Up to the peak with Juno today, with the oaks just past their full golden splendor, and I remembered my camera, so I got some clear shots of my favorite views southerly toward Diablo and Tamalpais, with the fog over … Continue reading
Out in Autumn
Category Archives: Autumn
Out in Autumn
Walking out in Autumn with Juno this morning, up to the precipice, overlooking a beautiful fog in the valley below, and cool enough at 8:30 in the morning. Again, I used my phone, which I keep in a little hip pack whenever I go hiking now, but so disappointed the phone’s photos portray everything hazy and colorless (next time I absolutely must bring my camera!) but I did get some photos of the top of the mountain, and on the way back down. I’m making a good effort with Juno to be out as much as possible in my favorite time of year, cherishing the landscape, although heat still hovering in waves, dusty, dry, and thirsty, hoping for the rains to start soon, and give it a good drink!
Sun Into Libra
Sun has gone into Libra, and now it is the Autumn equinox. This photo has become my tradition for years now, capturing the most magical time of day on the most magical day of the year, when the sinking sun throws light up against the rafters, and the beams reflect a glow, yet each year it is a little different. A time of transition into soothing cooler days with rain on its way, it marks a happy time of excitement. Wishing a happy equinox to all!
The last days of Autumn.
Almost mid Decembrrr, the days marching through the last stretch of Autumn, and the last page of the calendar. The trees rapidly losing their foliage now, the maples already bare, with only a few remaining black oak leaves hanging on, the ones always the last to fall. I haven’t been out photographing my favorite season this year, but it is ever as beautiful as I long for it to be, ever as calming, and nurturing, and as these last leaves break free in the breeze, they land as a surprising finale. And then it is time for nature’s sleepy yawn as soon it will bed down for winter, and with knitting to be done!
Sun Into Libra
Sun has gone into Libra, and it is the Autumn equinox. My traditional photo on this same day, in the same hour, for years now , always evokes such rich memories in me. Celebrating with the light and shadow of the beams, as they glow in the rays of the sinking sun of late afternoon, marking such a meaningful time for me, the transition into the cooler months ahead, and rain is imminent! Wishing a happy equinox to all.
Out in Autumn
Many weeks have passed since my last post on the equinox. I guess I just wanted to let October drift through the days without attention to anything in particular. Now comes November, and the most Autumnal month in the year it seems to me, and rain came yesterday, then this morning the chill was upon us. How could I resist going out with Juno and my camera to walk through the woods and say hello to our overgrown trail? Sniffing all the lovely smells, the spicy moist bay leaves and moldy musky smell of rained-on wild hay, crunching through fallen leaves and over thousands of acorns, kissing the awakened moss and climbing over yet more fallen trees, and admiring the grey clouds hanging by themselves in an otherwise blue sky. Its as though the landscape swells and sighs, as I do, into the moist cool healing after a difficult hot summer. Now home, the grey clouds are gathering, promising perhaps another shower, as a good mood, with cozy knitting with coffee inside . . .
(click the tree to go to the slideshow)
Out in Autumn
Rain has soaked the earth in our neck of the woods since some time in mid October, so much rain in fact, that there were run-off streams rushing down the hill that I haven’t seen in a couple of years. The return of the rain season is at last on time, calming everybody’s nerves and we’re settling into a bit of a post fire season bliss. At present we’re having a spell of warm clear days after all that rain. So clear and mild out early this morning I was able to get out with my camera while Juno & Jeff went to dog class and I had a beautiful sunrise all to my self! Mid Autumn, and the golden oaks and maple trees are glowing, turning of the season in balance and everything in its place. What is new: a thing showed up at the very end of October, and if you’re wondering what that odd photo of a small bit of machinery is, its an Ashford electric spinner folks! I write with exclamation and excitement, but to be honest, I’m not sure I’m so crazy about it. I much prefer spinning on my Ashford Traditional spinning wheel any day, but in recent months I have not been able to sit at the treadle wheel without a bit of back pain, or sitting for too long in general. So I couldn’t resist the temptation to try one, as my newly back pain caused a bit of a dilemma, the optimal plan in doing so is that I am able to spin and ply while standing! I must admit in its favor, that it is quite a thrill to ply off several hundred grams of singles bobbins at lightening speed, something that perhaps in time I will find a real benefit from. Until then, its in the closet while the beautiful Ashford Traditional is out of the closet. And Juno is eight months old this week ! Although her behavior is full tilt puppy still, and lots of misbehaving and testing her humans, she’s getting an adult coat of fur and looking quite beautiful . . .
A healing place…
I discovered today is very special. Counting back seventeen days before the wildfire, insert 2 years away from original home, then 2 years back in rebuilt home, forward seventeen days, mirror-reversed, bridges today with the Autumn equinox 2017. How special that is to me, because on the equinox four years ago I was finishing up my knitting trail, posted A rustic place . Today, I feel in a calm peaceful hopeful mood, and with determination, bracing myself and imagining starting the knitting trail over again. The forest was badly burned, dead & dying trees falling everywhere, soot and little pockets of ash even still in some places. In 2018 the loggers tore into it and left big open spaces, and so many really old tall firs on the lower leg of the trail disappeared. Gone. Since then there has been Jurassic regrowth of bizarre tall weeds and thorny shrubs taking over, a few pine and fir saplings, and thousands upon thousands of baby madrones. All this new growth beneath a surprising number of big firs still standing, although torched badly at their bases.
It matters not when I will complete the knitting trail all over again, but this mirror-reversed day in the timeline of things is very healing, letting the forest show me how the time passed is longer back home than was away from home, and every day now that passes heals it a little more. Something in the archives of memory is willing it seems, to start forgetting the sad and the bad times.
So, sometime this Autumn, with Juno running wild as she will, I will begin again finding the path anew in that very unique place that is the knitting trail, through and among tens of thousands of madrone trees growing furiously, completely carpeted over the old trail. That is, as soon as it dries up a little from the torrential rain we’ve been having, and I’ve been loving every drop ~~ today I am hopeful and facing forward!
Out in Autumn
Its been a while since I’ve posted Juno,
and now she’s already 7 months old!
We are desperately waiting for the first rain, due any day now.
Fields are golden and dry as parchment,
needing to be dampened down, to rest my worry.
Thats us here and now, midway through October.
Where does the time go, hmm?
Sun Into Libra
Sun has entered Libra, and I imagine rains coming, with a frantic sort of glee. Even though this year is like recent years, the dryest time, and most wildfire prone place on earth it seems to me, yet my mind remembers Autumn to be an awakening of moss, of first soft rains, of dewy grasses on the wayside of morning walks, and the papery leaves falling to the ground, speckled. I hope very soon a cooling trend, and I throw the memories of seasons passed into the compost as dried flowers. My mark of the equinox seems to be well expressed by the light & shadow in the posts & beams, and so I have gotten into an Autumn Equinox series I suppose, by recapturing the same scene every year. My favorite Autumn, and wishes for everybody a happy time!
Sun Into Libra
The sun has gone into Libra. I have attempted to replicate a photo I posted on the Autumn Equinox 2017, and about two weeks after that original photo was posted, our house had burned to ashes in the Nuns Wildfire. In the many months following the fire, it was that very post that I gazed at with such a heavy heart of grief and longing. But today is the day of days! As I photograph the same angle of the new rebuilt house, at same time of day, on the same day of the year, I recapture the warmth of that moment again, as the lazy equinox sun sinks low in the afternoon to the west. I feel like I’ve come full circle, having just posted it up to date, home again with everything in its place (sans ceiling fan and squiggly iron rail), not quite finished but very cozy. I am kind of collapsing into a fuzzy warm celebratory mood, a bit weary of the long journey back to my House of Light & Shadow, although I am nothing but colossally grateful. Happy Equinox everyone!
Out in Autumn (late).
Walking along a foggy path in the late afternoon, in late Autumn, I observe the season expiring after the heavy rain last week. Everything seems to be falling to the ground, exhausted. Soon there will be new grass popping up.
The last of the gold leaves wave in the breeze, as if to say “I’m tired, and it is time to go”, and the vines surely have given all their energy growing grapes for 2019 Harvest, and will wait bare until pruning time in late winter, leaving the trellises standing like soldiers in a winter field.
The stinging needles on the star thistle rot and become harmless, muted into the dull brown grass.
The fog surely lays burden to the spider webs, and even though nature is bedding down, the creatures are stirring.
The oaks are shedding leaves and covering the ground, another layer of compost for the soil, two years after the wildfire is nothing less than a treasure.
Yet some of what was dormant is now waking up, becoming lush, verdant, alive, as is the story of the moss.
So near to the solstice, I believe this little foggy outing has put me in the mood for more walking and writing, for it is at these times when I most intensely feel my existence. Rituals of coffee and chores, punctuated with knitting, walks, short naps, and contemplative writing, are my comfort as I get older. Peaceful and nearly silent my days tumble over one another, seemingly inconsequential, but if only to witness my landscape as it goes through the seasons. And I am happy it is so.
Out in Autumn (early).
We’ve spent two nights so far in the new house, so we’ve officially moved in, even though the construction mess is ongoing, we’re all just happy to be finally home. Now I’m busy cleaning out the tiny house to its former glory before two humans, a dog, and countless spiders inhabited it for seventeen months, while Jeff continues the finish building. I woke this morning early and watched the rose-gold sunrise, while Emma in her Help’emUp harness acclimates to the new front porch, as that was one of her favorite places before, where she use to spend hours napping in the early mornings.
We are back home, it is Autumn, and life is good.
settling in
I have begun collecting little treasures from Autumn ; a leaf from a Black Oak turning gold, a curl of Madrone bark, and a freshly fallen Douglas Fir cone. It was almost a year ago in Autumn that I found this novelty . . .
Now the vintage Four Posts are finally kitted out with a mattress and bedding, and so I’m going to fling off my shoes and curl up on it with some strong coffee made in a cezve (my thing lately) with fresh shortbread just out of the oven, and contemplate which small quilt I will attempt to make first from “Civil War Legacies” by Carol Hopkins.
The loft room (still without a door as you can see), the kitchen, and upstairs bathroom are the only rooms in the house able to be used thus far, while the main part of the house remains a mess of building, tile dust, and tools. But there is rumor ringing through the rafters, that we may move in this coming weekend, or should I say move out of the tiny house . . . fingers crossed!
Sweater Success!
Yesterday I met my nieces in Calistoga at the Roastery, we had a little catching up over coffee & tea, then they put on their new Hillwalker sweaters, and this time we headed straight down to the Castle in St … Continue reading