Weekly Photo Challenge – Seasons

The Weekly Photo Challenge hosted at The Daily Post for this week is Seasons and couldn’t help but want to participate.

I love all the seasons! I am so grateful to have lived most of my life in New England where each season is a distinct and a unique time of year. If questioned I would probably say that Spring and Fall are my favorite seasons of the year, as I am more of a moderate weather kind of person. Yet I love the heat of the summer when you can have fun in the sun and play in the ocean or the ‘smell of snow’ and the bitter cold of the winter when you can hibernate by the fire with a good book.

I love the beauty and rebirth of the spring. The joy of shedding layers of clothing and to feel the sunshine on your skin again even if for only a few hours during the middle of the day. The first daffodils of the year with their happy yellow blooms.

I love that I have lived relatively close to the ocean or a body of water most of my life so that in the heat of the summer there is some escape from the oppressive heat that sometime sticks around for a bit longer than we would like in the summer. The ocean is both magnificent and powerful, as well as peaceful and tranquil.

After a long hot summer, I look forward to the chill in the air that creeps in during the fall. The mildly warm days and chilly evenings that require a sweater. I love all the comfort foods that are so tempting and available during the fall. And I can’t wait for Thanksgiving.

And then there is winter. I am one of the few that actually still gets excited about the ‘smell of snow’ and waking up to a blanket of white covering the world and the possibility of snow cancellations. Getting up early with my dogs and going out while it is still snowing and just listening to freshly fallen snow. It has a sound all of its own that is so peaceful.

Winter 2016 has been relatively mild so far…however this ‘season’ of my life has been a season of upheaval, as I lost my Mom at the end of Oct. 2015 and I have been longing for more time to just hibernate and lick my wounds. Yet, this year, we have had unseasonably warm days and few actual snow falls that amounted to anything…which makes for not a very good season of hibernation.

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass