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Category: seasons

DST vs EST

DST vs EST

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There are movements afoot to banish Standard Time, to make Daylight Savings Time the law of the land all year long. Given how little Standard Time we have now (just a little over four months of it), we may as well.

Since I often deal with jet lag these days, to say nothing of early awakenings, it doesn’t make much difference to me either way. I love the long light of summer, but that’s because there really is more daylight to go around that time of year. In the spare season, a time change is the horological equivalent of a comb-over. There aren’t many hours, period. Pretending there are is just sad.

So let’s just pick one time and stick with it. Give up springing ahead and falling back. And given the eight/four discrepancy, it looks like Daylight Savings Time should get the nod.

Damp, Drizzly November

Damp, Drizzly November

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A walk at lunch time yesterday, a dash outside and back before the rain moved in. Crystal City was almost deserted, federal employee haven that it is, so I had the sidewalk almost to myself.

I made my way down to Long Bridge Park and back, Gershwin in my ears, a big, soothing sound.

It was cold enough for gloves but I left them in my pocket. There will be time for them soon. For now I counted on the brisk pace to warm the extremities. And it almost did.

On the way back to the office, I looked up at the sky. The sun was trying to break through. It never quite made it, but I liked the way it was trying, the way clouds gathered and puckered, the pockets of light they let through.

It was a November Monday, not yet the “damp, drizzly November in my soul” that Melville describes in Moby Dick. It was just Monday, just November. The damp and drizzly, that would start a few hours later, would continue on through the night and into the dark morning. I hear the rain now, a steady beat on roof and road.

Survival Plan

Survival Plan

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They’d predicted sun for yesterday, and at first they were right. It was sunny when I woke up and for several hours in the morning. But by midday the clouds had moved in … and they never went away.

It felt like the promise of summer cut short by early winter. The rains of Monday and Tuesday had stripped off many of the leaves, and the bare trunks of winter were out in full force.

It was time for my kind of mood music, for Mendelssohn and Respighi and Dvorak. It was time for a hooded sweatshirt and hands balled into fists pulled up into sleeves. It was time to make chili and turn on lamps in the afternoon.

In short, it was time to enact the winter survival plan. To listen, to light, to cook, to hunker down.

Calm Souls

Calm Souls

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A warm and windy All Souls Day, the trees finally fall-like after weeks of holding their green.

Crows caw, a sound familiar this time of year, which I often think of as a shoulder season, pausing at the top of the roller-coaster, almost time for the cacophony of year-end celebrations.

Many things are different now, with one daughter living far away, but it wouldn’t be a holiday season without a little cacophony, so I think it’s safe to say that will be true this year as well.

I am taking the calm when I can get it, then. The warm and windy calm. The calm that holds within it all matter of rustlings and bustlings. Which is, perhaps, the only kind of calm we can claim.

Warm and Golden

Warm and Golden

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A walk today when the sun was still high in the sky — or as high in the sky as it gets these days.

A walk through tunnels of autumn leaves — or as autumnal as they get around here.

It was a different kind of October, but at times a warm and golden one. Today I felt that warmth in my bones.

Fading Beauty

Fading Beauty

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The wedding was at 5 p.m., but there was time to meander along a Meadowlark Garden trail toward Lake Gardiner, to see the late-summer salvia and coleus, the asters and ornamental grasses.

It had been cloudy most of the day, but the sun had come out a few hours earlier and warmed the air.

With each turn of the gravel trail the eye took in another artful arrangement of fern and grass and frond.

What a balm for the spirit is a mellow fall afternoon, the air just warm enough, the scent of crisp leaves. After the frenetic growth of summer, the fading is welcome. The beauty seems to come from the fading. And there is comfort in that.

Mellow Sunshine

Mellow Sunshine

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Over the weekend, as D.C. reeled from yet another emotional and divisive week, the weather gave us a gift: days of mellow sunshine and low humidity, scant clouds. Not Indian Summer, not yet, because we haven’t had a frost. More like the early September days we hoped for but didn’t receive.

There’s a thinness in the air this time of year that allows us to enjoy the warmth, not dread it.  I remember feeling this thinness while doing homework in early September during grammar school. Sitting on the front stoop, wearing my green-and-gray-plaid uniform and a too-tight pair of saddle shoes or penny loafers, still in love with my cartridge pen with peacock blue ink.

Somehow, those memories are all mixed up with the feel of the September air, not quite fall but not quite summer, either. A glorious in-between time.

That’s what we had this weekend, even though we’ve just entered October, what we’re promised through the week. If you listen closely you’ll hear a collective sigh of gratitude.

Faded Rose

Faded Rose

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We’re at that point in the season when the bright hue of autumn leaves has not yet arrived and the muted palette of late summer prevails. Sedum and asters, the faded rose of late-blooming crepe myrtle.

All that’s left of clematis paniculata are the spent blossoms of the tiny white flowers.

And then there are the shaggy meadow flowers, the golden rod and Joe Pye Weed.

It’s easy to wander long amidst the subtle shades of this subtle season.

Fall Wish List

Fall Wish List

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On this first day of fall, I wish for …

Blue skies,

Brilliant fall foliage,

And a crispness to the air,

Which is more difficult to picture, but which means …

It needs to stop raining for a while!

Smelling the Roses

Smelling the Roses

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In the last few days, summer has caught up with itself. Mornings have been cooler with that steady thrum of insect noise that you don’t notice until it goes away in the fall.

To be able to work outside with the heat building, cicadas crescendoing and every so often a stray idea making its way into my brain … well, it’s very good indeed.

When I need to take a break, I dead-head the roses, lean down and sniff the ones that are still blooming. Then I let my gaze shift to blank and stare out at the green and oh-so-weedy backyard.

Nothing is perfect, it seems to say, but look what less-than-pefect gets you.