Another holiday season, another New Year, another birthday. Looking out the window, looking in the mirror, evidence of time, evidence of change.
A curious time of year, isn’t it – mid-January? A sort of vague limbo between the festivity of the holidays and the exuberance of spring. A lull, and a seemingly dull lull at that. The bleakness of winter, the sad browns and tans and grays, feel settled in. Skies of ashen pallor refuse admittance to precious extra moments of light.
Perhaps our least beautiful month, here in the Northern Hemisphere. The search for beauty costs more effort with less reward. Or at least it seems.
So in this curious month, on this curiously neutral day, I became curious about the illusive qualities of beauty and what those in essence might mean. As always, a consultation with a dictionary provided a quite wonderful definition:
beauty
1. The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness and originality.
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Truthfulness. Originality.
Not merely physical perfection. Deeper qualities that transcend time and age and weather.
And as I looked out on winter camellias in bloom and the very first shoots of the early narcissus peeking up in the woodland garden, snow began to fall, and in a few hours all was soft and white and puffy and pristine, reflecting light along all the garden paths and into each window in the house. 
And in seeking beauty, unexpectedly, it found me. Perhaps January is our most beautiful month, after all.
xo – g
• • • •
p. s. I’m honestly overwhelmed with your supportive comments and lovely words on my article in Somerset Life. Thank you to each one of you, more than I can say. I will see about posting it in full here for those of you outside the US who don’t have access to the magazine.
Wishing you a beautiful second week of the year!
p. p. s. (The water reflections were created in Photoshop with the Flood filter by Flaming Pear.)
Dear Georgianna, this photos are stunning! What beautiful colors!!!!
I love your photos!
Wish you a wonderful wednesday!
Hugs,
Yvonne
Gosh! G this is simply gorgeous!!!
your photos are simply breath taking!
I give you a stylish blogger award…Just follow this link(http://lilacheck.blogspot.com) to know more about it G.
hugs
lila
Dear Georgianna, these photos are great! Thanks for mentioning the name of the filter.
I would be very interested in reading the full article!
Dear Georgianna, How Beautiful! Pictures and thoughts! Just what I needed this morning. Thank you.
Wonderful photos that really makes me long for spring and such beautiful words. It is snowing a lot here today and I have not been able to see the ground since the beginning of November. So thanks for reminding me and for giving me hope – that there will be spring even this year :) Pure beauty!
Oh lovely G, I love your photos today — camelias are one of my favourite things to pick from the garden, float them in water….gorgeous.
My favourite today is the one with the bottles…perfection.
x
Bonne Annèe
Suzi
what a great filter…..i checked out their website and can just imagine the cool pictures you could get with it….i am loving the bokeh in your last two pictures, its really beautiful
do you really have flowers blooming outside already?? we just got another 4 inches of snow here last night and will not have ANYTHING in bloom until april :(
have a wonderful wednesday, g……
hugs, cindy
Hi Georgianna,
Beautiful! So,you already have signs of life in the garden-that is so much earlier then here on the Island.I will enjoy seeing your garden come to life while I wait for mine.
Congratulations on being featured in Somerset Life-I look forward to seeing it. Your pictures would be a lovely addition to any good magazine.
Take care,
Carolyn
What a lovely post, and as always such beauty to go with it!
Love coming here!!!
Exquisite photos. I really love the reflections and the softness to the photos. Happy Birthday. I have heard that some gardeners around here have seen snowdrops coming up. I have been thinking of gardening lately so getting edgy for spring. Enjoy the day. V
Oh so beautiful, I love them all! Thank you so much for sharing! :)
like always so touched and so true, my dear friend…the right for me to begin my work here again online…and i love it always to start with reading your thoughts…;)…thanks and i´m looking of a wonderful time with you and your gorgous photography here in 2011…its fine to be back…have a lovley creative and exciting second week in january…for me an wonderful month to begin new adventures, or?…a big hug from rainy germany…cheers and take care…i…
ohhh aren't reflections soo beautiful!?? i absolutely adore the first photo, the colors are amazing!! :)
HI Georgianna, you and are flowers are a beautiful couple. Your eye and composition creates magic. Carla
Love what you had to say about beauty, Georgianna. Even in the midst of shoveling even more snow today, I was taken by the beauty of the landscape.
xo
Claudia
Another birthday??? Another birthday!?!?! What? Did I miss it. Oh – that's bad of me.
Happy, happy birthday, my friend. May the coming year be rich and full and wonderful. I love you, I love you, I do.
congratulations :) oh oui, you have to post it !! georgannia, i love winter and wish i was living where you are because your photos of the snow look divine to me and can "listen" to the silence … sigh !
Hi G
It is so refreshing to see your magic with peonies while mine are fast asleep beneath the snow. The reflection is an amazing photo.
Do share your emerging life in the garden since I won't see anything here for a couple of months yet.
Judith
First off, Happy birthday (again). And really, you have Camellias blooming already? Or are those shots from last year.
I do love it when I see them start to come out, but looking out my window right now, mine are nowhere near ready!
I can never decide which month is my least favorite, Jan or Feb. Both are rather blah for me!
Once again, beautiful photos to see! A feast for the eyes. Happy Birthday, I hope you had a wonderful day for it, and did everything you wanted to do for it! I love your photos here, thank you for sharing them!
Dearest sweet g, your work makes me happy and i feel like im on cloud 9 each time i look at all your beautiful photos! I hope you had a wonderful merry happy birthday celebration! You are amazing! Wishing you a lovely merry happy day and love to yoU!
… all that you do, is sweetly imbued with the essence of beauty. Sigh…
I JUST read about that filter in a photography book tonight! I wondered if that's what it was…great job. So excited for you that you have color growing in your yard already…
Hello friend,
I enjoyed some delightful "me time" in the bookstores a couple of days ago, reading through your Somerset article. Your storytelling is so fluid, complimenting your photos so nicely. Truly enjoyed my time with you via Somerset. Thanks for bringing such beauty on this grey January day here in London.
Cheers,
Debi
Wonderful words of reflection my lovely friend and such beauty you have captured in your photos. It is so amazing how sometimes the things we search for have a unique way of finding us!
Enjoy you beautiful days of winter Georgianna. xxx
This is truly beautiful (both words and pictures). I'm so happy that I can come and visit your beautiful world – I've heard that the camellias are flowering in the winter gardens here but I'm not able to grow any myself. Gorgeous light you found too! January has definitely brought us some beauty. Today was an extraordinary day with light blue sky and trees covered in snow.
Have a lovely week! xo
Ps. Your birthday? In case it was I hope you had the best of days…
oohh Georgianna I'm so happy here!!
please I wrote your name in my blog for an Award,like Lila! I love your pictures!
monica
Your camellias are so heavenly! You've captured their beauty and elegance to perfection. I think I recall that camellias represent sincerity, among other things, which adds to the lovely images you have shared with us.
Thank you Georgianna!
Love,
Sherilyn
Lovely pictures as usual, am really glad that you mentioned the use of photoshop for reflection. That's very honest!
And I enjoyed reading the text as well, beauty especially is such a difficult term to explain. I have been planning to write a post of its perception for long…
Amazing camellias, so delicate! And beautiful water reflections, looks so natural! Thank you, my Dear G, for a fresh breath of Spring softly coming from the last 2 images… Sigh!
p.s. Oh, it would be simply great if you could share a Somerset article here… can't wait! :D
Beautiful … simply beautiful! We needed that!
Lovely. The reflection is beautiful, and I would have never guessed you created that with a filter in PS.
Hoii, kom hier via via op jou blog ga je volgen, wat mooi zeg prachtig die foto's!!
fijn weekend groet Stina
You have now given me a visual for one of my favorite e.e. cummings poems [in time's a noble mercy of proportion] I find your prose above is so fairy-like and sweet that January, this morning is truly the most beautiful month. I thank-you for being that lit soul to bring these thoughts to fruition. Blessings friend.
After a blog fast of sorts, I decided to visit yours today. Seems as though you have been up to all sorts of goodness – and I can't wait to go back and savor all I've missed these past few months (eek, has it really been that long!?!).
Interesting that your most recent post is a reflection on beauty, because I consider your blog and work a "beauty oasis" and tend to visit when I most need a good hardy helping of Beauty.
Beautiful photos … as always. :) Do you have camellias blooming? They are such gorgeous flowers. It will be at least another two months before I'll start to see shoots coming up in the garden. These dark, gray days are hard and light is rare but so welcome when it comes!
Have a wonderful week, dear G.! xo
Hi Georgianna! Happy Belated Birthday!!
Wonderful post with beautiful macros!!
Thanks for your comments at Blogtrotter Two, where the Nile 2010 is coming to an end! But the temple of Philae surely deserves a comment… ;)
Enjoy and have an excellent Sunday!
More incredible beauty! :)
I do love January. Quiet. Serene. The light on frost and snow. Everything is so soft and beautiful!
Wishing you a lovely week ahead, g.
You create such magic with not only your images, but your words as well g. And always with such thought and meaning. You leave me entranced! If I have a dull moment in winter, it is gone quickly after coming to visit you. Please do post some from the Somerset piece of your work… I know you were truly thrilled about being in their publication. I am so happy for you! Love you, Dianne
hello my dear…thanks for your lovley comment and it would be exciting when you could read our sketchbook on his tour around america…it will be also an exhibition in Seattle in june (10-12 june) in the form/Space Atelier…so mabye you have time…its a journey around the year…;)…and i will show some more pics also on our blog the next time…hopefully you have a great creative week…take care…cheers and hugs…i…
Wishing you a Happy Birthday G. It is a tough month I am finding, we are having such dark days, with no sunshine at all, really hard to work without natural light and depending on lamps to work by during the day. But the glimpses of your narcissus gives me hope. I planted a lot of tete a tete rather late last season so I am just hoping they will appear. Hugs, Catherine x
beautiful as always…
These pictures are truly magical, Georgianna! LOVE the post :)
dear Georgianna, all your images give me so much pleasure to my mind and senses, this is beauty!!!!
Lovely camelia!!!
hugs my dear
The water reflections are just soooo cool! I can't believe it's photoshop, lol. I prefer to think you caught it just as is, and I bet you could, too!
Simply perfect! I have no other words! I am really impressed!