blossoms

It is dark when leaving work these days. Looking back when taking the bypass home you can see the lights of Rutland. It is beautiful. There is a vine that blooms at this time in November. It's about the last blossoms we'll see until spring

barren

Green Mountains almost totally barren of leaves. We came over the Green and White Mountains about a week ago, snow on the tops. Have noticed over the years that the really small trees, those around a foot or so in height keep their leaves longer than the others. Wondering if that is just due to the fact that they are so close to the ground, or if there is some other adaptive reason that they keep them so long. Maybe it is a time of the year when they can collect a little extra sunlight.

drama

As the leaves come down, and the corn fields are harvested, the vistas in Vermont grow appreciably. Bird and squirrel nests, which have been hidden all summer long are now revealed. With the bird houses which we have in the backyard, I'm aware of the high drama that unfolds during the summer months. The birds are born, the parents are challenged to nurture their young; to feed them and protect them from danger. In the case of our bluebirds, the danger comes from sparrows who would kill the bluebirds, and take over the nests. I've been known to install some odd looking contraptions on the top of the nests to keep the sparrows away. Sometimes some swallows will take over a nest. That is not a problem as the swallows & bluebirds co-exist nicely. You see the nests in the bare trees & realize that the drama playing out in our back yards is multiplied a million-fold in the fields & forests all over the state. In the spring as the trees leaf out, there is the feeling that a curtain is being drawn to shield the dramatic participant from prying eyes.

sun pillar

Clearing out the garage so the car can go in. Bringing the wood rack down from the attic. Cold weather sometimes brings sun pillars in our neck of the woods. You see them at sunrise or sunset when sunlight reflects off of ice crystals falling from high level clouds.

on the other hand

The long, cold season of darkness is a season of high activity for astronomers. As I was driving home last night, the nearly full moon was rising above the Green Mountains in the east. It shone in a silver/gold, mother of pearl. In the summer, the sun ranges high in the sky during the day, and the moon, in a logical manner if you think about it, is very low in the south. In the colder months, the trend is reversed. The sun is low in the sky, and the full moon cruises high in the blackness. The full moon, the "Beaver" moon is tonight.

As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale and silver and streaked with rose color, thin as a bubble or ghost-moon. For five, perhaps 10 minutes,  the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of these fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.
My Antonia
Willa Cather

season of darkness, season of light

Daylight Savings Time has passed. The elections are over. It was dark when I left work yesterday for the first time in a long time; walkway lights between the two buildings ablaze. I remember driving to work in the dark the other day & thinking immediately and reflexively about family and friends. They are our necessary support structure during the long upcoming season of darkness. Our attention turns almost automatically from the warmth & light we experience outside to the same that now occurs within the confines of our snug little homes. It seems no accident that the two holidays that most celebrate family occur during the next two months.

seeing your breath

Sound of the ice scraper on the windshield. Birch and aspen turning a bright yellow. Seeing your breath in the morning, although the first time this happened for the year was over a month ago on the Allagash.