Settling down for a long winter’s ....?

Wildflower seeds are scattered on the back yard slope’s bare patches, thanks to the Better Half. Many of the recently fallen leaves have been mulched and/or bagged and dumped onto a compost pile [my jobs]. Snow is in the forecast for this afternoon and evening. It’ll be interesting to see how much we get and how long it lasts. George Winston, the musician, has a recording titled Winter into Spring and others titled Autumn, Summer, and December, but no Autumn into Winter. I can readily imagine the tinkle of melting snow and ice growing into musical flows as the seasons warm. I’m not sure what the susurration of falling leaves and snowflakes would grow into except howling winds which I don’t find terribly musical, but then, neither am I a musician.

There seem to be more leaves this year than in years past, although we suspect it seems that way because we had a warmer autumn that lasted longer than usual and then most of the leaves came down all at once, except for the ones still hanging onto the trees. Our push mower does a fair job of bagging leaves, but the bag fills terribly quickly and requires frequent emptying. Maybe if we had goats they could feed on buckthorn in summer and leaves in winter? That has to be too easy a solution or everyone would be doing it.

Harry the beagle adjusting to his new home

Photo by J. Harrington

Making the adjustments, mental, emotional and physical, to work with natural processes instead of dominating a landscape with turf grass is a challenge, but a rewarding and engaging one. Steering the tractor helped loosen the tight muscles in my arm left over from yesterday’s COVID booster. Harry the beagle is prompting us to clean up a long unused dog run. (He’s not comfortable taking care of some business while on a lead, but gleefully makes his deposit after scampering about the run for a minute or two.) We’ll probably have to revert to blowing a path through the snow to the run’s gate until the snow depth gets to be too deep for Harry’s short legs. Or, Harry learns to adapt to the lead and goes for walks along the plowed edge of the road? As things now stand, we have lots to look forward to all winter and into next spring.

First Snow

By Arthur Sze

A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway:

           imbibing the silence,

           you stare at spruce needles:

                                          there's no sound of a leaf blower, 

                                          no sign of a black bear;

a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack

           against an aspen trunk;

           a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall.

                        You only spot the rabbit's ears and tail:

when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,

but when it stops, it blends in again;

           the world of being is like this gravel:

                        you think you own a car, a house,

                        this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow these things. 

Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams

                        and stood at Gibraltar,

                                                but you possess nothing.

Snow melts into a pool of clear water;

     and, in this stillness,

                        starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze. 

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