Brrr! Winter has landed, or rather sweeping in with wind. Roaring fire in the fireplace, and when I stepped outside for wood this morning, I heard the wintery sound of a hoot owl.

Since this is only the 3rd day of the year, my word for the year–Hope– is fresh in my mind. Very often I forget these good intentions over night, but this time I have not. This is fortunate, because when the boatload of regrets from failures of last year tried to hang on me, the word hope popped into my mind. It came to me rather pointedly that I cannot mull on both regrets and hope at the same time. Can’t be done, just like the fact you can’t get sweet and bitter water from the same faucet. Much better to turn on the hope faucet. Regret stops me, but hope carries me forward.

So forward with a hopeful list of things to do today, beginning here with my writing, and the promise of a bit more later. But first there will be breakfast with home-grown eggs. My chickens are laying about half the number of eggs they were, because of the shorter winter days, but they are still laying enough for us. After that, maybe I will get some Christmas decorations put away. Who besides me still has their tree up?

God bless y’all!