January thaw for Christmas?

Winter Solstice arrived at 3:20 am Saturday, local time. The dogs and I were there to greet the arrival of the season as we walked down the driveway so they could “take care of business” and I could enjoy a cup of coffee when we returned to the house. I think all three of us are looking  forward to longer, warmer days ahead. But first we’ll enjoy the Yule season and an early January thaw that starts on Christmas and is forecast to continue until 2025. Mother Nature’s Christmas presence?

We wish everyone, or at least the “good guys,” peace and joy now and through the coming year. I’d love to see everyone read, reread, and take to heart, the messages in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. It seems to me that could make for a year-round Christmas spirit without the cold and snow and commercialism.

my favorite Christmas tree ornament

Photo by J. Harrington

SiSi, my aging yellow lab rescue dog, and I got an early present. Last week she could barely walk, her hips hurt so much. It seemed to come on suddenly. The Daughter Person offered some pain pills one of their dogs didn’t need. That, followed by a call to our vet for a regular prescription, has SiSi walking about as well as I do these days. We are both very grateful for the assistance and the outcome.

As I’m sure you realize, today, December 23, is the Eve of Christmas Eve. We are now at “C” minus two and counting. We’re a day late with this posting ‘cuz we got busy with seasonal stuff yesterday and forgot to take pen/keyboard in hand until we were already sleepy-headed in bed last night. We’ll do our best to be more timely next Sunday.

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

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

Wishing you seasons full of happiness

Were it not for our persistently cloudy skies, about 3 am this morning we could have enjoyed seeing December's full moon, known as Little Spirit Moon by the Ojibwe and Shedding Horns Moon by the Lakota, according to my copy of the Minnesota Weather Guide calendar. The dogs and I were taking our early morning constitutional about that time. As Minnesota sports fans, we have lots of practice with the phrase “wait ’til next year.” This year we’re in a typical Minnesota pattern of really cold and sunny or warmer and cloudy and often snowy. Yesterday and today are like the latter.

Proof that it’s been cold can be seen on local lakes where portable ice fishing houses are popping up like woodland mushrooms in a wet spring. While doing seasonal errands, we noticed the houses on not just one, several local lakes. I’ve tried ice fishing years ago. I’m too restless to sit still in an ice house or on a deer stand for the amount of time required for success.

Christmas thumbprint cookies: bet you can’t eat just one!

Photo by J. Harrington

Slowly we’re making progress with Christmas shopping. The Better Half [BBH] just finished baking Christmas cookies, including lots of raspberry thumbprints and lemon bars(?) for me. Plus I still have more than a dozen white chocolate, cranberry scoop cookies from Taste of Scandinavia. My holiday wealth isn’t measured in gold!

On our way to the barn yesterday, to visit and feed the Daughter Person’s horse, the BH and I spotted a flock of three to four dozen turkeys in a field along the way. I don’t recall ever seeing that many in one place before. They were foraging during our drizzle/ snow showers and had disappeared by the time we were returning home.

It’s now less than a week until Winter Solstice (locally 3:20 am CST). At the moment we’re in that shoulder season between the start of meteorological winter and the solstice. I’ve already reached a point at which I’m looking forward to Christmas and to days starting to lengthen just before then.

Happiness

Jane Kenyon
1947 – 1995

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
       It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

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

As days get shorter

 I found this on the internet the other day and wanted to share:

A Special Kind of Stupid

Slowly, very slowly, the Christmas decorations are coming together. Daughter Person's birthday has been successfully celebrated. She and her Spouse and Daughter are safely back from a brief Disneyland vacation. Now we all need to buckle down and get some Christmas shopping done, but first I have to drop the two remaining Halloween pumpkins under the pear tree on the ridge behind the  house so the local deer can enjoy them.

It's been a month since the election and I'm finally starting to shake off my funk. The warmer temperatures we've had the past few days has helped, I'm sure. A little lot more sunshine would be appreciated too. Today was cloudy, cool, and dreary, with some dank thrown in, but better than single digit temperatures and bellow zero wind chills.

I'm already working on some New Year's resolutions: one is to simplify and organize my  life as much  as possible; another is to have gratitude for the good things in my life instead of always looking for more and / or better. I've asked Santa for a mild winter and early spring but I'm not sure he can do much about either. Maybe I better  follow up with a request for some toy I can play with in the  house this winter.

The Power of Hope Today

Gabrielle Marshall

Today’s hope is a flickering candle that dwells in a snow-dusted window, 
circulating the prayers of Christmas mornings. 
Today’s hope is the crisp daffodil in colorless photos,
containing the soul of a small 
child,
who only wishes and knows of 
peace and love.
Today’s hope is the sparkling eyes that
truly believe in achieving
anything to reach unity.
Today’s hope is the palm to palm connection
bracing each other for the climb neither expected,
but couldn’t abandon.
Today’s hope is peering
beyond
the lingering barrier,
but still recognizing the diversity in ourselves.
Today’s hope has been dimmed and tossed recklessly,
but still generously stays with us,
for we cannot help but come back
like wide eyed children to candy.
We are said to be weak to rely on such strength,
but we are only believers.
That spark 
That gives science a baffled case
And oceans an infinite plane,
is the eagle that dips 
and soars
and fights,
which stands for
the hope of 
today. 

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

Welcome to Winter

I bet you know today is the first day of meteorological winter. Locally, Winter solstice occurs on Saturday, December 21, 2024 at 3:20 am CST. We’re three weeks from the shortest day / longest night in the Northern hemisphere and we’ve already had temperatures in the single digits and wind chills below zero. Snow and flurries come and go. It feels more like January or February than late November and early December. I wonder what the rest of winter will bring. Maybe the persistent cloudiness will relent?

We now have some poinsettias joining the candles decorating the house for Christmas. Sometime this coming week I’ll hang the outside lights and look in our woods for a tree. We’ll celebrate the Daughter person’s birthday later this week and, as always, our Son’s birthday on Christmas afternoon. December is just full of family activities. We hope the weather will be cooperative.

squirrel in December pine

Photo by J. Harrington

Local marshes and small or shallow ponds are ice covered. Remaining waterfowl are concentrating on the larger, deeper lakes that are still ice free. Harvested fields can still be gleaned. We saw several dozen swans in a harvested cornfield last week. Some usually overwinter on the St. Croix’s open water near Hudson, WI.

The Son-In-Law did not fill his deer tag this year but he has been having fun squirrel hunting. In fact, the Better Half has a Brunswick stew with meat from one of his bushytails cooking in the oven as this is being written.

Winter is the season of death and rebirth, reflected in the loss and return of the sun’s light. I hope we use this winter to reach a consensus on how we can not only resist, but defeat and repel the dark forces that will soon be besetting US. I have no doubt we will once again experience a winter of our discontent.

Stories

Amber McCrary

You are a Diné woman 
A cosmic energy of earth and sky
Nihimá Nahasdzáán
Azhé’é Diyiní

Winter is over 
So, we put our stories in the drawer
Then we take them out for the next winter

It is said stories are only told in the winter
So, the bears and snakes do not hear them

My father is not a traditional man
But he grew up as a traditional ashkii yázhí
He speaks the tongue of the sky and earth

of our people
He knows the ways of our land 
But denies it all 

One day I tell him 
about watching coyote and lizard 
stories as a young girl in boarding school 
in my Navajo culture class

I tell him excitedly how the videos are now on youtube
but I still don’t understand them 
because the videos are only in Navajo

I show him the cute coyote and lizard video
in hopes he will translate for me
He stops me the first ten seconds in
And tells me I shouldn’t watch it

Not because he doesn’t believe in cultural preservation
We are only supposed to watch and tell those stories during the winter, he says
Ohhhhhh, I say as I close the app

All the years my dad talks down on our traditions
I find it interesting, he still abides by the way of the seasons
because he knows snake and bear might hear

Or maybe he said it for other reasons

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

A bag mixed with gratitude

In my younger days, a mixed bag might have meant returning from an afternoon’s hunt with a rabbit, a squirrel or two, and maybe a grouse or a woodcock. These days it’s more likely to refer to counting my/our blessings as well as those things that aren’t going the way we think they should, such as November 5’s outcome.

One of my favorite local writers has an interesting piece that’s worth the time to read and then to think about this Thanksgiving week and for the rest of the season (no, not autumn, the “holiday season”). Speaking strictly for myself, I have a tendency to take the good stuff for granted, as my due, and complain about both the other, and about wanting more and/or better. At least these days I’m more aware of such tendencies and am working toward reducing my malcontentedness. Here’s a link to Heidi Barr’s perspective on Gratitude practice.

Gratitude is also a theme in a book I’ve been reading for the past week or so. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s THE SERVICEBERRY Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. An abbreviated version of the book can be found here in Emergence magazine.

As you no doubt already know, November is Native American Heritage Month and November 29 this year is Native American Heritage Day. Some argue that honoring Native Americans on the day after Thanksgiving is disrespectful or, at best, in poor taste. My preferred perspective on the subject is well covered by a Native American poet and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo. Please pay particular attention to the second line.

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

November may finally arrive

Our high temperature today was in the low 50s. That’s what’s forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday, then November actually arrives. Normal highs are about ten degrees less than today’s. Starting Wednesday, we’re looking at more seasonable temperatures, or less. It’s not just the precipitation that’s getting volatile.

Most of the leaves are down. Some of the yard is cleaned up. Today was the last day of firearms deer season in our neck of the woods. Last night after dark I was walking the dogs and we were almost run over by three whitetail does who ran out of our field entrance one at a time. The first two sailed over the split rail fence across the road. The third acted like she’d never seen a fence before until she looked at this one for a minute or so and then jumped over. My old lab took it all in stride. The beagle didn’t notice the first two deer but finally got a glimpse of the third one and responded with a “What was that?" spinning in circles. The three may, or may not, be the same three in the picture.

three whitetail does in field behind our house

Photo by J. Harrington

We recently stopped by one of our favorite, local, independent bookstores, which is conveniently located two doors down from one of the food coops of which we’re members. At the bookstore I picked up a replacement copy of Kent Nerburn’s wonderful Neither Wolf nor Dog. We gave away the first version we had and I wanted to reread it so now we have the 25th anniversary edition. If I had remembered we outplaced our copy, I would have bought a replacement when we went to hear Nerburn speak some weeks ago at an art gallery in Sandstone.

Tuesday I’m hoping to head for Birchbark Books to pick up a preordered copy of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry. I expect to find it verrryy interesting, as Arte Johnson used to say, to read about abundance and reciprocity weeks before a second Trump administration begins. I have major doubts that will do much to enhance abundance for ordinary folks and would truly like to see it experience reciprocity by having others treat it as it treats everyone else.

Next week we celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, the 28th, and Native American Heritage Day on Friday the 29th. I hope we all will have something for which we want to give thanks and also will want to do something to honor the heritage to which we owe so much.

History

Linda Hogan

This is the word that is always bleeding.
You didn't think this
until your country changes and when it thunders
you search your own body
for a missing hand or leg.
In one country, there are no bodies shown,
lies are told
and they keep hidden the weeping children on dusty streets.

But I do remember once
a woman and a child in beautiful blue clothing
walking over a dune, spreading a green cloth,
drinking nectar with mint and laughing
beneath a sky of clouds from the river
near the true garden of Eden.
Now another country is breaking
this holy vessel
where stone has old stories
and the fire creates clarity in the eyes of a child
who will turn it to hate one day.

We are so used to it now,
this country where we do not love enough,
that country where they do not love enough,
and that.

We do not need a god by any name
nor do we need to fall to our knees or cover ourselves,
enter a church or a river,
only do we need to remember what we do
to one another, it is so fierce
what any of our fathers may do to a child
what any of our brothers or sisters do to nonbelievers,
how we try to discover who is guilty
by becoming guilty,
because history has continued
to open the veins of the world
more and more
always in its search
for something gold.

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

Approaching Thanks! Giving?

Last night, for the first time in months, we had chili for dinner. It helped ease the dank and dreary weather we’ve been having and the even more dank and dreary results of Tuesdays elections. I suspect the deer hunters are wishing the showers, drizzle, and mist we’ve been living with would turn into tracking snow but, so far, the snow we got at the end of October is all that’s come and that melted before firearms season opened around here.

Nature's Halloween trick, now gone

Photo by J. Harrington

The tractor, lawn mower, and I have been struggling with an overload of wet leaves covering the lawns and driveway. Even the mulching deck on the tractor has been getting clogged with wet leaves and the bagging mower discharge chute keeps getting jammed. We’ll keep trying so that, come spring thaw, we’ll be in better shape for seeding and meanwhile, we hope to make the place less attractive to moles.

A major breakthrough appears to have been attained by blocking two gaps in the walls with coarse steel wool. The number of mice caught in traps has dropped remarkably since the illicit entrances were blocked.

Despite the trials and tribulations, we have a lot to be thankful for this year, as usual. I confess that I’ve caught myself focused too much on what’s wrong and not feeling and sharing enough gratitude for what’s still good in our lives. Robin Wall Kimmerer has a book that will be published in a little more than a week. I have preordered a copy and hope to have it read by Thanksgiving. If you’re interested, you can get more info here at Birchbark Books. Who knows, I may even start a gratitude journal. For Thanksgiving, I’m planning to read the version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address found here before we enjoy the meal.

Tomorrow is Veterans’ Day. We’ll be remembering those in our families who have served in the armed forces and have defended freedoms we may well have to fight to retain during the next several years. Let’s do our best to help ensure the wars fought by our troops to preserve democracy weren’t fought in vain. Let’s also honor Native American Heritage Month by remembering the guidance below as we grapple with the differences among US.

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

by Joy Harjo

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song
—Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.

2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.

A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.

If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.

At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.

There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. "It feels like wartime," said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.

If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.

We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.

We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.

The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould...

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That's what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.

4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.

There was no "I" or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.

5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.

6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.

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

Fall Back! fall down!

We  have definitely entered the darker half of the year here in the northern hemisphere. Daylight savings time ended yesterday. The results of tomorrow’s election will largely determine how deep and for how long the darkness may last. The current weather pattern of dank, cloudy, drizzly days, compounding a Halloween snowfall and windblown leafdrop, are, quite literally, putting a damper on what is usually one of my favorite times of year.

autumn leaves leaving

Photo by J. Harrington

Then again, I seem to have solved the problem of my boules of sourdough  bread coming out of the oven much darker than I prefer. I’m combining elements of two basic recipes, including lowering the oven temperature for the second half of the baking period, after attaining oven spring.

Halloween was brightened with a Trick or Treat visit  from our Granddaughter and her parents. She showed off one the the cutest costumes, it made her look as if she was riding  a dinosaur. The only thing that could have made it better would have been of the dinosaur were a dragon, but that’s mostly my bias for flying, fire-breathing, critters showing.

November, as I hope you know, is Native American Heritage Month. I intend to help celebrate by rereading parts of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and getting a copy of her latest, The  Serviceberry. That will provide just the excuse I need for another trip to Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark Books. I truly believe we would be much closer to resolving the climate breakdown and loss of biodiversity catastrophes if more of US incorporated much more of the Native American relationship to nature.

Without 

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge

Of grief and heartbreak

Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature 

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters 

And the other half is nailing it all back together

Through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers’ trysts, and endless 

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

We will find each other again in the timeless weave of breathing

We will sit under the trees in the shadow of earth sorrows 

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

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

Approaching Samhain

Great clouds of leaves have floated away from their homes of origin. They now clutter the ground and complicate the last grass cutting of the past growing season. Bare branches begin to dominate country skylines. Halloween / Samhain arrives Thursday. Candles are lit at dinner time. Autumn is here and next weekend we begin to anticipate celebrating Thanksgiving in hope that “our fellow Americans(?)” will leave US something to celebrate after November 5.

All Hallow's Eve visitors

Photo by J. Harrington

Not only was Halloween itself more fun when I was a kid, I didn’t know enough in those days to worry about elections and outcomes. An example that getting older doesn’t always mean getting wiser? Anyhow, I’m anticipating that, again this year, we’ll have at least one Trick or Treater, our 4 year old granddaughter. I think she’s the only one that’s shown up in the 25+ years we’ve lived here. I’ll spend some time over the next few days debating whether to bring in our political signs for the haunted evening rather than leave them subject to pranks or vandalism.

Flocks of Canada geese and sandhill cranes are still to be seen in our local airways. So far there’s still plenty of food and open water so no reason for them to head south. The Son-In-Law has captured some pictures of a nice buck oor two on his trail cam. I tried deer hunting off and on over the years. I just don’t enjoy sitting that still for that long to get good at it. When I was younger, I’d rather bust brush for grouse or fiddle with decoys for ducks than sit in or on a deer stand. If I had had an enclosed stand, I’d probably been guilty of too much napping. This reminds me, after Samhain, I need to send Santa a letter asking for more accommodating weather next fly fishing season.

Samhain

By Annie Finch

(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.

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

The autumn leaves drift by my window

The local leaves are just about at peak color, sliding past peak any day now as the colors drift down with the leaves. It sure is pretty around here for now. Yesterday I noticed a new dandelion blossom. Today there’s a small cluster of little white flowers. Garter snakes are out and about. I wish they’d feast on more of the mice that keep getting into the house. We must have trapped almost two dozen since last Sunday.

Autumn's silver and gold

Photo by J. Harrington

The Better Half, plus our son, plus me, have all voted early. I wonder how long post November 5 the suspense may continue and how long after that the prospect of violence may hang in the air. Meanwhile, critical global and national issues continue to fester instead of getting the attention deserved and needed. For example, a report issued this past week calls to our attention, inter alia, the following:

Most gravely, while itself a victim of climate change,

the degradation of freshwater ecosystems including

the loss of moisture in the soil has become a driver

of climate change and biodiversity loss. The result

is more frequent and increasingly severe droughts,

floods, heatwaves, and wildfires, playing out across

the globe. And a future of growing water scarcity,

with grave consequences for human security.

Nearly 3 billion people and more than half of the

world’s food production are now in areas where

total water storage is projected to decline.

We’ve seen examples of these issues with recent hurricanes and flooding in major parts of our country. Most Republicans I’ve read about claim climate change is some kind of scam. Of course many of them also continue to incorrectly refer to the 2020 election as “stolen.”

Things got more than a little hectic around the homestead this week, especially today. The Better Half noticed one of the kitchen cabinets needs major repairs. An electrical circuit that, about this time last year,, started tripping the breaker for no reason that we or the electrician could figure out, is doing it again this year. My theory is that mice in the garage are biting into a hot wire because the breaker can be reset after a few hours. Anyhow, I’m tuckered so this posting is short and as sweet as I can make it. More next week.

Neighbors in October

By David Baker

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon

with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting

chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.

Down the block we bend with the season:

shoes to polish for a big game,

storm windows to batten or patch.

And how like a field is the whole sky now

that the maples have shed their leaves, too.

It makes us believers—stationed in groups,

leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters

over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,

bagging gold for the cold days to come.

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

On the eve of Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Last Friday I was doing some outside chores and, as I looked up from time to time, it seemed as if I could actually see colors changing in the maple leaves. We are rapidly approaching peak color and the area is looking mighty pretty.

St. Croix River Valley colors

Photo by J. Harrington

Today’s clouds and wind served as backdrop to flights of Canada geese and sandhill cranes either heading south or practicing for the trip. Another sign of autumn’s progress: increasing numbers of mice getting into the house and caught in traps. This past week we eliminated about a dozen and a half. I don’t remember ever, in 25+ years here, dealing with as many mice as this year. I’m not sure what happened over the spring and summer to produce such a bumper crop. It would be better for all concerned if they’d settle for outside nests and get fat on the acorns that have dropped everywhere.

Early voting has started. Election day is three weeks from Tuesday. Pundits torment US with their assessments of races depending on a handful or two of battleground states or congressional districts, all within a polling margin of error. If candidates were at all comparable in their capabilities and integrity and sanity, I’d be less troubled. Regardless of the election outcome, the fact that one of the major presidential candidates is a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, among other unsavory attributes, seems to me disqualifying on its face, and yet....

At least we have three months with joyful holidays to celebrate. This month it’s Halloween and Samhain; next month it’s Thanksgiving; and, come December, Christmas. They’re all better if shared with family and kids and we’re lucky that way.

Tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Information about activities and resources in Minnesota can be found here. My personal celebration involves starting to read Louise Erdrich’s Original Fire, selected and new poems.

That Pull from the Left

By Louise Erdrich

Butch once remarked to me how sinister it was   

alone, after hours, in the dark of the shop

to find me there hunched over two weeks’ accounts   

probably smoked like a bacon from all those Pall-Malls.

Odd comfort when the light goes, the case lights left on   

and the rings of baloney, the herring, the parsley,   

arranged in the strict, familiar ways.

Whatever intactness holds animals up

has been carefully taken, what’s left are the parts.   

Just look in the cases, all counted and stacked.

Step-and-a-Half Waleski used to come to the shop

and ask for the cheap cut, she would thump, sniff, and finger.   

This one too old. This one here for my supper.   

Two days and you do notice change in the texture.

I have seen them the day before slaughter.

Knowing the outcome from the moment they enter   

the chute, the eye rolls, blood is smeared on the lintel.   

Mallet or bullet they lunge toward their darkness.

But something queer happens when the heart is delivered.   

When a child is born, sometimes the left hand is stronger.   

You can train it to fail, still the knowledge is there.   

That is the knowledge in the hand of a butcher

that adds to its weight. Otto Kröger could fell

a dray horse with one well-placed punch to the jaw,   

and yet it is well known how thorough he was.

He never sat down without washing his hands,   

and he was a maker, his sausage was echt

so that even Waleski had little complaint.   

Butch once remarked there was no one so deft   

as my Otto. So true, there is great tact involved   

in parting the flesh from the bones that it loves.

How we cling to the bones. Each joint is a web

of small tendons and fibers. He knew what I meant   

when I told him I felt something pull from the left,   

and how often it clouded the day before slaughter.

Something queer happens when the heart is delivered.

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

The month peak color comes and goes

It looks like the weather may have finally turned the corner from Summer to Autumn, more than a month after the start of meteorological autumn and a couple of weeks after the equinox. Maple trees are showing more color. Pines are shedding their needles. Aspen and birch leaves are mostly gold. Seed heads from purple love grass are flying everywhere and the last few really windy days have turned a few trees almost leafless.

maples starting to show color

Photo by J. Harrington

Today we saw another wooly bear looking very much like the one we reported on last week, about four ginger bands in the middle and each end black. No frost yet locally. Most birds coming to the feeder are year round residents like woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals and goldfinches. Every now and then a pair of bluejays stop by.

We’ve been going through an extended dry spell for the past month or so. Fire danger has been high enough that I’ve not even thought about torching the back yard brush pile. If it sits until spring, that’s no big deal although I would like to get it gone so we can replace it with more of the downed branches lying around. The electric weed whacker we recently acquired is helping to bring a modicum or orderliness to some of the overgrown areas around the place. That’s going to be a continuing project. We may see if the battery-powered chain saw diminishes the buckthorn that’s trying to overrun the woods.

All in all it’s been a mostly pleasant week up North here. We celebrated the Granddaughter’s fourth birthday and her parents tenth anniversary. No signs of Helene but we may well pay for it come blizzard season, or might climate change temper our upcoming winter? We’ll see.

Autumn's Gold

by George MacDonald

Along the tops of all the yellow trees,

The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies;

And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise

Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses;

And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze,

Cometh more joy of light for Poet's eyes—

Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies,

And shining houses and blue distances.

By the roadside, like rocks of golden ore

That make the western river-beds so bright,

The briar and the furze are all alight!

Perhaps the year will be so fair no more,

But now the fallen, falling leaves are gay,

And autumn old has shone into a Day! 

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

It’s woolly thinking time

Today is the penultimate day of September 2024. Haven’t seen a hummingbird at the feeder all week. Wasps and/or hornets are about everywhere, building nests and being annoying. Temperatures have been running close to 20 degrees above normal this week past but are expected to become seasonable, or close to it, come mid-week, early October. This in a state that decades ago became famous for a Halloween blizzard. This morning I found a woolly bear showing four bands of ginger, of 13(?) total bands. It’s an unrepresentative sample size, but it may portend a winter thats more wintery than usual. Meanwhile, there’s at least half a dozen lilac bushes in the neighborhood that are in bloom.

woolly bear says winter will be ???

Photo by J. Harrington

In a typical year, we’d be looking toward peak leaf color over the next couple of weeks. It’s been very slow developing this year. September has been more like July, plus we keep discovering more lilac bushes in bloom. Birds and butterflies seem to be moving south, but that must be due to day length more than our weather. Did I mention all the lilacs in bloom? In September?

We aided and abetted our Granddaughter and her friends and relations celebrate a 4 year old's birthday last week. I had forgotten that just opening presents is considered as much fun as playing with or trying on what’s getting unwrapped, especially if there’s a big pile of presents to be unwrapped before we get to the birthday cake. There was a strong horsey theme since a certain 4 year old has been taking, and enjoying, riding lessons these days.

It looks like, with two minutes to go in today’s game and a nine point lead, the Vikings are going to beat Green Bay and start the season 4 and 0. Our football fan son will be gleeful. I’m still touchy having rooted for a team that’s lost the Superbowl four times. (Final today: Vikings 31 Green Bay 29)

I’ve been working, without as much success as I’d like, at letting go of expectations and living in the moment. With the weather changes and the constant revisions in technology and business practices, that seems wise but requires the retraining of a lifetime’s conditioning. I have a book on order that should arrive this coming week, written by Jenny Odell, titled How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. I’d been toying with reading it and, in one of the reviews I read, saw the mention of bioregionalism. I was hooked and look forward to reading about the combination.

The Woolly Bear

Along a silvan lane, you spy a critter
creeping with a mission, a woolly bear
fattened on autumn flora. So you crouch,
noting her triple stripes: the middle ginger,
each end as black as space. Her destination
is some unnoticed nook, a sanctuary
to settle in, greet the fangs of frost,
then freeze, wait winter out—lingering, lost
in dreams of summer, milkweed, huckleberry.
Though she’s in danger of obliteration
by wheel or boot, your fingers now unhinge her.
She bends into a ball of steel. No “ouch”
from bristles on your palm as you prepare
to toss her lightly to the forest litter.

She flies in a parabola, and lands
in leaves. Though she has vanished, both your hands
hold myriad tiny hairs, a souvenir
scattered like petals. When this hemisphere
turns warm again, she’ll waken, thaw, and feast
on shrubs and weeds (the bitterer the better)
then, by some wondrous conjuring, released
from larval life. At length she will appear
a moth with coral wings — they’ll bravely bear
her through a night of bats or headlight glare,
be pulverized like paper in a shredder,
or briefly flare in a world that will forget her.

by Martin J. Elster

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

Happy Autumnal Equinox and Alban Elfed

As of 7:43 this morning, local time, we are into full autumn, if not fully into autumn. The equinox has occurred but the season has not matured. Leaf color is still less than 10%. Some monarch butterflies have fluttered by. Flickers are flittering through the backyard. Strangely, several lilac bushes in the neighborhood have produced a second bloom recently. Meanwhile, the size of sandhill crane flocks has grown and Canada geese are doing training flights. We even saw a woolly bear caterpillar this week past.

just a hint of color in the trees

Photo by J. Harrington

No sign yet of the first frost or the first snowflake in our neck of the woods. Either could arrive any day now. The local crew of hummingbirds seems to have headed south. We’ll leave the feeders up for another week or two in case northern migrants stop by. I think, and hope, high temperatures will now stay seasonably less than 80℉ at least until next April.

As we enter the darker seasons, many of US hope that will only be literal and not figurative. The latter depending on the results of the upcoming presidential election. In our funkier moods, we wonder how many days of relative peace and quiet we’ll get before campaigns for the mid-term elections start up.

Archery deer season opened the beginning of last week Friday brought a handful of thunderstorms, complete with boomings, lightning flashes, and downpours. Will that be the last until next year, or might we experience thundersnows? Stay tuned.

Something we couldn’t share before this because it might have spoiled a birthday surprise was one of this month’s high points. For his birthday, we got the Son-in-Law an Early Lessons print from the BobWhite Studio. The Studio is located not far from our home so we made arrangements to take a peek prior to completing the purchase. In the process, we enjoyed a nice visit with Bob and his charming wife, Lisa. The story behind the print as a gift is that it depicts a man, presumably a Dad, standing behind / beside a girl holding a fly rod. The Son-In-Law has been taking his almost four-year-old daughter fishing quite a bit this summer. She’s a bit young for a fly rod, but, as most Minnesota sports fans have learned to say, “maybe next year.”

Poem Beginning with a Line from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Maggie Smith

Just look—nothing but sincerity 
as far as the eye can see—
the way the changed leaves,

flapping their yellow underbellies
in the wind, glitter. The tree
looks sequined wherever

the sun touches. Does anyone
not see it? Driving by a field
of spray-painted sheep, I think

the world is not all changed.
The air still ruffles wool
the way a mother’s hand

busies itself lovingly in the hair
of her small boy. The sun
lifts itself up, grows heavy

treading there, then lets itself
off the hook. Just look at it
leaving—the sky a tigereye

banded five kinds of gold
and bronze—and the sequin tree
shaking its spangles like a girl

on the high school drill team,
nothing but sincerity. It glitters
whether we’re looking or not.

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

Almost Alban Elfed time

Despite summer-like temperatures and humidity, Canada geese and sandhill cranes are beginning to flock up. Daylight is shortening. Bowhunting season for deer opened yesterday and the current election season has less than two months to go. I’m trying to find a local organization that teaches youth hunting that would like a donation of my old decoys and duck boat. The Son-In-Law just finished using the leaf blower to clean the gutters. We’ve got a microshield that accumulates crap from oak leaf droppings. All in all, except for unseasonable warmth and dampness, we’re enjoying a typical early (meteorological) autumn with gradually increasing amounts of color in the leaves.

one tree in autumn's scarlet finery

Photo by J. Harrington

After most of a week’s worth of “accidents” in the house, my yellow lab SiSi seems to be recovering from her diarrhea, thanks to the vet’s probiotics and the Better Half’s home remedy of rice and pumpkin and other good healthy stuff. It’s frustrating to have not a clue what triggered the episode so we know enough to not do it again.

Another sign of impending seasonal change has been increased rodent activity building, actually, trying to build, nests in the engine compartment of the tractor. So far we’ve live trapped two chipmunks and translocated them and mousetrapped two mice. The nest building was occurring on top of a couple of bags of last year’s rodent repellant, so this week we’ll replace that with fresh stuff and see if it works better.

Wasps and/or hornets are building nests under the roof peaks. The front peak is just beyond the reach of our “up to 20 feet” wasp killer so I’m looking for a local source for some that’s supposed to reach “up to 27 feet.” I’m not interested in spraying from up on a ladder in case they decide to swarm the attacker. If nothing else, we’ll put up with them until winter’s freezing temperatures and then finish the job. Country living strikes again.

The feast of Alban Elfed, Autumnal Equinox, occurs a week from today at 7:43 am local time. Between now and then, we have a Son-In-Law birthday, an annual furnace tuneup, and a septic tank pumpout on the calendar, among other things. At the rate we’re going, by the time autumn’s gone, we’ll have earned and be ready for a winter’s rest, if we don’t get too many blizzards.

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

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

It’s not all bad this autumn

In several ways, this has been literally a shitty week My dog SiSi has had diarrhea for the past few days and, since we’re getting the septic tank pumped out soon, I had to locate and dig out the pumping port. Ah, the joys of country living! I won’t trouble you with a list of all the recent political stunts that fit the theme.

On the bright side, our son, a Vikings fan, is quite happy that they’re well ahead of the NY Giants at the beginning of the fourth quarter of today’s first game of the regular season. The Daughter Person is enjoying a weekend visit from a friend who was the maid of honor at Daughter’s wedding a decade ago. Granddaughter is excited about an upcoming fourth birthday and her weekly horseback riding lessons. Most to all of us have been enjoying the drop in temperatures and humidity that occurred this week. I’ve been pleased with autumn’s other encroachments such as increasing color in some trees and bushes,, although the temperature drop has lead to increased time for the sourdough’s bulk rise due to house temperatures several degrees less than 70℉. Plus, the Better Half informs me there are pears on the pear tree this year. Maybe some neighbors will come and help themselves.

a pair of whitetail deer at our pear tree

Photo by J. Harrington

Our community supported agriculture autumn shares started yesterday. The farm hasn’t yet sent a list of what’s in the box this week, or, they sent an email and I inadvertently lost it. If a list is found, we’ll add it next posting.

The latest issue of TROUT magazine arrived yesterday and included an announcement that one of the staff had won the 2024 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. You might want to check out Erin Block’s writing online and How You Walk Alone in the Dark at Middle Creek Publishing. Here’s a sample from an alternate source:

Swallows

Just before the storm moves in, violet-green 
swallows fly overhead. 
I thought they were mayflies,
like what trout eyes see, looking up 
from a plunge pool.
Like a hermit thrush being my mother’s voice 
before dawn. 
With nothing to measure against,
how do you size something up.
This is chasing a horizon.
This is looking valley to valley from a ridgeline 
saying, it’s not all that far. 
Saying, sure, we can get there by dark. 

(Published in The Dodge, Spring 2024 issue.) 

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

Here’s to full days with color

It's Labor Day weekend here in Minnesota. The weather is turning autumnal. Thanks to the Better Half, there's a couple of pots of asters on the stairs to the front stoop. Due to a couple of severe thunderstorm evenings this past week, the yard and driveway are again cluttered with dead, broken branches. We're not sure what’s left in the air after all the rains, but both dogs are exhibiting allergic reaction signs, licking their paws.

pots of asters on the steps

Photo by J. Harrington

Hummingbirds are still showing up at the feeders. I expect they'll start heading south over the next few weeks. Local sandhill crane colts are fully grown, or close to it. We expect to see crane flocks grow in size this month before they head off to warmer locales to spend the winter. Other than hay, we’ve not seen any signs of fields being harvested. May be a late harvest this year if the snow holds off.

I’m looking forward to cooler weather and warmer colors in the days ahead, although the MNDNR Fall Color Finder isn’t yet updated from last year. We’re coming into the season of soups and stews and homemade pies and .... I’ll no doubt get back into some sort of regular bread baking routine.

It’s now time to start watching for woolly worm caterpillars migrating. If they make it through until spring, they’ll become Isabella tiger moths. Monarch butterflies are heading south, although we’ve seen very few this year so expectations are tempered. If the changing of the seasons brings cooler, dryer weather and pleasant times out doors, plus a blue wave on November 5, we’ll have enough to be thankful for in late November. Summer community supported agriculture shares just ended. Autumn’s start next weekend.. Here’s what was in yesterday’s box:

Watermelon Heirloom Tomatoes Mixed Sweet Peppers French Breakfast Radish Curly Parsley Broccoli or Cauliflower Decorative flowers (not for eating!)

September

Helen Hunt Jackson

O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!
The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung
On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue
To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped
In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped;
And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among
The yellow gourds, which from the earth have wrung
Her utmost gold. To highest boughs have leaped
The purple grape,—last thing to ripen, late
By very reason of its precious cost.
O Heart, remember, vintages are lost
If grapes do not for freezing night-dews wait.
Think, while thou sunnest thyself in Joy's estate, 

Mayhap thou canst not ripen without frost!

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

Summer into Autumn

It’s been an interesting week. Today is the last Sunday of Summer, meteorologically apeaking. Meteorologists begin Falling into Autumn on September 1. With luck, today’s Heat Advisory and tomorrow’s Excessive Heat Warning will end Summer’s heat and humidity attacks.

On Wednesday, we enjoyed a visit to our backyard by four sandhill cranes, two adults and two grown colts it looked like. They pecked their way around the yard and the wet spot behind the house. I can only hope they nailed a few moles and/or voles. As the cranes moved toward the North, a small flock of wild turkey hens entered from the South. Everyone pretty much ignored each other and kept their distance. Would that we humans were better at such behavior.

[ONCE AGAIN BLOGGER IS MALFUNCTIONING FOR ADDING AN IMAGE!!!]

Echinocystis lobata (Wild Cucumber)

Photo by J. Harrington

Midweek, I discovered, and removed, a red squirrel’s nest from the deck rafters. I spotted it while checking to see if the bat I had chased out of the house Wednesday morning early had tried to settle under the deck. No signs of the bat, and I set a live trap for the squirrel. A couple of days later, s/he was caught and transported several miles away and released into a new home territory, we hope.

Why are oak leaves and snowflakes alike in Minnesota? There’s only on month of the year in which Minnesota hasn’t recorded a snowfall and, I suspect, there’s but one, maybe two, months when oak trees aren’t shedding their leaves. They’ve started coming down this week, again. Tamaracks are turning golden, wild cucumber is blossoming. More trees are showing more colors.

Our son has had successful surgery on his broken arm. Daughter Person took possession of a new, to her, horse on Thursday. That pleases the daylights out of her. There seems to be something in the air, again, that has the dogs licking their paws, and me blowing my nose. Summer has just about worn out its welcome as our state fair begins.

I’m guessing you’ve heard by now that our Governor, Tim Walz, is the Democratic candidate for Vice President, with Kamala Harris nominated for President. We have an opportunity to do much worse. I truly hope we don’t take it, not so much for my sake as for the lives of our children and grandchildren unto the seventh generation. VOTE BLUE! please.

Autumn

Alice Cary
1820 – 1871

Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips
   The days, as though the sunset gates they crowd,
And Summer from her golden collar slips
   And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud,

Save when by fits the warmer air deceives,
   And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower,
She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves,
   And tries the old tunes over for an hour.

The wind, whose tender whisper in the May
   Set all the young blooms listening through th’ grove,
Sits rustling in the faded boughs to-day
   And makes his cold and unsuccessful love.

The rose has taken off her tire of red—
   The mullein-stalk its yellow stars have lost,
And the proud meadow-pink hangs down her head
   Against earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost.

The robin, that was busy all the June,
   Before the sun had kissed the topmost bough,
Catching our hearts up in his golden tune,
   Has given place to the brown cricket now.

The very cock crows lonesomely at morn—
   Each flag and fern the shrinking stream divides—
Uneasy cattle low, and lambs forlorn
   Creep to their strawy sheds with nettled sides.

Shut up the door: who loves me must not look
   Upon the withered world, but haste to bring
His lighted candle, and his story-book,
   And live with me the poetry of Spring.

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