Category Archives: Seasons

Seasons, Whatever

Sparkle and shine

3 Comments

One of my favorite ways to avoid actually shopping at Christmastime is to wander around stores, pretending to be shopping, but instead just enjoying the sparkly displays.

Most are way too over the top and garish for me to do anything but gape in a sort of childlike wonder. Bubble lights! Penguins! Glittery stuff! Fake snow!

My tastes for home are much simpler, but by God I’ve got tons of decorations! Each year a different bunch of boxes is hauled down from the attic and I feel as if I’ve never seen most of it before because it’s been so many years since I last used whatever is in that particular box.

I have a particular weakness for glass ornaments and try very hard to avert my eyes and avoid displays like this one! A store around the corner from me has a wall solid with nothing but glass tree ornaments in every conceivable shape and size… animals, lighthouses, flowers, birds, insects…

I only looked long enough to find a sweet little shorebird; a group that is poorly represtented among the bird ornaments on my tree. That was my excuse for buying it at least.

😉

Today wasn’t entirely wasted on ogling; I did manage to buy a few gifts. Not many, but it’s a start at least.

How many shopping days left?

Seasons, Whatever

Keeping Christmas

9 Comments

Just passing this along today:

There is a better thing than the observance of Christmas Day, and that is, keeping Christmas.

Are you willing…

To forget what you have done for other people and to remember what other people have done for you;

To ignore what the world owes you and to think what you owe the world;

To put your rights in the background, your duties in the middle distance and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground;

To see that men and women are just as real as you are and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy;

To own up to the fact that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life;

To close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness.

Are you willing…

To stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children;

To remember the weakness and loneliness of people growing old;

To stop asking how much your friends love you and ask yourself whether you love them enough;

To bear in mind the things that other people have to bear in their hearts;

To try to understand what your loved ones really want, without waiting for them to tell you;

To trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you;

To make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open.

Are you willing…

To believe that love is the strongest thing in the world;
stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death;

And that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love?

Then you can keep Christmas. And if you can keep it for a day, why not always?

But you can never keep it alone.

–Henry Van Dyke

Seasons, Small truths

All that glitters

23 Comments

It must be some sort of record that there’s a tree in my house before December. It’s only half-decorated, but I’m hoping early for some of the magic of the lights and baubles to improve what is lately a hard time of year for me.

At some point, the holidays became less about magic and hope and celebration and more about rushing around and obligations and ridiculous expectations. I feel terribly selfish for it, but I almost want to just skip the whole production.

Scandalous, I know.

The DH has had his radio tuned to the *24 hour-round-the-clock-make-you-insane-all-Christmas-music-all-the-time* radio station for two weeks now. I’ve growled at him often enough that he just quietly changes it to something less offensive in my presence. He reminded me the other day that we practically wore out a tape of favorite Christmas music on our honeymoon. Our Christmastime wedding, all hollyberries and seasonal cheer, guarantees that I should forever have the Christmas spirit, right?

Right?

I’m less confused by my change of heart than he, but can’t easily explain the tarnish that’s come over the season. There’s a lot less innocent belief, less love for the ritual, less hope for the power of one day on the calendar to make things what we wish them to be.

What’s left feels false. And forced. And not at all golden.

This horribly depressing post brought to you courtesy of days of rain and gray gloom. Rather than the twinkly lights of a Xmas tree… I think I may need a raging bonfire to improve my mood… or a short vacation to the tropics.

😉

Seasons, Whatever

How many days?

6 Comments

I wonder if it’s a part of the closing down of the year that causes this almost resentful acceptance of time and distance.

Winter’s coming cold brings the chance for rest and reflection… we’re forced inside with time to ponder the duration of a sleepless night or the reach of one’s imagination.

Plus, there’s time to learn a new trick or two with PhotoShop, but very little daylight for the taking of photos.

I love Autumn most as it comes; in the subtle changes of a September day and the endless stars that fill an October night. November for me is a time for looking forward… forward to feasts with family and frosty mornings with the hope of snow by day’s end. There’s the sharp air and the deep, dark cold of December ahead to contend with and the summation of another year and all its memories to be remembered.

Today is the day to walk with Autumn and to know it in your eyes and ears and with your entire being. Here it is. Here we are. Here I am. Here are the owls dueting in the black locust out back as I type, announcing the season and their intentions for the future.

The days grow short as the nights grow long…

How many days till Spring?

😉

In the neighborhood, Seasons, Snapshots

Tapestry

8 Comments
Summer is like a shadow; turn and it’s gone.

The seeds of another summer spin into the air, twirling, catching in spider webs and wool sweaters, sailing high in the sky, vanishing like migrating birds.

The wind carries them; the air stills and they settle gently to the earth, waiting for winter to blanket them in snow.

In the neighborhood, Seasons, Whatever

A tree of your own

6 Comments

A favorite to share from Hal Borland:

Everybody should own a tree at this time of year. Or a valley full of trees, or a whole hillside. Not legally, in the formal way of “Know all men…” and “heirs and assigns” written on a paper, but in the way that one comes to own a tree by seeing it at the turn of the road, or down the street, or in a park, and watching it day after day, and seeing color come to its leaves. That way it is your tree whenever you choose to pass that way, and neither fence nor title can take it away from you. And it will be yours as long as you remember.

Red maples are beautiful trees to own that way. They color early and the color steadily deepens. Find one that turns mingled gold and crimson and you have a tree of wonders, for you never know whether another day will bring more gold or more rubies. It will be a great treasure in any case. And a sour gum is a thrilling tree to own, for its reds and oranges are like those of no other tree that grows. A dogwood, too, is one to consider, for it not only rouges itself with some of the warmest reds in the woodland; it decks itself with berry clusters that outstay the leaves, if the squirrels are not too industrious. Or you may choose the sassafras, and cherish the choice until all the leaves are fallen. For the sassafras is like a golden flame with all the warmth of orange and red and even purple mingled in. No fire that ever leaped on a hearth had the warmth of color that glows in a sassafras on an October hilltop.

Take your choice among these and many others. Make one your own, and know Autumn in a tree that not even the birds can possess more fully. It’s yours for the finding, and the keeping in your memory.

The pic is of a tree that I like to think of as my own, one I keep track of. I’m not sure what kind it is, as I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with leaves; I’ll have to pay a visit this weekend before it disrobes itself again for the winter.

Birds, Seasons, Wanderings

Bits of summer in Cape May

12 Comments

I drove south to Cape May on Saturday, in the middle of *Hurricane* Hanna, and so missed a lot of the signs of the season I know to look for along the coast. I missed the beach plums ripening close to shore and the wash of russet-gold that comes to the sea meadows that border the parkway in South Jersey. Mostly I concentrated on the raindrops and the taillights of the cars in front of me so as to not run off the road and into a tree. God I hate driving in the pouring rain!September is always beautiful in Cape May, regardless of the weather. By Saturday evening, Hanna was little more than a gray curtain over the ocean, but there was some hope of good birds brought in by the storm. Unusual birds never materialized beyond a Magnificent Frigatebird that we missed (of course!) I did hear some interesting call notes overhead one night on the beach though. If you ever have reason to be on the beach at night in the late summer under a clear sky – take it!

All the usuals for late summer were there and things are happening just as they should; I guess to most, September belongs to Autumn, but for me it’s still Summer and the best part at that. It’s hardly ever too hot and the nights have a faint chill that hints of what’s to come. The skimmers were barking and dancing over the cove by the jetty while we played in the surf as the sun set down along the bay…

We crossed paths with a box turtle looking for shade from the hot sun at Hidden Valley among the balled up fists of Queen Anne’s Lace going to seed and the ripening greenish-purple berries of Porcelain-berry Vine. We didn’t spot any of the hunting hawks that I know to look for there, but instead found vultures pitching and banking among the few clouds overhead.

I can’t go to Cape May and not remember other times there; other September days with hordes of migrating monarchs and dragonflies, clouds of sanderlings flying in a lane close to the edge of the ocean like distant twinkling lights as they turn and flash their underparts in the sun, wheels of hawks rising together over the Point and then setting their wings and streaming south.

The sanderlings this weekend were doing their thing on scurrying feet, up and back with every shining wave, alone or in twos. The egrets congregated in big groups at Bunker Pond in front of the hawkwatch, entertainment for the lack of hawks, despite a merlin spotted feeding on a swarm of dragonflies. Of course there’s no picture of that; the best memories somehow manage to always escape my camera.

Books, Seasons

September’s Certainties

19 Comments
There are the certainties of September, a month by grace of the calendar but a season by its own insistence. Now comes the time of pause and slow transition, a time neither new nor old, growth nor completion. Summer nor Autumn.

There is the certainty of fire in the maples, now evident in the coals and brands of the sumacs. The coinage of October is now being minted in the elms, and the ripeness of the grape is forecast in the big New England asters, purple as amethysts. The certainty of Indian Summer’s mists is there in the thistedown and the finespun silk of the milkweed. The frosts to come are foreshadowed in the froth of small white asters at every roadside.

The crows now know the certainty of their own tenure and proclaim it loudly. The jays no longer make any secret of their presence or their coming inheritance. The cricket and the katydid tell the darkness the certainty of time and its implacable demands. The whippoorwill and the owl exchange confidence in the night, reluctant companions in the slowly shifting eternity of starlight.

There is the certainty of sun and evening light, which mark the time of change in the breadth of a shadow, the depth of dawn and dusk. Two more weeks and the compass can set its needle by the morning sun. Yesterday’s new moon will wax toward the fullness that will double the certainty of the equinox.

September makes its own commitments, abides by its own inevitabilities in the decisions of time.

–Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

If I were to make a short-list of favorite nature writers, Hal Borland would probably be at the top of it. I love the way his writing so often sounds like poetry, yet gently teaches me things about astronomy and botany and phenology.

Do you have a favorite nature writer? Can we share short-lists?

😉

Seasons, Whatever

Sailing weather

7 Comments

Autumn comes at night, I think. It creeps in on soft footsteps in the darkness after days of thunderstorms and billowy clouds. Its telltale creaks on the stairway are the katydids, rasping at the edges of the night and shaping the season from August to September, to Autumn.

Autumn is my favorite time of year and I’m happy for the hint of it the last couple nights have brought. The air is almost crisp and there’s a tinge of ripening apples drifting in the open windows; the stale humid air of summer is a memory on nights like these. It makes me want to head out the door after midnight, down the road and to the beach, to feel the cool sand underfoot and to look at the moon and the stars and the sea with its ever-changing moods.

During daylight hours, it’s still high summer. Wet shells shine in the noon sun and the air smells of coconut oil; the slap of flip-flops is the soundtrack, the atmosphere like an amusement park. Nights though, and Autumn, bring relief. Relief from all that energy and heat and all these people. The beach can be mine again.

Cropped out of this pic is the ice and snow that decorated the bay on the January day it was taken. Also cropped out is any sense of scale; this is a remote-controlled toy sailboat. I watched a bunch of *grown-up* men playing with them in the midst of a snow squall… proof that many of us are so enamored with the coast and its many pleasant pastimes that seasons or weather can hardly keep us away; we pretend our way through the meantime.