’tis a ghastly, ghostly Halloween landscape

Last night and this morning we got flurried on to the tune of a couple of inches of sticky, wet, snow. Unless we get lots of melting this afternoon, it will be hard to spot ghosts this evening but at least, unlike 1991, it’s not going to snow for the better part of three days straight. The dogs were mildly traumatized as they stepped into a newly snow-covered world this morning. It wasn’t there when they went to bed. They’re now sleeping off the shock, napping in the living room.

Getting a dusting of snow on or around Halloween is par for the course [note to self: stop using golf metaphors] in our region, but a couple of inches is more than reasonable. Psychologically, we may be in for a longer than usual winter unless the temps warm up and stay there for the next month or two. Our average high for today is 50℉. The actual high won’t br much more than the normal low of 35℉. I wonder if there’ll be enough snow still covering the driveway this evening to look for ghoul and goblin tracks tomorrow. I have no intention of clearing the mix of snow and leaves from the driveway since there’s a better than fair chance Mother Nature will take away the snow and continue to dump more leaves for a while.

Happy Halloween from the Jack O'Lanterns

Photo by J. Harrington

The Better Half and I have behaved as responsible adults and foregone (until this evening) eating our special Halloween candy that’s been sitting on the dining table. It’ll be a nice desert starting today. Maybe we’ll be able to stretch it out until almost Thanksgiving. Each adult has one chocolate bar and two chocolate pumpkins. 🎃 

We’re expecting a three year old granddaughter to arrive for a late afternoon Trick or Treat visit and will be surprised if anyone else shows up during the evening, but will leave the front light on. Meanwhile, may you and yours enjoy the magic of Samhuinn. Tomorrow is the traditional Celtic New Year. May it bring US all of what we need and some of what we want.

Chansons Innocentes II

E. E. Cummings     1894 – 1962

hist     whist 
little ghostthings 
tip-toe 
twinkle-toe 

little twitchy 
witches and tingling 
goblins 
hob-a-nob     hob-a-nob 

little hoppy happy 
toad in tweeds 
tweeds 
little itchy mousies 

with scuttling 
eyes     rustle and run     and 
hidehidehide 
whisk 

whisk     look out for the old woman 
with the wart on her nose 
what she’ll do to yer 
nobody knows 

for she knows the devil     ooch 
the devil     ouch 
the devil 
ach     the great 

green 
dancing 
devil 
devil 

devil 
devil 
     wheeEEE 

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Approaching October

We have accomplished the only specific goal we set for ourself this week: pumpkins have been acquired and are posted along the driveway. In an abundance of exuberance, we also picked up a couple of handfuls of small gourds for table(?) decorations. The place is beginning to look like autumn, although we’re headed back to summer-like temperatures later this week.

There are three pumpkins so far, two of the traditional round, orange shape and a pale grayish-blueish “decorative” sort of turban shape. One ore more may eventually get carved as a Jack O’Lantern. I think next week we may set a goal of acquiring a stash of Halloween candy, just in case someone shows up at our door in the midst of a blizzard late next month. With a government shutdown all but assured, will the months and seasons progress as usual, or will time be furloughed along with nonessential government workers?

full October moon rising

Photo by J. Harrington

It’s raining again. We’ve been enjoying light showers off and on all day. I noticed that the creek up the road once more has water where, a week or so ago, there was only mud and a plethora of yellow flowers. The flowers have faded but the water is now bright and shiny. Speaking of shiny, next month’s full moon occurs on October 28, so it will be very close to full for Halloween. That could make for an even more interesting Samhain than a typical thinning of the vails between the worlds.

I think I’ll add another personal goal, to begin a list for the Cailleach to take “the unwanted aspects of our personal year away, so that these too might be transformed.” I wonder if it will include ending a government shutdown and transforming those who caused it.

Sheep to Sweater

By Drew Gardner

Considering the frequency

with which I take people’s words

out of context, lie through my teeth and smear

anyone who doesn’t hew to my philosophy

of division and contempt,

I’d prefer my candidate of choice to stay

on the high road, but there’s a certain element

of fighting fire with dilemmas,

not just for me, but for any candidate.

Is it more important to lose honorably,

or to get into the gutter with your own particularity

when so much is the answer?

I love the pumpkin idea.

I will definitely use that and I also plan

on making the “kielbasa launcher.”

I already have a guacamole rifle

and it’s the same thing, I just need

to figure out how to do it.

If you have ideas for that please help.

Also on the splitting heads thing they

have that hydraulic wrench that

rips the brain chunks out of the

head you can do that so much

easier just get the fishing line attached

to the fragments and then fill 

a two to three liter soda bottle

with sand and throw it in the opposite

direction your life is going.

To see the results of this oscillatory combustion

phenomenon between the acoustics of the

cavity and the pyrolysis of the propellants

which were used in irreproducible ignition

which I never liked much anyway.

I couldn’t decipher myself.

Too bad. I have typed out some abbreviated remains

where my old life used to be, but I’m still

living in them as if they were a book.

I spent the afternoon reveling

and wondering what

I need to do to get my own sheep.

I saw sheep herding and shearing,

admired the baby lambs, and followed

the “from sheep to sweater” interpretive trail.

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Happy Autumn, if you Fall for that stuff 🏈 🍁🍁🍁

By the time this is posted, we will have officially attained the Northern Hemisphere’s Autumnal Equinox. I’m sure of that because I control when the daily blog gets posted and today that will be after 1:50 pm CDT. 

woollybear caterpillar (Isabella Tiger Moth)

Photo by J. Harrington

Still no signs of woollybear worms, but the Climate Prediction Center already claims we may have a warmer, drier winter than normal, thanks to El Niño. Of course, their forecast is framed as a 40% to 60% chance. As I figure it, that averages at 50%, which equals a coin toss, which isn’t much of a forecast. In fact, it’s about as helpful as the banding on a woollybear caterpillar, which doesn’t foretell winter’s severity, or lack thereof, according to the U.S. Weather Service. Normally, I’d be heartened by the prospect, no matter how slim, of a milder, drier winter, but, over the past few years, I’ve noticed that warmer winters usually bring more freezing rain and ice storms than we used to get pre-Anthropocene. I can blow snow or scrape wet snow with the tractor’s back blade. Freezing rain leaves me with no tools except prayer that it melts soon.

a nice collection of prior year pumpkins

Photo by J. Harrington

Back to autumn: looking toward the week ahead, one of our goals will be to get a few pumpkins. I saw the first ones for sale yesterday as I drove past a local feed and grain store. When we dropped off the Daughter Person’s CSA portion yesterday, I saw a couple of pumpkins on their front steps and instantly suffered some pangs of jealously. But, as I’ve learned over the years, it’s good to have at least one goal in life.

Football Weather

By Paul Carroll

As a kid I tried to coax its coming

By sleeping beneath light sheets

Weeks before

The funeral of the summer locusts in the yard;

Then when Granny peeled down the crucifix of

     flypaper that dangled from the ceiling of the

     kitchen

Magic wasn't needed any longer

To fill the air with pigskins.   The air itself

Acrid, lambent, bright

As the robes of the Chinese gods inside their

     house of glass

In the Field Museum by the lake.

Even practice could be fun—

The way, say, even sepia photographs of old-time

     All Americans could be pirates' gold

Like my favorite Bill Corbus, Stanford's "Baby-

     Face Assassin" crouching at right guard, the

     last to play without a helmet on—

And the fun of testing muscles out 

Like new shoes; the odor of the locker room

     pungent

As the inside of a pumpkin;

And the sting of that wet towel twirled against

     bare butt by a genial, roaring Ziggy, Mt.

     Carmel's All State tackle from Immaculate

     Conception Parish near the mills;

And then the victory, especially the close shaves,

     could feel

Like finally getting beneath a girl's brassiere

She'll let you keep

Unhooked for hours while you neck

Until the windshield of your Granddad's Ford V-8

Becomes filled by a fog

Not even Fu Manchu could penetrate.   Jack,

Next football weather my son Luke will be in high

     school,

Bigger than I was and well-coordinated—but

Couldn't care a plenary indulgence

If he ever lugs a pigskin down the turf

Or hits a long shot on the court.   At times, I wish he

     would.

So he might taste the happiness you knew

Snagging Chris Zoukis' low pass to torpedo nine

     long yards to touchdown

And sink archrival Lawrence High

45 years ago come this Thanksgiving Day.   Still,

He has his own intensities

As wild as sports and writing were for us:

Luke's the seventh Rolling Stone,

His electric guitar elegant and shiny black

As a quiet street at night

Glazed by rain and pumpkin frost.

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September plantings

The autumn planting is done, at least that I know about. Potted chrysthanthemums along the driveway; asters on the front steps; some sort of sunflowers in the front flower garden and a new hanging basket have been put to bed and watered in. I helped buy some of them and dug the holes that were more than trowel-sized. The Better Half did the rest. This year’s selection of mums was more expensive and less attractive than past years but they add a nice touch of color.

potted asters with bee

Photo by J. Harrington

Sometime over the next several weeks, we’ll pick up some pumpkins and those, plus what we did yesterday and today, will take care of outside decorations until Christmas season, unless the Better Half declares otherwise or I get inspired at a weak moment.

The sourdough prepared from the revived starter is looking promising. I think a boule will get popped into the oven this afternoon. Following the directions in Sourdough by Science yielded a dough that’s much tackier than I’m used to. Learning is such fun!! I’m still scratching my head about why a baker should both preshape and shape the dough.

We heard a few, very few, shotguns this morning. It’s Minnesota’s youth hunt weekend. From what we've noticed the past week or so, there haven’t been many birds in the air.

And Now It’s September,

By Barbara Crooker

and the garden diminishes: cucumber leaves rumpled

and rusty, zucchini felled by borers, tomatoes sparse

on the vines. But out in the perennial beds, there’s one last

blast of color: ignitions of goldenrod, flamboyant 

asters, spiraling mums, all those flashy spikes waving

in the wind, conducting summer’s final notes.

The ornamental grasses have gone to seed, haloed

in the last light. Nights grow chilly, but the days

are still warm; I wear the sun like a shawl on my neck

and arms. Hundreds of blackbirds ribbon in, settle

in the trees, so many black leaves, then, just as suddenly,

they’re gone. This is autumn’s great Departure Gate,

and everyone, boarding passes in hand, waits

patiently in a long, long line.

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Autumn prelude

For the past eighteen hours or so, there were storms to the east of us; storms to the west of us; storms to the north of us; and storms to the south of us. Amidst the torrents, we got drizzled on. To quote an old saying: “close to, but better than, nothing.”

a damp autumn day

Photo by J. Harrington

Under this morning’s cloudy, drippy skies, we watched a skein of geese in their classic V plus a flock of cranes in a ragged line. That was in addition to several gaggles of geese feeding on a local lawn and two or three (four?) flocks and families of wild turkeys out foraging in the drizzle. Autumn’s urge for going is growing. The preceding observations were made as we headed for the credit union to deposit our 2021 tax rebate check, the one that looks suspiciously like some sort of junk mail or scam. Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world where folks didn’t feel a need to be so skeptical? The last time I emptied my email spam folder, there were more than 250 messages that had accumulated. Sigh!

Despite a number of interesting and appealing new books on the shelves and tables of our favorite local bookstore, located just down the road from the credit union, I uncharacteristically behaved myself. The number of unread and partially read books sitting on my tables and shelves is enough to give even me a slightly guilty conscience. Writers keep writing, poets keep poeting, and publishers keep publishing faster than a guy can read. Definitely not a case of “close to, but better than....” 

Next to the book store is one of the food coops to which we belong and where the Better Half took a walk through to emerge with a bag of “First Kiss” apples (juicy and delicious and traditional deep red) plus a small collection of pumpkin candles that will bring the dining room table more into seasonal alignment. I’m going to have to watch my step. A few more mornings like this and I might end up in a good mood!

September

by John Updike

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.

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Has winter arrived?

We have once again confirmed that getting off our duff and actually cleaning up some of the mess along the drive is much more productive than sitting on our duff in the house and complaining about the mess along the drive. We have also confirmed that, despite living in Minnesota for half a century, we’re still not acclimated enough to remember to wear warm boots or shoes when working outside and standing around in cold damp weather. Each of these observations further demonstrates the accuracy of the saying “We get too soon old and too late smart!” 

Does anyone have any hopes or expectations for an extended warm spell before we get a January thaw, if we get a January thaw? I don’t like these autumns when, within a day or two, we go from low 60s to low 30s and high 20s and then stay there. I feel as though mother nature owes me a couple of weeks in the 40s to get my outside chores done. [Even the Better Half has been discombooberated by this weather. She planted some peonies today but others are still en route. All were supposed to be planted end of October.] Autumn has become too much of a mirror image of spring when we do weeks in the 60s and then jump to the mid 80s and stay there.

pear tree, pumpkins, whitetails

Photo by J. Harrington

Despite my complaints, it felt good to be outside for more than  a quick dog walk. I used the fire pit to burn a bunch of the small branches left over from the tree removal on Tuesday. It’s been too long since I enjoyed an outside fire and the smell of woodsmoke. The pumpkins, all five of them, have now been deposited under the pear tree. Some time over the next week or two I expect the local whitetails to find them and feed on them.

Final observation on this Veterans Day: I remain very grateful that my Dad, Uncle,  Father-In-Law and their peers did such a great job stopping fascism through WWII. It will be even better if we can eradicate it from our country without another civil war.

Windigo

By Louise Erdrich

For Angela

The Windigo is a flesh-eating, wintry demon with a man buried deep inside of it. In some Chippewa stories, a young girl vanquishes this monster by forcing boiling lard down its throat, thereby releasing the human at the core of ice.

You knew I was coming for you, little one,

when the kettle jumped into the fire.

Towels flapped on the hooks,

and the dog crept off, groaning,

to the deepest part of the woods.

In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up.

Mother scolded the food warm and smooth in the pot

and called you to eat.

But I spoke in the cold trees:

New one, I have come for you, child hide and lie still. 

The sumac pushed sour red cones through the air.

Copper burned in the raw wood.

You saw me drag toward you.

Oh touch me, I murmured, and licked the soles of your feet.

You dug your hands into my pale, melting fur.

I stole you off, a huge thing in my bristling armor.

Steam rolled from my wintry arms, each leaf shivered

from the bushes we passed

until they stood, naked, spread like the cleaned spines of fish.

Then your warm hands hummed over and shoveled themselves full

of the ice and the snow. I would darken and spill

all night running, until at last morning broke the cold earth

and I carried you home,

a river shaking in the sun.

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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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Almost to mid-season

The Better Half [BH], while we were walking the dogs this morning, noticed a flock of five swans at about treetop height. They were silent and I, who was not next to BH at the time, never saw a thing. Seeing them would have been wonderful. Seeing them with my camera ready to shoot, even better. That gives me one more thing to still look forward to. I have many pictures of swans on the water. None of them in the air.

some fancy pumpkin carving

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re but a weekend away from Halloween. So far, we’ve not had any creative pumpkin carvers, but there’s still some time. About a week after the big H, we’ll be halfway through autumn and well on our way to Thanksgiving. Despite all the trials and tribulations in today’s world, I’m hopeful that we’ll have much to be thankful for and that between Halloween and Thanksgiving we’ll enjoy more treats than tricks.

This morning I cleared lots of leaves from the stoop and the garage doors. There are still many, many leaves on the trees around the house. As usual at this time of year, it’s a contest of whether I’ll get leaves cleared before they’re covered in several inches of snow. Wet leaves clog up the snow blower so we often just drive on and compact the snow until there’s a coating of an inch or so, which turns into ice next March. That’s an element of phenology I’ve become too familiar with. I’m less familiar with when pollinators and others head for the leaf piles to overwinter. If anyone has good information on the critters lurking in the leaves all winter, please share in the comments.

Halloween Is Coming

© Fiona Halliday

Creeping, crawling creatures scurry in the night,
Rats and bats and spiders, nibble, out of sight,
Don’t look too carefully,
You’ll get a nasty fright!

Monsters in the bathroom, witches in the hall,
Hairy beasts and demons climbing every wall,
You won’t want to catch them,
When they start to fall!

Vampires’ stealthy footsteps cross the wooden floor,
Werewolves howling fearfully, beyond your kitchen door,
Don’t look outside now,
You won’t want to find out more!

Zombies with their wild eyes and their soulless grins,
Skeletons with their bony cheeks and their missing skins,
Listen for their rattling sounds,
But do not let them in!

Halloween is coming, what a scary night,
Ghosties, ghouls and goblins dancing in the light,
Here they are all coming now, feel the spooky beat,
If you listen, hear ‘em shout:

“TRICK OR TREAT!” 

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The many faces of autumn

The October decorations: gourds, pumpkins, halloween candy, are now in place on the stoop and the dining table. Pumpkins will become Jack-o’Lanterns about a week before Halloween. Meanwhile, summer’s hardier flowers continue to bloom despite overnight temperatures close to freezing. The drive to get the candy and pumpkins was a treat, as was watching children select pumpkins for their parents. It’s been a long time since our kids were in grade school. Yesterday was the family and friends birthday party for our 2 year old granddaughter. This is a busy month, more so for farmers.

creative “pumpkin" baling

Photo by J. Harrington

Most of the local soy bean fields are harvested. Some of the corn fields too, but more corn is standing and drying than harvested as of this weekend’s driving around. Based on the traffic, there were lots of folks out taking in the fall colors today. Soon they’ll be gone for another year, the colors, that is. Traffic is sometimes heavier but almost always there.

Only two more weeks of this year’s Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] shares. I appear to have missed listing what was in Friday’s box so we’ll take care of that now.

• APPLES
• CARAFLEX CABBAGE
• DELICATA SQUASH
• KALE
• POTATOES
• TOMATOES, and
• YELLOW ONION

Last, and far from least today, I just noticed that there are fresh flowers on the lilac bush in front of the house. I suppose that goes along with this being the time of year for ghosts, goblins and what not coming back to life.

Song for Autumn

by Mary Oliver

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the fires that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

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Approaching the year’s darker half

The Better Half erupted into a frenzy of Jack-O-Lantern carving this morning. I, displaying my usual level of artistic ability, took the pumpkin chunks and guts up the hill behind the house and dumped them for the deer to feed on. The carved pumpkins, and the uncarved one that’s already starting to rot, will join them after the weekend. We’ve learned over the years that, left along the drive, the deer munch their way through pumpkins while the rest of us are sleeping.

The Better Half’s pumpkin artistry from a couple of years back

Photo by J. Harrington

If you measure winter by shorter days and colder nights, next week brings the beginning of winter to the North Country even though we’re weeks from the solstice. Beginning with Halloween, each night brings below freezing temperatures; by week’s end, daylight will last less than ten hours, and a week from Halloween standard time returns. Meanwhile, at the moment we’re really enjoying what’s left of autumn’s colors in the oak trees and looking forward to seeing if anyone comes to the door Sunday night.

pumpkins “nibbled” by deer

Photo by J. Harrington

So far this autumn we’ve not yet seen and woolly bear caterpillars, and sightings of deer and wild turkeys have occurred elsewhere than in the fields behind the house. Unfortunately, the pocket gophers have been very active, as have the moles and shrews under the bird feeder. Soon the ground will be frozen and thoughts of reducing those populations will once again be deferred until spring.

Theme in Yellow

Carl Sandburg - 1878-1967

I spot the hills 
With yellow balls in autumn. 
I light the prairie cornfields 
Orange and tawny gold clusters 
And I am called pumpkins. 
On the last of October 
When dusk is fallen 
Children join hands 
And circle round me 
Singing ghost songs 
And love to the harvest moon; 
I am a jack-o'-lantern 
With terrible teeth 
And the children know 
I am fooling.

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Autumn becomes palette-able

Our local trees are showing about 10% to 20% autumn colors, as is the situation in much of the state. Several of the local pumpkin patches were closed this morning, but one with enough sizes to meet my needs was open and had everything I was looking for except lower prices. My mother taught me, many, many, years ago, that “beggars can’t be choosers.” I needed 10 pumpkins, 2 largish, 2 mediumish, and 6 smallish (pie size). Once the 10 pumpkins were safely in a real shopping cart wagon, we remembered another mother-taught saying: “a fool and his gold are soon parted.” When I parted with my gold, I loaded the pumpkins into the back of the Jeep and headed north toward the home of the Daughter Person who had requested help assembling decorations for the house and a certain granddaughter’s first birthday party.

pumpkin field at a local farm

Photo by J. Harrington

Actually, shopping at Lendt’s Pumpkin Patch in nearby Wyoming was a pleasant experience, augmented by the pleasure of driving country roads through fields of corn and soy beans nearing harvest. Greens are diminishing. Tans and yellows and golden hues are becoming dominant, with accents of maroon and scarlet. At the risk of jinxing things, we’re pleased to report that, locally, autumn seems to be shaping up as one of the most normal aspects of the world at large these days. The levels of discontent seem to have reached a state in which, if everyone got their fondest wish, the air would be filled with complaints about how long it took to be granted. We’re overdue for spending less time watching screens while listening to screams of outrage from all points on the spectrum. Quite literally, the world would be a much better place if each and everyone of us would take a time out and take a hike! In fact, this is so important I may even take my own advice.

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.

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Of myths and moods and attitudes

 According to myth, Sisyphus had his boulder to roll uphill. We have oak leaves to clear from the driveway and what laughingly passes for lawns and gardens on the property. In a good year we even get to clean most of the gutters on the house. The drive is the primary focus of attention so we don't have to spend too much time unclogging wads of wet leaves from the snowblower. Maples and aspens and black cherry trees are considerate enough to drop their leaves within a relatively short period. Oak leaves become more like the proverbial Chinese water torture for about six months of the year.

Today's weather cooperated and, once again, we've cleared most of the leaves from the driveway edges. Pumpkins are now lying near the pear tree. We suspect the deer will find them by Thanksgiving and will enjoy their own feast for a day or three.

preview of coming attractions

Photo by J. Harrington

The Better Half has replace pumpkins along the front stoop with pine and fir branches and red thingys and silver balls. Sometime within the next week we'll hang Christmas lights and the outside will be done for this year. Unless, of course, we find something new that just has to be added to what we have already. A deer statue covered in lights? Probably not, but we're learning to never say never.

We wouldn't want this to get out and be spread around, but, with a few exceptions, such as having our ear protectors/music players fall off our head at one point, and temporarily misplacing one of the pins that holds the back blade on the tractor, we almost had a good time today. That's something we could use more of and will work toward that end for at least the remainder of the holiday season. Something about blah, blah "good will toward men?"

Sisyphus and the Ants

By Jennifer S. Flescher

The story tells us Sisyphus is being punished.

Over and over he has to push that boulder

up and up. The mountain and God glaring.

And you, you have

your avalanche of moods.

Pills the size of stars to nearly quell

cascade and tumult.

And still you step

gravity amplified by incline, each hazard

in the way of the boulder a reminder

it should be easier. There should be

a hot fudge sundae at the top. A long nap in the shade.

The story forgot to tell us, though, Sisyphus thrived.

He learned to guide his wrists

and shoulder girdles safely to protect himself.

And later he worked to safeguard every insect

from here to the crest. Considers this his calling.

Even as the sun and the weight of time bears down.

Your strength is kingly.

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And a time for every purpose under heaven

We're about to enjoy what might be the nicest week or ten days of this autumn. Unless, of course, the forecast changes. I plan to spend some time outside about every day doing yard chores such as moving leaves off of grassy areas and dumping them in the woods or mulching them with the mower; or pruning dead branches before they get a chance to fall on my head. This may well be the week to get this year's pumpkins, too.

October is pumpkin time

Photo by J. Harrington

This year's election will be all over but the counting 30 days from now. May we never have another campaign season like the one we're in the midst of. Funny thing though. I've been rereading Aaron McGruder's Public Enemy #2 book and lots of the comic strips about the 2004 election and some about voter suppression would fit today if we but changed some names. Much of what we're suffering, from the ways we allow our politics to be conducted, has been made worse but isn't new. That's both disgusting and depressing.

Meanwhile, leaves change colors, days get shorter, temperatures progress downward, and ghosts, goblins, spirits and wraiths get restless as their night of nights approaches. Let's not let all the joys of life be dampened by the drips from our stormy political arena. Since today is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, be  sure to be especially kind to your pets and other animals you may encounter, even politicians. Kent Nerburn has written a wonderful and inspirational book, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of St. Francis, that I read several years ago. In these times, with our current customs, I should reread it. You might find it makes living your life more satisfying if you read it too. Here's a copy of the prayer on which  the book is, in part, based.

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy. 

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive, 
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

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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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Is anything "normal" in late October?

A brief while ago, I checked the very, very, small pond behind the house. It was still covered with a thin coating of skim ice. As I drove around doing errands this morning, I noticed ice reaching out from the shores of larger ponds and the banks of slow-moving creeks. It's beginning to feel more like November than October, but that's not unreasonable, since the month changeover is only a couple of days away.

Photo by J. Harrington

Early this morning, before I left on the errands excursion, i was heartened to see a flock of five Tom turkeys cross the back yard, walk up the hill and disappear into the oak woods. It's been a long time since we've seen turkeys, or whitetails, on the property and that's made for an unusually bleak Summer and Autumn.

Photo by J. Harrington

Something: deer?, rabbit? raccoon?, has attacked one of the Better Half's pumpkin carvings. The two ravens have been torn from their perch. The perch is missing also. Based on prior years' experience, I strongly suspect deer nibblers, but prior years haven't had a rabbit living under the front stoop as we've had this year. Of course, at this time of year, when the boundaries between worlds are thinnest, the night-time culprit might have been a hungry ghost or goblin. We'll probably never know. When the deer were eating the full, uncarved pumpkins, the teeth marks were a giveaway.

Wonders

By Linda Bierds

In a wide hoop of lamplight, two children—

a girl and her younger brother—jump marbles

on a star-shaped playboard. Beside them,

in a chair near a window, their father

thinks of his mother, her recent death

and the grief he is trying to gather.

It is late October. The hooplight spreads

from the family, through the window,

to the edge of a small orchard, where

a sudden frost has stripped the fruit leaves

and only apples hang, heavy and still

on the branches.

The man looks from the window, down

to a scrapbook of facts he is reading.

The spider is proven to have memory, he says,

and his son, once again, cocks his small face

to the side, speaks a guttural oh, as if

this is some riddle he is slowly approaching,

as if this long hour, troubled with phrases

and the queer turn in his father's voice,

is offered as a riddle.

There is the sound of marbles

in their suck-hole journeys, and the skittery

jump of the girl's shoe

as she waits, embarrassed, for her father

to stop, to return to his known self, thick

and consistent as a family bread.

But still he continues,

plucking scraps from his old book, old

diary of wonders: the vanishing borders

of mourning paper, the ghostly shape

in the candled egg, beak and eye

etched clearly, a pin-scratch of claw.

A little sleet scrapes at the window.

The man blinks, sees his hand on the page

as a boy's hand, sees his children bent over

the playboard, with the careful pattern

of their lives dropping softly away, like

leaves in a sudden frost—how the marbles

have stalled, heavy and still on their fingers,

and after each phrase the guttural

oh, and the left shoe jumping.

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'Tis better to light a candle than curse the darkness!

We're back to 100% cloud covered skies. Sigh! Rain is forecast to start within the next hour. Deep Sigh! At least we now have some jack-o'-lantern pictures to share. May they brighten the day! The top one I carved. It's a spider, carved in honor of our son, the arachnophile. The bottom two were carved by the Better Half. I think she did the owl because she knows I've a thing for owls and she did the ravens (or the dove and the raven if you look too closely) because she liked the picture on which the carving was based. If I were that capable with carving tools, the spider would look more like a tarantula, but all those fuzzy hairs intimidated me.

for the arachnophile in your life

Photo by J. Harrington

pumpkin carvings for the birds

Photo by J. Harrington

Today we start the last week of October, and it's not even a full week. Then, again, we get to enjoy Halloween and Samhain as the week and the month end and November begins. May all our haunts be happy ones and may the darker half of the year see us warm, dry and with harvest stores that last until next year's fresh food emerges and ripens and may this week bring us more treats than tricks!

October

Evalyn Callahan Shaw

October is the month that seems 
All woven with midsummer dreams;  
She brings for us the golden days 
That fill the air with smoky haze,  
She brings for us the lisping breeze 
And wakes the gossips in the trees,  
Who whisper near the vacant nest  
Forsaken by its feathered guest.  
Now half the birds forget to sing,  
And half of them have taken wing,  
Before their pathway shall be lost 
Beneath the gossamer of frost.  
Zigzag across the yellow sky,  
They rustle here and flutter there,  
Until the boughs hang chill and bare,  
What joy for us—what happiness  
Shall cheer the day the night shall bless?  
‘Tis hallowe’en, the very last  
Shall keep for us remembrance fast,  
When every child shall duck the head 
To find the precious pippin red.

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The magic of turning pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns

I carved a jack-o'-lantern this morning. The last time I carved one is lost in the mists of time long gone. Shortly after I finished, the Better Half [BH] began carving the first of two she's doing. Guess which one of this partnership is the patient, attention to detail person.

This was the first time I've ever used serrated pumpkin cutters and a plastic goop cleaner - pumpkin scraper. They worked better than I expected, but inexpensive, undersized, plastic handles don't make for an enjoyable experience. Since we only carve pumpkins once a year, it probably wouldn't warrant looking for a better set of tools, unless they could also serve other purposes, like a serrated bread knife? We may give that some additional thought.

fancy pumpkin carving for a centerpiece

Photo by J. Harrington

Tonight, we'll try to get some decent photos of our carving efforts. The one BH has finished is impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks with a candle or LED inside it. Until then, enjoy some of our prior year's efforts. The carvings were done by the BH or the Daughter Person or the Son-In-Law. I'm responsible for the pictures. At least pumpkins are a better size for carving than turnips, unless the Irish grow monstrously large turnips.

ghosts, ghouls, and goblins can be seen wandering at night

Photo by J. Harrington

While BH was "gutting" and carving pumpkins, Yr. Obt. Svt. was outside cleaning a mouse nest out of the dashboard of the tractor. We had planned on putting mouse repellants in the dash area early next week. The persistent rain no doubt motivated the mouse to seek someplace high and dry. We ended up the proverbial "day late and dollar short" and now the tractor needs to go into the shop to get a gnawed on wiring harness replaced or repaired. What induces a mouse to go exploring into a dash board in the first place? The one's that have been sneaking into the garage have been lured to their demise in the baited traps, ideally before they find their way into either vehicle. Country living isn't all watching beautiful sunrises while drinking coffee on the deck you know. Sometimes it's dealing with vermin varmints!

Theme in Yellow

By Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

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