“The library was a mighty hall, lighted from the roof, which was formed of something like glass, vaulted over in a single piece, and stained throughout with a great mysterious picture in gorgeous colouring. The walls were lined from floor to roof with books and books. All around the walls, in front of the books, ran galleries in rows, communicating by stairs. These galleries were built of all kinds of coloured stones; all sorts of marble and granite, with porphyry, jasper, lapis lazuli, agate, and various others, were ranged in wonderful melody of successive colours. Over some parts of the library, descended curtains of silk of various dyes, none of which I ever saw lifted while I was there; and I felt somehow that it would be presumptuous in me to venture to look within them. But the use of the other books seemed free; and day after day I came to the library, threw myself on one of the many sumptuous eastern carpets, which lay here and there on the floor, and read, and read, until weary.”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

A perfect autumn day for a walk through the woods.

“The window was built with a low arch, and filled with lozenge-shaped panes. As soon as I looked out of the window, a gush of wonderment and longing flowed over my soul like the tide of a great sea. Fairy Land lay before me, and drew me towards it with an irresistible attraction. The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in motionless rivers of light.”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

“I lay and looked through the eastern window of my room. The curtains of pale blue silk fell like a cataract over the windows. A large green marble basin, which stood on a low pedestal in a corner of my room, was overflowing like a spring, and a stream of clear water was running over the carpet. And where this carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow.

“My dressing-table was of black oak, with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carved in foliage. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of ivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the next looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy. I saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed were slightly in motion. Springing from the bed, my bare feet alighted upon a cool green sward; and I found myself under the boughs of a great tree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many interchanging lights.

“Faint traces of a footpath, much overgrown with grass and moss, were discernible along the right bank. ‘This,’ thought I, ‘must surely be the path into Fairy Land”.’

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

A winter version of Little House in the Big Woods.

The coming year in perspective.

An image of peace and safety in the midst of turmoil and danger.

This is my digital artwork, not a photograph.

I love playing with water and other refractive materials in the sunlight.

I love mornings with lots of dew on the grass.

This is my digital artwork, not a photograph.

The early bird gets the berry! I love winter landscapes, expecially with a little red in them. And I'm always trying to get snow and crystals to sparkle and refract light. And I also love chickadees :-) So this was a natural combination!