Will Mother Nature trick us after treating us?

Today is a classic autumn day in the North Country, although perhaps a little warmer than normal. The Better Half is displaying another of her creative facets by carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns. I was assigned responsibility for securing the candles required and have precipitously completed said assignment. Tea candles galore are now available, hauled from the stash in the storage closet.

our house, come Halloween

Photo by J. Harrington

We ended up in Minneapolis earlier today and dropped by Birchbark Books. It appeared that about half the city was out and about the lakes, enjoying a glorious ending to October. I’m continuing to honor my myth that I can’t die as long as my tsundoku stacks are large enough. I bought three books as Halloween treats for myself. The Better Half wanted to pick up a copy of the latest volume of a mystery trilogy and succeeded. On the drive home I was struck by the realization that a store we used to visit several times a year pre-COVID, we had visited for the second time in the past two years. We’ve essentially foregone eating out or grabbing coffee at the local coffee shop. Our quality of life has indeed been diminished by the pandemic, but at least so far we’ve survived it. That’s a combination Trick and Treat, sort of, right?

I’ve neglected mentioning another recent treat for a couple of days now. Late this past week I noticed a freshly bloomed dandelion growing in the roadside ditch. Is that a message of hope? Of persistence? Of foolish foolhardiness? Of evolutionary experiment? All of them? How can we tell some treats and tricks apart? Does today’s poem help?

A January Dandelion

By George Marion McClellan

All Nashville is a chill. And everywhere

Like desert sand, when the winds blow,

There is each moment sifted through the air,

A powdered blast of January snow.

O! thoughtless Dandelion, to be misled

By a few warm days to leave thy natural bed,

Was folly growth and blooming over soon.

And yet, thou blasted yellow-coated gem,

Full many a heart has but a common boon

With thee, now freezing on thy slender stem.

When the heart has bloomed by the touch of love’s warm breath

Then left and chilling snow is sifted in,

It still may beat but there is blast and death

To all that blooming life that might have been.

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