In my mind, I had romantic visual plans for today. I would walk to the park as the first light of Winter Solstice filtered through the trees. The wreath of pussytoes I had created this spring summer would be displayed on the sparse covering of sparkling snow. From there, an airy breeze would lift the seed puffs and disperse them to become future native seedlings living again within their natural habitat. And I would photograph the experience artfully.
Instead, I have just awoken from a noon day nap. The weather app is still clocking in at a sunny and more reasonable -16ºC. The flu/cold I contracted shortly after last week’s dramatic morning-recess-supervision-during-a-snow-squall, is starting to subside, and the only artful thing I have created today is to make myself a sandwich. The bread was stunning both visually and gastronomically; however, you will have to take my word for it. To photograph it now would be suspect: just a plate of crumbs and one small triangle of spinach (by now even that has disappeared).
I am grateful to have this day stretch out slowly, even in its natural light shortness. My memory is stumbling and it is comforting to have a record of terrestrial activities to ground me in the idea that somewhere in my mind, there is a crumb of creativity ready to spring forth and visually express itself again.
And the wreath? Maybe it will show up here again sometime. But not today. There is too much snow right now to think that seeds would make contact with the ground anyway – perhaps future food for a critter instead?
(I see that now I have the option to improve this post with AI. I did not. The only literary crutch I used was a dictionary and thesaurus.)
quietly creating 
Your reflection carries a quiet honesty that feels just as intentional as the vision you first imagined. There’s a tenderness in the way you allow the day to be what it is rather than what you hoped it might become. The abandoned plan isn’t framed as a failure, but as a gentle yielding—to weather, to illness, to the body’s need for rest. That shift itself feels deeply seasonal, very much in conversation with the Winter Solstice you describe.
I love how creativity still finds a way to surface, even in crumbs and small domestic moments. The sandwich, briefly glorious and now gone, becomes its own kind of artwork—ephemeral, unrecorded, but fully experienced. It echoes the wreath and the seeds: beauty doesn’t always need documentation to have mattered. Sometimes it exists precisely in passing.
Your gratitude for slowness and for memory made tangible through “terrestrial activities” feels grounding and wise. There’s reassurance in knowing that creativity doesn’t vanish when it pauses; it simply rests, gathering itself beneath the snow. And the wreath, like the ideas it represents, hasn’t been abandoned—only deferred. Whether it returns as future seedlings, sustenance for a critter, or reappears in another form altogether, it’s still part of a living cycle.
This reflection feels like winter itself: restrained, observant, and quietly alive beneath the surface.
Keep up the great work.