Morning moments

This morning I took my sister and a friend of hers to the airport. They had a flight taking off at 7:30 am and we left home at 5:30 when it was still completely dark – and freezing cold, -23.5°C (-10°F).

When I returned it had turned to twilight and the street lights were just dying away. I was lucky enough to witness my first sunrise this year. It was about 7 am but I couldn’t stand the cold and only stopped for a few moments by our mailbox to admire the glow before rushing indoors to the warm house.

Recently, we’ve had rather typical late winter weather with cold nights but mild days with sunshine and a temperature close to the freezing point. There is finally some hope of the thick snow blankets melting.

As for the sun, we would absolutely want our next home to have an unobstructed view to the east, as well as to the west. We now have a row of high spruce trees by the eastern side of the house. They serve as a windbreak, which is sometimes much needed on an open location such as that of our house surrounded by fields. The trees also provide a home for quite a number of birds and other wildlife.

This morning I spotted two of the tenants having their sunflower seed breakfast under the bird feeder hanging from the apple tree visible from our kitchen window. The squirrel and a couple of blackbirds have been regular visitors under the spiral-trunked tree. As we haven’t had any snowfall for a week or so, the spot is starting to resemble the Ai Weiwei work we saw in London at Tate Modern last year. But some of these seeds will grow into sunflowers in a few months.