quiet?  What rises up from the stillness wanting to be heard? What have you shed that you want to regrow? What has been left behind to make room for the new? What do you say to the seeds waiting to be planted, to the roots waiting to rise up above the soil?