December is here — one of those mild cheery days, however, when you can hardly realise that the boughs are indeed bare, and the beds flowerless, and the Spring birds far away; — one of those days which tempt you out into the garden, to saunter and loiter there, and look at the patches that will be snowdrops soon, and to think longingly of leaves where you had before naturally . . . acquiesced in the canopy of bare boughs . . . .”

~John Richard Vernon (British minister; 1833 – 1902) from The Harvest of a Quiet Eye: Leisure Thoughts for Busy Lives