The Natural Christmas Tree

On December 23 of last year, I looked out my living room window at the red oak tree outside. It still had a few leaves on it, scattered on spreading branches.

Rain had frozen on the leaves, so that they had ice on them. The sun came out from the west behind the tree and shone on the leaves, making little gold lights which moved and glistened in the wind.

Then, as the sun went further down, there was more orange and the leaves looked like small candle-fires burning all over the tree, very lively and in motion. The sky behind the tree was very light blue and white, so that the tree really stood out. The "candles" kept shining brightly for a good fifteen minutes.

There were then bands of white clouds brightly lit from below, which blew out of sight to the east, and what was left was a vivid blue sky, like a summer sky, until a gentle orange appeared, and then a deep orange just before sunset.


Note: This is my last and final posting at Nature Ontario, as I have now covered all of the topics which I had planned at the beginning. These postings will be here until the blogsite provider decides to remove them, so now is your chance to read or print out any you may want. Thank you for your interest.