Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Wild winds tonight, and fierce.  I don't usually feel too vulnerable driving around in a Volvo station wagon, heavy as all get-out, but tonight my windshield actually said "maybe" while I rode the waves home, watching signs bend to and fro, passing fallen branches, and I have to admit I was relieved to make it home and find everything safe and sound.  Despite the insistent gusts, even the garage, with its slightly cock-eyed support system, offered not a hint of weakness.  The bee hive remains tightly covered and my house lets be heard not even the whisper of a whistle through a window, much less a groan or shake.

Arriving late, I stepped out in the dark to secure the hive, at the bequest of its keeper.  I grabbed a large wedge of rock from the doorstep--still don't know from whence, or whom, that came--but on placement it seemed too light, so I traced the curving path through the garden, angling here and arching there, to fetch a heavier stone.  What a lovely feeling it was, in the damp and the lateness and the pressing wind, to feel my feet fall just where they should, as if treading a well-worn path through the woods.  This I love, such knowing.

I've been busy lately, unduly burdened not by work but by my job, which is not only keeping me up late at night but is also keeping me up late at night.  I'm not going to get into it here, so let it suffice to say that the way things are shaping up, I'll be lucky to get my bedroom painted before my next birthday...  I'd hoped to move in there by the one-year mark, but time is getting tighter and the weekends are filling fast.  My job is demanding travel and, in other news, my brother is losing his house and home of many years, so there will be much sorting and packing and moving and leaving to do, in the weeks ahead, before Thanksgiving.

Here at my humble abode, I've for the past few weeks been quietly taking stock of the past year.  While little has changed on the surface of the interior, much has been set in motion outside...Perennially, I've introduced a robust old rhubarb, a cluster of tenacious asparagus, a thriving peach, an ambitious plum, a modest currant and several assertive strawberries, as well as many species of herbs and natives and others, both humble and showy, among the residents.  Room has been set aside for bee forage, for fruit and nut shrubs, for an expanded vegetable garden and for mixed fencerows and corner pockets, next season.  More recently, my neighbor felled the young ash tree which shaded the southwest corner of my yard, clearing a sunny space for the cherry I envisioned there.

Now, as the daylight wanes, I turn my attentions inward again...with the shift of the light (set back coming soon.) I begin to change my habits of food and of rest, of rising and setting... Already my heart is filled with dreams of falling snow, mounds of pale soft quiet and the rush of my waxed weight on each downward slope, yet to climb again... There's still a way to go before that, though--two fat pumpkins sit in my entryway, awaiting the knife, and All Hallows Eve lies just ahead.  It looks as though the Bare Bones show is right on the mark this year, as usual, and boy am I long overdue for a reality check of the other-worldly kind...


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