October’s Ides are upon us

The month is half gone. According to my copy of The Pagan Book of Days, “In ancient Rome, the tradition of Winter’s Day was held a day later than in the north. Here, the season of combat ended, and weapons were put away until the following year.” I don’t like pondering about the kind of world in which combat had a season. It seems to imply combat always occurring somewhere but perhaps it was like boxing under the Queensbury rules.

October’s fields

Photo by J. Harrington

Once again this week I neglected to post the contents of our Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share box on the  day we picked it up. The excitement of the season’s first snow fall took precedence so here’s the list of goodies we got yesterday, in our penultimate share:

• APPLES
• CABBAGE, CAULIFLOWER, or BROCCOLI [we got cauliflower]
• DELICATA SQUASH
• GREEN ONIONS
• GREEN TOMATOES
• RAINBOW CHARD and
• WINTER SQUASH SURPRISE [blue hubbard, red kuri, or turban]

Next Friday we collect the final box of veggies. It truly marks the end of summer and this year’s growing season. We could be sad, and we may let such feelings prevail for a day or two, but we’ll be quickly moving into a period full of holidays, plus the insanity of the upcoming election, so the philosophy of “life goes on” will soon dominate. There’ll be Halloween candy to eat and share at Samhain, drumsticks at Thanksgiving and presents to share at Christmas, plus whatever the Pagan Book lists during the next several months. We’re not Caesar, the Ides aren’t yet falling in March, so we’ll cross our fingers, hope for the best, and enjoy as much as we can of the rest of the year.

Late October

By Maya Angelou

Carefully

the leaves of autumn

sprinkle down the tinny

sound of little dyings

and skies sated

of ruddy sunsets

or roseate dawns

roil ceaselessly in

cobweb greys and turn

to black

for comfort.

 

Only lovers

see the fall

a signal end to endings

a gruffish gesture alerting

those who will not be alarmed

that we begin to stop

in order simply

to begin

again.

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