As snow season approaches...

We're a little overdue in announcing that our record is still in tact. Approximately 25 years in this house and not a single Trick or Treater. We know there are a few children in the area because we see them on occasion at the Little Free Library kiosk. Someone around here is going to have to eat that Halloween candy we bought "just in case." Maybe I'll volunteer.

It's windy and cold enough that we've decided doing more to clear the drive of leaves would be a fools errand today. While walking the dogs, we're pretty sure we noticed the wind come from every one of the 360° in a compass. That makes it almost impossible to work with nature since at some point the wind ends up in your face instead of from behind you. In fact earlier today we watched a number of wind-blown leaves head straight up toward the overcast sky.

last year, November 6

Photo by J. Harrington

Juncos are back, perhaps blown in on the Northwest gusts of the wind, both birds and wind directions are clear signs that Winter is headed this way. Before we get too carried away with complaints, last year about this time we started to accrue snow cover. Memory repression can do funny things to our sense of phenology. That's one of the reasons we take pictures that are self-dated. We also forgot that last year something, probably deer, ate the faces out of our pumpkins. We need to remember to be sure the Better Half keeps in mind that fancy carving of jack-o'-lanterns may be for naught unless we keep them inside where no one will see them. But then, with no Trick-or-Treaters, who, other than us, would see them anyhow?

the deer have made a habit of this

Photo by J. Harrington

November

By Maggie Dietz

Show's over, folks. And didn't October do

A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries

Of migrating geese, low-floating coral moon.

Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees.

Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage,

While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees

Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage

And gone to shiver in their winter clusters.

Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge

On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster

Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,

Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.

Even the swarms of kids have given in

To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure:

TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains.

The days throw up a closed sign around four.

The hapless customer who'd wanted something

Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door.

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