Two Novembers

Two Novembers

Comments 0 Comment

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! 

Two Homes

Two Homes

Comments 0 Comment

As the light fades, the sounds change. Instead of birds flitting through azaleas, squirrels scamper through leaves. The sound of autumn is the sound of rustling, of animals circling to find their resting places.

We humans, too, take our clues from the light. First our plants come in, then we do, too, reluctantly in the beginning but eagerly in the end. Back to these houses that are both balm and bait, which cushion our captivity with heat and comfort, with down pillows and warm baths.

Once inside, we will forget the wild world where Blue jays cry and ants crawl slowly up the pergola post. Our spirits will flag without that knowledge.

And then, one warm winter afternoon, we will sit in the sun on the top of the deck steps. We will sniff the earth again and feel stirred by the same breeze that eddies the crushed leaves. We will know then that we have two homes, and we do best when we live in both of them.

Musical Chores

Musical Chores

Comments 0 Comment

I’m always listening to music while walking with my iPod, but until recently I’d lost the ability to blare symphonies or musicals or folk tunes at home. But now, a jerry-rigged system is once again filling the house with sound. 

On Saturday morning, while putting away the groceries, it was Simon and Garfunkel’s “Old Friends.” “Bye-bye Love”  is a surprisingly apt tune for wiping down packages of peppers and strawberries and finding a place for them in the fridge. The “bye-bye” part is good for jettisoning leftovers.

Later in the day, I listened to Benny Goodman while chopping vegetables for potato-leek soup. “Sing, sing, sing” mimicked “Chop, chop, chop,” the driving bass beat perfect for making quick work with the potato peeler. Dad must have been behind the scenes for this pick, loving both food and Big Band.

And finally, while making pot roast in the crockpot, I matched the cool, foggy weather outside with the Hernon Brothers’ “Across the Sound,” an album picked up two summers ago on the isle of  Inishmore. 

Chores fly when they have a musical accompaniment. 

Writing Together?

Writing Together?

Comments 0 Comment

As a new grandmother I’m certainly not skimping on the photos or the ink — or what passes as digital ink, the keystrokes that allow me to describe in detail all the glories of my new grandchildren.

But a passage in a book I was re-reading last night brought to mind a time when recording one’s life was near to impossible and led to an odd sort of epistolary cohabitation. 

At the end of Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, Cromwell writes at his desk. “Paper is precious. Its offcuts and remnants are not discarded, but turned over, reused.” As a result, he finds the penmanship of Cardinal Wolsey, his departed friend, “a hasty computation, a discarded draft,” Mantel writes. But Cromwell “had to put down his pen till the spasm of grief passed.”

Imagine what our world would be if we had to reuse the scrap paper of our friends and neighbors. Would it help us see the world from another perspective? Would it bring us together?

The answer, I’m afraid, is clear: It certainly didn’t help the 16th century. 

Leaf Meal

Leaf Meal

Comments 0 Comment

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. 

A Bump in the Night

A Bump in the Night

Comments 0 Comment

Halloween is behind us. The skeletons and graveyards that decorate neighbor’s yards have given way to sedate autumn wreaths. But my heart was beating faster yesterday than it did the entire month of October. 

The reason: a bump in the night. The early night, to be sure, but it was dark and it was rainy and the bump sounded like something big had fallen upstairs. 

Was it a cat burglar come to get my jewels (an errand sure to disappoint, I might add)? We crept upstairs to check it out, entered each room carefully, and there was  — nada. No box had fallen from a shelf, not a thing out of place.

There’s a chance this was an outside noise mimicking an inside one. But I doubt that. I’m going to assume it was just a friendly poltergeist messing with us a little, taking advantage of this old house, with its creaks and groans, sending us a message — that we are not alone. 

November Question

November Question

Comments 0 Comment

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. 

Naming Names

Naming Names

Comments 0 Comment

The late-turning trees are giving us a final burst of color. In the front yard, the Kwanzan cherry has burst into a sunny yellow that matches its spring bloom for brightness and intensity.

In the backyard, the volunteer Japanese maple is outdoing itself: its bright scarlet hue shining in the sun that is just now touching the back fence.

Closer to the house, the black gum’s final leaves flutter like tiny, opalescent flags. Their color is a magnet, drawing the eye. As I look more closely, I see two young upstart black gums right behind the tall one. How is it that I’d never noticed this before, never used the fall color not just as inspiration but as information, another clue to naming names in the natural world?  

Turning Back

Turning Back

Comments 0 Comment

A hike yesterday on less familiar ground, light slanting low from the late-afternoon sun. Only a short way down the trail came a fast-moving stream and what was billed as a “rock crossing” on the map but which was in fact a few slick stepping stones spread far apart and barely peaking their razor-thin edges above the rushing water. 

The first few stones of the crossing looked treacherous but feasible. If they weren’t so moss-slicked I could see getting across them. But then I’d be in the middle of the creek, and, from what I could tell, stranded. I could see only the barest, thinnest edges to the mostly submerged rest of the stone crossing. 

Feeling distinctly wimpy, I turned back. I don’t like turning back; it goes against my nature. So I found a side path to explore. It followed the stream for a few minutes, close enough to glimpse an ancient roadbed (see above), which seemed part of an old watercourse. 

I felt better, realizing that waterworks would have remained hidden had we taken the original crossing. And this morning, reading a description of this section of the Cross-County Trail, I felt even better about turning back. 

It describes a “stone crossing that is only usable during the low to normal stages of the creek.” The gurgling of the stream, its breadth and raucous rippling, made it clear that the creek was at a high stage creek, not low to normal.  

Perhaps I wasn’t as cowardly as I originally thought. Only prudent, even a bit adventurous. Ah, that’s better. 

 

 

Celebrating Hope

Celebrating Hope

Comments 0 Comment

When the word came that Joseph R. Biden had been elected the 46th president of the United States, the country was well along on its Saturday morning. I’d just put the groceries away. Celia in Seattle seemed to have the word even before the news alert on my phone did.

There was no ringing of church bells, no banging of pots and pans or shooting off of firecrackers in my neighborhood, but there was one joyful family and, I assume, many joyful families throughout Folkstone, each celebrating in their own way, glad that a new era is dawning for this country.

I seldom write about politics in this blog — this week has been an exception — but today, especially, is a day worth noting. It’s not that the road won’t be steep and the going tough. But there is now a hope that we may come together as a country. And that is definitely worth celebrating.