First snow fall 08

I understand not everyone is a weather maven like I am so if the changing season isn't fascinating to you, you might want to skim.

October 29 and it has been snowing, fluttering fat snowflakes, all day. Early certainly but so beautiful. One photo is of the garden, now tucked in for winter. And the other is of the chicken coop with the hens peeking out.

The amazing thing is that even though we aren't really ready for snow, it felt like a present - a surprise gift before the 31st and the ending to the Celtic year, Samhain. This white will last now until next April (not May, if we are lucky.) The tall Hemlocks will stand sentinel through the dark and cold. A common place wonder, this changing of the seasons.

If time circles, as the seasons demonstrate then we have faced this same kind of crisis before. We have lived through it, figured it out or just endured, but in the end we continued. This season also reminds us that some day we will not, continue - I mean.

So each first snow fall of the year is welcome.

Many happy returns.

Golden leaves

I had the luxury of sitting and watching the shining maple along the road drop the last of this year's leaves. As I considered what the relationship might be between the tree and the leaves, I was surprised. This tree was releasing the very useful, working, necessary support that has sustained it throughout the spring and summer. Science aside, what is this myth, being enacted around me, saying?

The tree has a wisdom which knows the assurance that a new set of leaves will come again in the spring. And, unless there is serious disease, there will be new green leaves on that tree in May. Is that also true for the useful, now no longer useful, things in my life that must be released. Sure. We all know that. But what about something that has worked, more or less, for years but now no longer holds any juice for me. Is there a time when one needs to accept things as they are? I had thought so but looking at the maple I wonder.

I wonder if holding to the crinkled, sapless things in life just prevents the new juicy, life-filled things to manifest. I wonder if the lifelessness is a result of the tree's withdrawal of energy and attention. I know a lot of "new age" theories that would support that hypothesis but I've never liked those theories much. They just didn't seem real to me. But this maple tree, this teacher by the road says indeed, letting go of something when it is working, because it is time, is healthy. It is fearless participation in the cycle of life.

The steady breeze has pulled all those yellow leaves down. They lay like a shiny blanket around the tree, useful to the end, mulching the roots against fierce cold coming.

Talk talk talk

they are talking now - Obama and McCain. They are allegedly debating. Having been on a college debate team, I can tell you even in my limited experience this is not a debate. I like hearing them for a while but it's like a speech, only broken up by questions.

McCain doesn't answer questions. That much is clear. Obama is better but does run on with his talking points. So I can only take about 45 minutes and then my fairly high tolerance for boredom is exceeded.

I am grateful that in the end the reins of my life are not in the hands of either of these men. I am grateful that in my experience there are many more factors besides Presidential elections that will shape my future.

So I can turn off the radio and read a book on bees, confident in the midst of chaos.