Solstice Greetings!

Day 69: Dance the Holly! Dance the Mistletoe! The Light is now returning, and dark nights swiftly go!

How long will it be before you first remark, "Hmmm...the days must be getting longer?" Even though the length of day will only gain five minutes by January 1, something about the quality of the light registers in the primitive portion of my brain by that date. Like most Pacific Northwesterners, I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder to some degree (some years are rougher than others), and even that slight change is enough to lift my spirits. Although today Winter is preparing to throw its white mantle around our shoulders, the knowledge that we are beginning our climb out of the pit of seasonal gloom can focus our eyes towards Spring. For many of us, this manifests as a renewed interest in seed catalogs with their bright, cheery pictures of rosy-red tomatoes, bouquets of lettuce, nosegays of broccoli and cauliflower. Life, green life, is waiting to leap up from the earth from tiny seeds. My pussywillows know it. Their buds are beginning to swell in joyous celebration of the Light. Join them and me for a happy Solstice, dear readers!