Advent and winter waiting

Advent began beautifully this weekend, highlighted by a phenomenon that we haven't had in quite a while. Each Vigil of Sunday in Advent our tradition is to have the newest postulant carry in the first candle the first week, the youngest novice the second week, the youngest temporary professed the third and the youngest professed the fourth. We've had lots of "substitutes" over the last decade or two but this year---this year---we have all four and it is such a delight. Congrats to our newest postulant Karen who did a fine job this first weekend.

Lots of guests this holiday weekend included at least three groups from Buffalo that I met. All three were asked if they were affected by that horrid lake effect storm and all three said no, and gave us the exact distance it was from them! One said, "I was about five blocks from it." Another said it ended two miles from their house and the third was in downtown Buffalo which was largely untouched! Here, we ended the month at 25" and lost first place in the you-know-what contest. Yeh! We've been down to the pavement all week with no predictions of anything new in the 10-day out forecast.

Here's a huge lake freighter docked at the east pier near our library and Maritime Museum this weekend. Note the fishermen sitting at the open water of the bay.

Nearer to home, a walk in our own woods brought this fallen log covered with fungi.