It's the little things!

The garden is sporting a nice snow cover and the trees in our micro-forest have frost decoration all over! We're all set for Christmas!

Even the black locust we use for coppicing is frosted right up to the tips of the thorns.

Dry and frosty yarrow is clinging to one of our baby fruit trees - it's a part of a herbal guild we're planting at the base of each tree, mainly to make our job easier and encourage discovery and recognition in our children's garden games. More on that in a future post, probably come spring!

All those little details I find beautiful. Nature manages to always amaze without so much of an effort. Winter is a time of slower movement, contemplation and reflection. Nothing like the spring frenzy, there time rarely is enough to stop and enjoy a small and simple thing of beauty, like the tender tendril of the pea plant and the microscopic spider silk on it.

Yet we must! I have vowed years ago to never be in such a rush that I miss a moment or a piece of beauty!

And sometimes, it's not just the aesthetic, but also the little practical things of use that give me great pleasure. Like this simple, all natural, zero maintenance winter bird feeder. In the form of a sunflower plant, left standing in the garden.

Before we started this practice a few years ago, I thought the birds are going to strip the plants bare as soon as they set seed. It turns out those little things, the overwintering birds, are quite clever - they pick only the largest few seeds of each flower and leave the rest for the winter.

During the winter, they come and feed and gradually eat all the seeds, but that usually takes them a few months. They are either rationing, or they have others sources of food and come to our sunflowers only in time of need.

Of course, I write "our sunflowers", but I know the plants are actually for the birds. That's their purpose. And I feel they're connected to our purpose, too - to note and take care of the little things.