Winter didn't wait for the solstice

Today it's time to say good-bye to November, since tomorrow we welcome the arrival of December. Signs of Thanksgiving past arrive later today in the form of hot turkey sandwiches for tonight's dinner, while the Christmas season arrived earlier this week in the form of snowflake lights and wreathes adorning the house and reflecting in the snow from the two separate storms we had this last week. In fact, another snow shower has started since I began writing this post. Sometimes we get too much of a good thing.

Christmas cheer comes in many shapes and sizes

Photo by J. Harrington

Juncos are back at the feeder, probably for the rest of winter. There's a pair of cardinals that occasionally arrive at the feeder just as dark is setting in. Maybe, if we ever shake the chronic cloud cover, they'll show up during the day to bring bright Christmas color to the woods. Male cardinals agains a snowy background are about as cheery as winter woods get, it seems to me.

The Better Half [BH] and I have yet to select a home grown Christmas tree from the woods around the house. The aforementioned snow storms required enough snow blowing and shoveling to preempt woods wandering. I'll try a reconnoiter tomorrow and see if I can spot some candidates for the BH's approval. We've been cutting our own, on our own, for several years now and it's become a fun tradition.

Another holiday season tradition around here, blooming amaryllis, was renewed today when the BH put three separate, newly arrived, bulbs into three planters on the south-facing window sill. I''ll be curious to see how long it takes them to blossom. I should have paid more attention in years past.

This is supposed to be a season of peace to men of good will and / or peace, good will toward men. Holding aside the archaic, sexist phrasing, peace and good will seem sparse this year. Perhaps, if each of us tries, just a little bit harder, as Janis used to urge us, we can make this season a pleaasant memory for many more of both young and old than would otherwise be the case. It's worth a try, don't you think?

Since this is the last day of Native American Heritage Month, let's have Joy Harjo help us welcome winter and December.

 

Grace

Joy Harjo   1951 –

                                    For Darlene Wind and James Welch

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn't stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace. 

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn. 

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn't; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it. 

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Season's greetings to you and blessings upon you!

It's Thanksgiving week. Around here we are starting the week with well above average temperatures and look like we're going to have snow cover for Thanksgiving. The thirty-day forecast suggests that snow cover may last until January thaw or what passes for spring in our North Country. That's why we're behind schedule posting this. Yesterday was committed to changing the oil and checking out the snow blower (and cleaning up most of the mess I made in the garage) as well as cleaning up more fallen leaves plus the dead plants from the front porch planters that will soon (before the soil freezes) hold Christmas angels and greenery. By Thanksgiving, the "back yard" may look like this:

November usually brings a "dusting" of snow

Photo by J. Harrington

We've already started shopping for Christmas presents and received our first "holiday greetings" card. The weekend after Thanksgiving is traditionally when we put up lights. A pair of poinsettias is perched on the piano already. My long-standing dedication to deferring all Christmas activities until after Thanksgiving is being eroded by retail temptation, especially since the family is going to do our best to honor the Black Friday / Cyber Monday boycott from Thanksgiving until December 2, shopping only local and with cash (if stores still accept that😉).

We Ain't Buying It

Today we're planning on changing the oil in the tractor without increasing the mess in the garage, we hope. Then we get to mostly sit and watch what Mother Nature delivers late Tuesday and early Wednesday. We promise not to complain at all if the storm misses us entirely. That would give us something else to be grateful for come Thursday.

Many decades ago we lived a little north of the former Plimouth Plantation. It looks as though they've been increasing recognition of Wampanoag contributions to the first celebration since I moved to Minnesota. I'm please to see that during this Native American Heritage month. Check out Plimoth Patuxet this week but first, enjoy Joy Harjo's Thanksgiving poem:

Perhaps the World Ends Here

By Joy Harjo 

 

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.