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Category: seasons

Stan’s Side

Stan’s Side

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For the last few days I’ve been getting to know an old friend, Standard — Stan for short.

I haven’t seen him since March, but here he is again, and up to his usual tricks: early mornings, early evenings, a sense that darkness is winning. In a way, it’s not his fault. He arrives on the scene just as the light is fading, and departs when it’s coming into its own. He’s left holding the bag.

Some people want to banish him forever. Others think we should get rid of his flashy cousin. Until we do one or the other, Stan will be the sober fellow who says “you really should go home now, it’s getting dark” or “early to bed and early to rise.” 

If you happen to catch him in the morning, though … it’s a different story. Trust me, I know.  

(Two sunrise photos in a row? Stan made me do it.)

Super Scary!

Super Scary!

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Ghosty has been with us for years, a piece of fabric with a stuffed-newspaper head and inexpertly-drawn eyes. He’s been haunting our lamp post for the better part of two decades, and when I at first couldn’t find him in the basement a week ago, I felt bereft.

Compare him with the current crop of Halloween decorations. The 12-foot-tall Skelly, for instance, a plastic skeleton so popular that Home Depot can’t keep it in stock. Or the gruesome, leering werewolf that rears his ugly head from a woods near me. I wouldn’t want to run into him on a dark night.

It’s all fun and games — unless you’re a child with an overactive imagination. Since I was one of those, I feel for the kiddos who see a masked face so scary that a full year later they can’t forget about it.

It’s super-sized Halloween terror, coming soon (already!) to a suburban lawn near you.

(Top photo: courtesy Home Depot)

Autumn Afternoon

Autumn Afternoon

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A late walk through the woods, along the lake, over the bridge, and back to where I started from.

No question what time of year it is. If the leaves didn’t clue me in …

the peg-legged skeleton pirate did. 

But there are still patches of green, remnants of summer left behind. 

Shoulder Seasons

Shoulder Seasons

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What is it about shoulder seasons? Are spring and fall truly more poetic or do they just seem that way? 

“Margaret are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?” wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem “Spring and Fall to a Young Child.”

Autumn and spring are times of great beauty, times when it’s easier to notice the underpinnings of things: the uncoiling of a fern, the thinning of leaves. 

I wonder, too, if spring and fall aren’t times of greater yearning, when we see outside our small worlds to what lies beyond. 

Author Susan Cain would call these seasons bittersweet, “a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.” 

A Reckoning

A Reckoning

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The furnace came on this morning. I smelled the heat before I felt it, slightly acrid but warm and comforting, too. The aroma of thick bathrobes and steaming kettles and stepping inside from a cold rain. 

We could have held out longer, but why? It’s inevitable. The cold is coming. Toughing it out won’t keep it away. 

As befits a day of forced air heat, clouds dominate, and the stillness they bring is welcome. They promise seclusion and concentration and a long writing session. They promise cold, too. 

Backward Glance

Backward Glance

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I know people who extol the beauties of fall — the color, the crispness, the end of humidity — but I’m not one of them. To me there’s always a backward glance at this time of year.

I don’t mind the heat, I relish cicada song, and I love the long days that summer brings.

So on the last day of this summer, I’m reveling in the sun that’s trying to peak through the ever-thickening cloud cover, and I’m savoring the adventures — from Seattle to Scotland and all the places in between.

Summer and Smoke

Summer and Smoke

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For me and for many, summer is a recharging season. A lot of the recharging occurs outdoors. Whether it’s walking the trails, writing on the deck, or dining al fresco, summertime is outside time.

But not this summer. This summer I check my phone first. This morning the air quality index is 153, Code Red. So I’ll write from my office and exercise in the basement. There are plenty of indoor projects — cleaning up decades worth of clutter, for starters. 

I won’t be idle. But I won’t be happy. 

And yet … it’s the way many of the world’s people live everyday, without the privilege of working at (and inside) the home. Missing summer is the least of their concerns. I’ll keep them in mind today.

(Summer in the city, where there was no smoke last week. A tip of the hat to Tennessee Williams for the post title.)

Humidity of Home

Humidity of Home

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It’s not that Manhattan defies seasons, not completely. It can be stiflingly hot there, and bitterly cold. But weather does not rule as it does in other places I’ve lived. 

I remember my first winter in the city, being amazed when snow finally stuck on the pavement. I thought that all the heat underground — the subway, smoke belching from grates — would make it impossible for white stuff to accumulate. It eventually did, of course, but the city itself is an excellent distraction from all things meteorological. 

All this is to say that last week I was ensconced in a season-free bubble, so this week I open my eyes (and my pores) to the new season in town: summer. I know this not just from the calendar, and the writing on the street, but from the humidity, which began building Saturday and is now gearing up for a sticky, months-long run. 

What can I say — it can be miserable, to be sure, but it’s the humidity of home. 

Maybe May

Maybe May

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It’s May Day, the first day of a glorious month, not a holiday in this country but in many others. I used to tell my daughters, if you’re looking for a lovely time of year to be married, the beginning of May is that time. They were married in April, September and December.  So much for motherly advice. 

But what’s interesting about time and weather patterns is that I wouldn’t say this today. A decade or so ago, early May was a reliably beautiful time of year, prime azalea season, iris yet to pop, plenty of color amidst the green. These days it’s unsettled. We might have such a May 1, but more than likely we won’t. This year’s unseasonably warm winter means it’s looking decidedly summery, though it’s quite chilly, an odd combination, to say the least.

We talk a lot about climate change with its serious implications for life on this planet. But shifts in longtime patterns of growth and maturity, planting and harvesting, affect us more subtly too. They prey on our spirits and mess with our minds. 

(An azalea in its prime … on April 14, 2023.)

Kwanzan Up Close

Kwanzan Up Close

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The Kwanzan cherry had barely begun to leaf this time last week. But the warm temperatures of early April have sent it into overdrive. 

I’m spending some time this morning just looking at the tree, observing how the big-fisted flowers bend its branches to earth. 

The Kwanzan is not as ethereal as the Yoshino cherry, which typically blooms a few weeks earlier. It’s an earthier, later blossom.  It’s best photographed up close, I think, against a bright blue sky.