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Two Novembers

Two Novembers

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I knew I would catch it after yesterday’s post, waxing rhapsodic about our “two homes,” about the human need for outside time, for the comfort and the balm of nature.

Yesterday, nature was definitely without her diadem. A stiff breeze bore down on us all day, not enough to reroute the Dulles air traffic but powerful enough to “prune” the trees and make walking a trial. Copper and I ventured twice into the tempest: once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

Here’s a shot I snapped during the latter. I’ll use it to remind myself that, just as we have two homes, so also do we have two Novembers. One is warm sun on the face and the scent of dry leaves; it lures us to sit on the deck stairs and take in the scene. 

The other is what we had yesterday: raw skies and an angry wind. That November has one message for us: go inside! 

Leaf Meal

Leaf Meal

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I borrow this term from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who in “Spring and Fall to a Young Child,” wrote of Goldengrove unleaving and of “worlds of wanwood [that] leafmeal lie.” 

Here is my leaf meal — what is left of the Kwanzan cherry’s foliage, which disappeared in a day. 

I shivered when I saw it, and not just from the chill wind that followed the rain (and which, paired with the rain, brought down the leaves). 

I shivered because looking at that bare trunk I felt winter in my face — and the single-mindedness of seasonal change. 

November Question

November Question

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Warm Novembers confront us with a question: Is it the early darkness that makes the month gloomy — or the cold temperatures? Melville would say the latter, I think, at least he would if we take the famous opening lines of Moby Dick with its “damp, drizzly November in my soul” as proof of where the novelist stood on the matter.

For many of us, though, it’s not just the damp drizzle; it’s also the early darkness, the dying of the light. I saw this first hand in the parakeets yesterday. Lulled into autumnal complacency by the mid-70 temps, I brought the birds out onto the deck to share the glass-topped table with me as I worked. 

They were chattering and happy, doing their best to respond to wild bird calls … until the sun began slanting lower and lower in the sky.  Then, as if on cue, they quieted and calmed, began tucking their heads into their wings. 

Even when it’s warm, the early darkness has its way with us. 

Gathering Rosebuds

Gathering Rosebuds

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The weather gods have given us one more warm day, one more day to walk and bounce and write outside before the cold moves in. It could be 30 degrees cooler tomorrow than it is today.

I can hear the lawnmower outside. Does it only seem more fast and frantic because I’m feeling that way about making the most of this day?

The second bloom roses I’ve been enjoying brought this verse to mind:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

Seasonal Migration

Seasonal Migration

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It’s time for the annual migration. I’m not talking about birds flying south for the winter but of the seasonal switch from shorts and t-shirts to tights and sweaters. 

One thing struck me yesterday as I laundered and folded and ran up and down the stairs carrying warm clothes up and cool clothes down. It was that many of these clothes would be better off going not up or down but out of the house entirely.

How many sweaters and shirts and scarves do I hang onto because I love the person who gave them to me? The answer is … many! 

Yesterday I told myself once again that I need to stop hanging onto these duds. It’s one thing to have papers and books and knick-knacks you cannot bear to part with … but to have clothes that are this way, too, is far more inconvenient. What’s required is a certain ruthlessness. I’m awaiting its arrival. 

New Month

New Month

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The witch hazel tree, first to bloom, is also the first to turn. But this year, other trees are following suit. Cold evenings have also tinged the maples and oaks. 

In the garden, the weeds I haven’t pulled are thinning and retreating on their own. Summer is giving up the ghost.

It’s a new month, an autumnal month. And months matter more in this time of few markers. 

Perfectly Balanced

Perfectly Balanced

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Approximately one hour from now the Northern Hemisphere will leave summer behind and enter fall. While there is plenty of reason to mourn this passage — and I will certainly miss summer— there is something about these days, one in the spring and the fall, these equinox days of perfect balance, that I always admire. 

It has something to do with moderation and tolerance, with being able to hold in one’s mind two opposite thoughts and feelings. Here we are with summer flowers and autumn chill. I like the variety of the day. It is a hinge, a bridge, a passageway.

So instead of concentrating on what we’re losing, I’m going to try and think about what we have today. In this moment we are perfectly balanced: a rarity in nature and in time.

Quiet Sigh

Quiet Sigh

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This morning’s walk gave me a taste of fall: brown leaves on the roadside, thick clouds in the sky. There were fewer people about, and I picked up my pace just to get warm.

Autumn arrives next week, but tell that to the crickets, which are chirping more slowly these days, and to the cicadas, which aren’t chirping at all.

Working outside now, I glance up at the roses that twine on top of the pergola, a few of them in second bloom.  I notice how thinned out they have become, how fragile.

It’s still a humid, green world, but the edges are peeling away to reveal what’s been hidden beneath all the time: the bare trunks of winter, the quiet sigh of fall. 

Like a Sundial

Like a Sundial

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My once-shaded morning spot is now striped with sunlight as greenery thins and light lowers. To listen to the cicadas you’d never know that summer is winding down. They’re as whirring and wonderful as ever. 

But to this stationary human, it’s all in the angles and shadows: not just a later sunrise and an earlier sunset, but countless other reminders based on known shadow points.

Sometimes I feel like a sundial, my movements charted and parsed, my dial controlled by a vast, uncontrollable force. 

Spent

Spent

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The climbing rose is losing its leaves and there are fewer rose hips than last year. Is the plant ailing or just tired after a long summer of heat and humidity? Probably a little of both. But it’s not just the rose; it’s all the plants, the ones that are here, fraying around the edges, and the ones I had hoped to plant … but did not.

It’s that time of year when you realize that what you have in the garden is what you get. The grand dreams of landscaping that were yours for the taking in the heady days of early spring seem silly now. There will be no clematis paniculata planted by the deck stairs, no zinnias by the mailbox. The weeds that once threatened are now welcomed because at least they are green. 

But this is not to sound an entirely disappointed note. There are some gardening success stories this year. The transplanted ornamental grasses are thriving farther down in the yard, beside the fence. And the knockout rose I bought on impulse has made a promising start (even though it will have to be moved, thanks to one of those doing-better-than-expected ornamental grasses). 

Still, it’s time to acknowledge that we’re moving out of the growing season, not into it. Acorns are falling fast and even a few yellow leaves have imprinted themselves on the black springy mat of the trampoline. In a month we will be entering meteorological autumn. Summer … is spent.