liquid amber leaves
Terri Webster Schrandt

Sunday Stills: The Impossible #Brightness

sunset

“I love the autumn…when the sky at sunset preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered grass…” – Gustave Flaubert

This week, as we begin Thanksgiving festivities, our days are shorter, our nights longer, and temperatures are dropping each day. To combat the growing darkness, let’s celebrate “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” I’m sure many of us are familiar with these words from the quote/song, which came to mind as I prepared my Sunday Stills themes for November.

“All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.” ~ Bright and Beautiful, William H. Monk, 1887. Copyright status is Public Domain.

But first, a cautionary note to bloggers:

Although the lyrics shared above are from the song and are now in the Public Domain, I chose not to publish more than the song’s refrain. If you haven’t read Hugh’s latest post, please click the link and read the sad truths about insidious scams relating to copyright infringement and so-called “free” images.

The Latest Blogging and Publishing Scams by Hugh Roberts

Autumn’s Bright Colors

We enjoyed an extended autumn here, and the trees were bright with colors for weeks! All things must fade, but it was a fabulous show!

autumn berries
Rowan Ash Tree
Overgrown Suburban Maple Tree
Overgrown Suburban Maple Tree

As we sink deeper into late fall and winter here in the northern hemisphere, seasonal depression (SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder) may haunt you like it does me with the lack of sunlight and cloudy days. Although the holiday season is upon us, giving us things to look forward to, mid-January might be fraught with unmet expectations and boredom.

desert sunrise
Dramatic desert sunrise

The last three Januaries found us traveling to Arizona, but we plan to stay home in 2026 and enjoy a snowy winter. Yes…enjoy!

To combat SAD, I bought a natural light-therapy lamp. 30 minutes in the morning with my coffee does the trick, and the effects are felt immediately.

Sunlight Lamp
Sunlight Lamp View

Or perhaps it was this bright cup of coffee…

coffee orange mug

…But I was revived and energetic most of the day.

Bright is the Night

Two weeks ago, the Earth experienced another intense geomagnetic storm on both Nov. 11 and 12. You know what that means…northern lights! We’ve had occasional fog and clouds since September, and we’ve missed several opportunities to see the aurora here in Eastern Washington.

northern lights
Aurora Nov 12

“The aurora occurs when charged particles from solar flares interact with molecules in the Earth’s magnetosphere, creating bursts of light.” TIME.com

Eruptions of solar energy known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have been hammering the Earth’s atmosphere. Nov. 11th show was a G-4 level (8.7 Kp index).

red glow aurora

Red lights filled the skies with impossible brightness even through the wispy clouds still on the horizon. The red glow was visible to the naked eye in our very dark part of rural Eastern Washington.

The farther north one lives in the Northern Hemisphere, the more likely one is to see the entire spectrum of color with the naked eye. Otherwise, smartphone cameras do a fine job of capturing colors!

red aurora
Bright Red Aurora

The Nov 12th show was visible for only a few minutes in our area due to increasing rain clouds.

Perhaps the autumn brightness is over until next year, but she put on a fantastic show of colorful leaves in 2025. Meanwhile, we can continue to look within ourselves to discover what is bright and beautiful.

Sharing this week for Becky B’s November Shadows, Dawn’s Festival of Leaves, and Johnbo’s Cellpic Sunday.

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Sunday Stills Photo Challenge Reminders

The Sunday Stills weekly-themed photo challenge is easy to join. You have all week to share and link your post. Please use your own original images, whether new or from your archives.

  • Remember to title your blog post a little differently from mine.
  • Please create a new post for the theme or link to a recent one.
  • Entries for this theme can be posted all week.
  • Tag your post “Sunday Stills.”
  • Don’t forget to create a pingback to this post so that other participants can read your post.
  • I also recommend adding your post’s URL to the comments.

“Autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year.” – Mary Russell Mitford

alpenglow
Sunset Alpenglow Looking East

If you are participating in the photo challenge, I look forward to seeing how you interpret this week’s theme! Creativity is encouraged, so please share your own photographs (old or new), poems, original short stories, and music inspired by the theme. Join me next week as we explore the season’s rich textures!

For those enjoying late spring and summer in the Southern Hemisphere, share your bright and beautiful images with us!

Urban Turkeys taking a walk

Wishing everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving this week a wonderful holiday and time with friends and family!

For the planners, please visit my Sunday Stills Challenge page for the December schedule.

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© 2025 Copyright — Terri Webster Schrandt and secondwindleisure.com — All Rights Reserved

All content on this blog is copyrighted. Please do not repost or reblog without my permission.

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114 comments

  21. Gorgeous colors, Terri, and I love the sunlight lamp. I don’t suffer from SAD, but I dislike the time change. I shared Hugh’s link, as well, since I feel it is very important to bloggers. 🧡

    Liked by 1 person

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  23. I don’t suffer with SAD, but I’ve heard it is a very common occurrence, Terri. I’ve seen the SAD lamps for sale and I’m glad they help. Fortunately, the mornings are still light here, so I don’t mind the clocks going back. If they hadn’t gone back it wouldn’t get light until 09:30 – far too late for me.

    Those autumn colours are wonderful especially the suburban Maple tree, and you’re so lucky to have seen the Northern Lights again. With Christmas on its way, our nights are now lit up with brightly colour festive lights. By the time they come down, the days will be getting longer again.

    Thanks so much for linking and mentioning my recent ‘Copyright’ post.

    Happy Thanksgiving.

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Thank you, Hugh! Im glad you are spared from SAD. Seasonal depression is annoying, but can be quite serious for many. Our first light here is 6:30 but now dark by 4:30. It’s what it is.
      Always happy to share great information for bloggers. I was pleased the lyrics for “Bright and Beautiful” are in the public domain. Enjoy your week!

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  33. Lots of bright things here Terri! Your colorful trees are competing with the Aurora in your neck of the woods. As we both commented about a few weeks ago, we had the Aurora here and parts of Michigan saw a lot of colors lighting up the night sky. Dawn (“Change is Hard”) posted some of her photos taken in her backyard. I follow a meteorology site that has installed weather cameras all over the state and they also use those cameras to give Aurora sightings in real time. Then they compiled the pics people sent in for each of the most-vibrant days. So, I got to see the skies light up that way. I also used the same poem as you, attributed in my post to Cecil Frances Alexander, just the first two lines and have used it in several past blog posts as well, but all pertaining to animals. In today’s post I referenced the PBS series, as today’s post is revisiting Council Point Park and its flora and fauna, notably the squirrels.

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    • I’m glad several bloggers got to see the auroras, Linda. Its totally dark in our rural area, only the metal shop light compete with the lights. I’ve learned how to aim higher with my lens at the dark and shoot willy-nilly. Many get deleted! My aurora app also shows live-cam footage in Canada, the arctic and lands to the north. A blogger who lives in Australia saw the southern lights!!

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      • Yes, Dawn was lucky and sat in the backyard on a lawn chair in the cold with a coat on – it was pretty cold that week. You’re lucky you don’t have a lot of light pollution and can see the big lightshow. How cool that Australia saw the southern lights!

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    • Thank you, Janis! We were put and about in North Spokane last week and I saw the various bright orange leaves and berries–of course I used google Lens to figure it out.

      We are going to visit south in late February and most of March and will likely be in SD for a few days. We’ll definitely get together and I’ll keep you posted 🙂

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  50. Excellent photos, Terri. I love the Maple Tree full of vibrant color and the contrast of the sidewalk and sky. A lovely angle and frame too. Autumn is such a fabulous season; I enjoy this time of year.

    Happy Thanksgiving in advance.

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