silage

It occurred to be the other day that my wood pile was similar to a Buddhist sand mandala. Maple to ashes. A cornfield is much the same thing. Actually there aren't any more cornfields in Vermont these days. Corn has turned to silage.

the leaves were flying

Yesterday it was really windy. The leaves were flying. The following first appeared in this blog 11/18/11.

Clear and cold. Two weeks ago on Sunday, I got home from the Zen Center in the afternoon. Allyn was a couple of hours behind me, returning from visiting her mother in Ohio. I wanted to finish cleaning up the mess from the various wood piles I had created in the back yard before she returned. I hauled bark and chips from the back to the burn pile we have in a field nearby. As I was returning from the burn pile, I saw two oak leaves high in the sky down by the bridge. They must  have been 100 feet in the air. I couldn't feel any breeze, it must have been above the tree line. But they came toward me, slowly fluttering in the air. They would start to head down, but would catch a thermal again, and rise up to the original level. One finally headed to earth along the road, but the other kept coming, fluttering, falling, rising, dancing on the wind. I had watched as I was hauling the wheelbarrow back, but the leaf had been in the air a long time, a number of minutes at least, longer than any leaf I had ever seen before. I finally put down the wheelbarrow, and gave the leaf my full attention. It kept coming; floating above the road, over the back yard and the house, over the front yard, and finally over my head heading east. It parted ways with the zephyr along the fence line, and slowly fell to the earth, landing in Allyn's flower garden near the old apple tree. As my eyes finally parted from the oak leaf, I looked up and saw the waxing moon, almost full, like mother of pearl, rising over the Green Mountains.

Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not  until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day...we become seekers.
Peter Matthiessen

observation

Boats on trailers heading back home from Lake Champlain for the winter. Ski sale at Middlebury High School. Sound of ice pellets hitting dried leaves. Smell of wood smoke.

There is no reality in the absence of observation.
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
Zen page a day calendar

shiny

Walking in the woods. some of the small, round leaves look like shiny golden coins.

I can feel this heart inside me and I conclude it exists. I can touch this world and I also conclude that it exists. All my knowledge ends at this point. The rest is hypothesis.
Albert Camus
Zen page a day calendar

second season

The fall foliage season is not a static event that concludes on Columbus Day, it is a continuum. Some time after the maple leafs have fallen the oak trees turn.

At about the same point in time, the beech trees reach their peak. Burnt orange seems to be their favorite color.

On the whole, the colors of this second season of the fall foliage extravaganza are usually a little more muted in color, often with a coppery hue. Even the leaves of the blackberry bushes get into the act.

other things

There are events other than turning leaves going on in the area. The corn maze in Rutland town has been available for some time, and the haunted house in Pittsford is up and running. Halloween decorations are seen in most towns, and homes in the region.

the leaves

Contrast is part of the fall foliage story. Sometimes the changing leaves seem brighter when viewed alongside neighboring pine trees.

As some of the leaves start to fall, the contrast with the darkness of branches helps to highlight the leaves remaining.

As the season moves past peak, there are trees that are bare at the top with leaves remaining at the bottom. Sometimes these remaining leaves are the brightest.

amur maple

Some of the invasive species we deal with here in Vermont got started because of their attractive ornamental appeal either as flowering trees in the spring or because of their fiery red leaves in the fall.  Burning bush is one example. Another is the amur maple which is native to Asia. Its red leaves in autumn are among the most brilliant, and it tolerates cold very well. Most of the trees I've seen in the wild are just outside nurseries like this one. 

fantasyland

The fall foliage season is past peak, but there are still some beautiful scenes to see out there. As a matter of fact, I was driving Route 7 on Saturday, and saw some trees in the Brandon area that were intensely bright. They didn't even look real. I have been living in Vermont for over 30 years, and I can honestly say I don't ever remember seeing leaves more brightly colored than the ones I saw on that day.
It is not unusual during this season to see someone half pulled over on some busy byway, taking some photos of the scenery. We jaded Vermonters scoff at such behavior. I have often said to myself, this is not Disneyland. There are people who actually live here, and need to use these roads for the usual daily activities. But for 2-3 weeks in October, Vermont does indeed have a Fantasyland quality to it. It does feel like another, more beautiful world.
The other reality is that some years the foliage is remarkably brilliant while in other years it is more ordinary. The last three years have been of the remarkable variety. I don't ever remember that happening before. The only potential down side is that the ensuing winters the last two years have been much colder than usual. I hope that pattern is not repeated in the coming months.

scrape

We've had amazing weather for months. The leaves are beautiful in the sun, but also on cloudy days. Some trees are so bright that they seem to create their own light. Flying leaves behind trucks on narrow roads look like they are coming out of the exhaust pipe. A frosty night creates an annual autumnal experience; scraping ice off the windshield with my comb.

impermanence

The cows have headed back to Clarendon. I finished mowing the last small field yesterday, and now the tractor has departed as well. Finished up the wood pile the other day. It's sort of like a New England version of a Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala. There's a lot of work involved in putting it together, but it ultimately all just turns to ash.

Grasshopper-
Do not trample to pieces
the pearls of bright dew.
Issa

or milkweed

Bows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way.

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on everyone

So many things I could have done

But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down and still somehow

It's clouds illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all

Joni Mitchell

October light

Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day, the peak of the fall foliage season. The following first appeared on this blog/journal in October, 2009.

At this time of year it's possible to see leaves in a different way. I usually think that the natural state for leaves is for them to be attached to a tree, but now that seems as sensible as saying the natural state for a horse is for it to be tethered to a hitching post. It seems that leaves only reveal themselves, show their "leafiness" when they are finally liberated from their mooring on the ends of branches.
On a windy day it gladdens the heart to watch them chase each other down the road. They seem to be in such a hurry to get to wherever it is they think they're going. It is uplifting to drive under a cloud of leaves released by the wind from tall trees. They resemble a swarm of butterflies heading south for the winter.
On a calm New England morning, when the time is right, they just calmly melt off the trees, and drop softly to the ground, like hot wax dripping off a candle. Some of the leaves seem to have figured out that they would be better off indoors out of the cold and damp. They congregate outside our front door at home, waiting to get in. Quite a number of them do make it inside. One can find them happily ensconced on the door mat in the kitchen at home, and in hallways and offices at work.

shining

The waning crescent moon and Venus are very close together in the morning sky. So much so that even in total daylight it is possible to see Venus shining in the brighness. What I mean by that is that because they're so close, you can get a pretty good idea on the position of Venus at dawn which allows you to find it later in the day, during the daylight hours. The fact that Venus can be seen in the sky during broad daylight seems like it should be impossible, but there it is.
Frost burns on the basil in the front garden.

Into the twilight zendo
maple leaves
come dancing.
Soen Nakagawa

indeed

Purple mountains majesty, indeed.

autumn in Vermont

Autumn in Vermont is a time for getting the house ready for winter, finishing off that woodpile, and canning. On Sunday, when I was at the Center, Ellen, John, and Owen came over, and made some apple butter from our own apples. I hear that Owen was a lot of fun, but he didn't help much.
We had frost warnings on Monday night, and for some reason I was compelled to make some pesto out of the basil, and parsley growing in the front garden. I've never done that before. It was easy to make, and tasted pretty good as well.

hockey

John replied that the hockey season starts on Thursday, just when you need it the most.

it breaks your heart

30 degrees this morning, first frost of the season. Sheets covering vegetables in New Haven. Yesterday was the last day of the regular season in baseball.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then when the days are all twilight, when you need it the most, it stops. Today, October 2nd, a Sunday of rain and broken branches, and leaf-clogged drains, and slick streets it stopped, and summer was gone.
Bart Giamatti

value?

The ubiquitous yet humble (very humble) sumac bush is found on uncultivated land, often between roads and fields. Doug says the seed pods provide much needed food for birds during the winter. Other than that, what possible redeeming value could they have?

Living deep in the mountains
Ive grown fond
of the soughing pines-
on days when the wind is still
how lonely it becomes!
Otagaki Rengetsu

40's & 50's

Temperature 45 degrees this morning. Highs in the 50's. It's amazing how cold 40's & 50's feel in the fall, and how warm they are in the spring.