There's a big empty space in my living room now. My middle son came home this weekend and helped me pack up the memories and cart the tree downstairs to its place in the storage room. (Daniel also helped Tom cut and carry firewood. We love it when he comes home!)
Usually my rocking chair sits in that empty space the rest of the year, the old wooden one we bought at Sears in my first pregnancy…the one I spent hours in, rocking my babies in the middle of the night. As we do every year, we moved it into my library/office to make room for the tree.
I'm thinking of keeping it there; I need a place to sit and read, and I love rocking in it, even if I don't have a baby to soothe to sleep.
Rocking is good for the soul at any age, don't you think? And I didn't rock nearly enough when the chair sat in the living room.
Actually, I feel like I have a big empty space in my head right now, too, thanks to a blossoming case of Cedar Fever… or maybe it's from the antihistimines I'm taking to combat it.
It's mating season for Ashe Junipers, commonly called mountain cedars, and we're surrounded by them; the slightest breeze makes pollen explode from the trees in huge clouds that drift straight to your nose and eyes, making you sneeze and wheeze and want to scratch your eyes out.
Alas, these warm winter days I love makes the pollen even more amorous!
I blame my antihistimine/Cedar Fever brain fog that I haven't posted this handful of small stones yet…
#19: The sun drops behind the hills, splashing salsa on a blue-corn-tortilla-sky.
# 20: Spending time with old friends helps patch the worn spots on the fabric of your soul.
# 21: Under the moon's eye, even the road whispers.
# 22: Treetops, drizzled with sunlight.
#22.5 Fresh blooms, budding trees, and the smell of new-mown grass, wrapped in the trill of bird song, a gift of spring in the middle of winter.
I took the above photo this morning…our typical path right smack dab in the middle of those dang cedars. But as miserable as they make me, and as much as everyone curses them, I love them, if only for the splashes of green they offer when everything else has gone gray and dormant.
Have you picked up any small stones lately? Please share!
Long Hollow 
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