Leaf and Timber

It is just my own peculiar take on things of course, but could there be anything more telling or poignant or Zen than this single vibrantly colored ash leaf resting on the weathered timbers of the old veranda on the last morning of September? I think not...

To me, this chance meeting of color, texture, form and fragrance is the essence of wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic which is rooted in natural cycles, notions of impermanence, our acceptance and embrace of the transience which is the way of all living things.

Leaf and old wood resting together have a beauty which is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, and at the same time a full circle, perfect, timeless and complete in every way. Nothing here is merely kirei or pleasant to look upon, but all is omoshiroi, quietly striking, visually arresting and compelling in a way which elevates the unity of leaf and wood into the commonwealth of the beautiful and the sublime.

On this last day of September, such a composition is a gift.

Little Friend on the Fence

He visits the oak trees, the beech trees, the crabapple trees and (most of all) the bird feeders, all in their turn. He takes no sass from the jays, the cardinals, the sparrows or from Cassie with whom he likes to play tag.

He chatters endlessly as I tend the garden and make it ready it for winter - cheerful, bright eyed and very good company indeed.

Weekly Poem - Quiet Friend

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XXIX
(translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

There is usually a poem here on Thursday morning, but the previous evening's Harvest Moon captured my heart and my rapt attention too. Rilke's sonnet has been a favorite of mine for - oh, let me think - fifty years or so.

The Harvest Moon of September

Of the thirteen moons in a calendar year, September's moon is my favorite, and it grieves me to admit that I have never been able to take a decent photo of it, although I have been trying for many years.

September's moon is golden - as golden as the wide corn and barley fields it rises over. It comes up in sumptuous plushy indigo skies, round and expressive of the season, lambent of face and lush in its contours, perfectly attired for autumn and incandescent. This moon always makes me want to raise my arms in celebration, dance and holler and sing, then bow deeply and fall on my knees in thanks and gratitude for it. This moon is something else, and in spite of its rich color and lustrous glow, there is something rather Zen about it.

We also know September's moon as the:

Acorns Gathered Moon , All Ripe Moon, Apples Ripening Moon, Arbitration Moon, Aster Moon, Autumn Moon, Barley Moon, Black Calf Moon, Blood Berry Moon, Blood Moon, Breeding Moon, Calf Grows Hair Moon, Changing Season Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Cold and Ice Moon, Corn Maker Moon, Corn Moon, Dancing Moon, Deer Paw the Earth Moon, Drying Grass Moon, End of Fruit Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Fruit Moon, Harvest Moon, Hay Cutting Moon, Holy Moon, Hulling Corn Moon, Hunter's Moon, Index-finger Moon, Leaf Dancing Moon, Leaves Changing Color Moon, Little Chestnut Moon, Maize Moon, Mallow Blossom Moon, Middle Between Harvest & Eating Indian Corn Moon, Moon of Drying Grass, Moon of Full Harvest, Moon of Much Freshness, Moon of Plenty, Moon When Calves Grow Hair, Moon When Deer Paw the Earth, Moon When Everything Ripens and Corn Is Harvested, Moon When The Calves Grow Hair, Moon When The Deer Paw The Earth, Moon When the Corn Is Taken in, Moon When the Leaves Fall Off, Moon When the Leaves Change Color, Moon When the Plums Are Scarlet, Moose Moon, Morning Glory Moon, Mulberry Moon, Nut Moon, Papaw Moon, Rice Moon, Seed Moon, Shining Leaf Moon, Silky Oak Moon, Singing Moon, Snow Goose Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Tenth Moon, Vine Moon, Wavy Moon, Wine Moon, Wood Moon, Yellow Leaf Moon.

(I am rather fond of the name "Leaf Dancing Moon", and that is precisely what is happening here at present - the leaves are dancing.)

Wordless Wednesday

Harvesting

It began with a whole large field of pumpkins, several acres of meandering vines and huge flowers almost incandescent in their resolute presence and their luminous intensity.

For several weeks I have been walking past a neighbor's pumpkin field and entertaining hopeful thoughts. This was not by any means the ideal summer for growing the great golden heirloom gourds, but the blossoms were lovely to look at this year and they peeked out of the dense foliage, looking very hopeful themselves.

A day or two ago, there was a sudden flurry of activity, the resonant rumble of tractors and wagons, upraised happy voices out among the greenery and much excitement. (Sigh) the pumpkin harvest has finally begun, and there are pumpkins, lovely pumpkins, everywhere. Oh sweet September!!!

Sunday in the Field

Yesterday, Blogger was being most uncooperative, and I was torn between sitting here and compelling it to work, or just picking up the camera and heading out to the eastern field with Himself and Cassie - obviously, the idea of a gentle pottering out to my sunlit field with its tall fringe of yellowing corn won the day.

There was a single delicate young doe grazing near the old rail fence yesterday morning, and deep in the cornfield, there was a great rustling, thrashing about and squabbling - the wild turkeys were also grazing, and they are a garrulous lot to be sure.

Sign of the Season: My neighbors are harvesting their pumpkins.

Grazing

Mabon Moon

The evening was a rich blue already deepening to violet around its edges and down in the dark shadows by the hedgerow. Purple is an autumn color too - the purple of Michaelmas daisies in bloom and these velvety September skies at nightfall. Last night, the garden behind the little blue house in the village was a vibrant purple at sunset, and it was touched here and there by the flames of the setting sun.

The sky was hung with early stars, and up came the moon of Harvest Home (or Mabon or the autumn equinox) like a lustrous but rather ghostly pearl over the old ash tree in the garden. Lady Moon and my great ash tree are old friends, and they converse about the season now and again, pointing out to each other the crimson of the maples, the gold of the willows, the coppery hues of the beeches.

That perfect waxing moon called out to be photographed last night, and so I did - no telephoto lens and no tripod. Perhaps the photo was meant to be.

Compliments of the Day

Can it be??? Here we are again at one of the two pivotal moments in the turning of the seasons and the wheel of the year when day and night are perfectly balanced in length and existing in dynamic equilibrium. From now until Yule, days will become shorter, and our nights will lengthen and lengthen and lengthen - at least here in the northern hemisphere.

Whether you call this festival Mabon, Harvest Home or just "the fall equinox" (in the northern hemisphere) or Oestara, Lady Day or "the spring equinox" south of the equator, blessings to you and yours...

Thursday Poem - To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

To Autumn (John Keats)

Wordless Wednesday - Transformation

Foggy Thoughts

It's a natural state of affairs for an old hen like myself, but today my sconce seems as foggy as the front field on a fine September morning before the sun begins its work, and the day is revealed in all its windswept glory.

I find myself thinking of two books this morning, and fog (or mist) had a starring role in each. The first is a children's novel by the late Julia Sauer called "Fog Magic" which I read as a child many years ago. The second novel is Pat Murphy's magnificent tale of plague, redemption and magic in an alternate San Francisco called, "The City Not Long After". I recommend both books heartily and shall probably go hunting for my own copies a little later in the day.

Delight in these September morning mists is something which seems to have been with me forever, and so is the lovely nebulous state of wonder which attends such softly amorphous intervals.

I look into the swirling silken skirts of the fog as it drapes itself around chimneys, hillsides, rocks and trees, and I find myself somewhere else entirely and in need of no words at all. It's quite enough to just be here. Autumn fogs are a truly bewitching and very Zen thing.

Hopeful

Most of the Queen Anne's Lace on my favorite hill has been touched by the icy breath of September winds, and it has turned brittle and withered. The stuff forms lacy complex autumn architectures which are very alluring to a wandering photographer with cold fingers.

In a sheltered corner by the gate, there is a small stand of the elegant resident of field and trail, still greening , ever hopeful and attempting to bloom in spite of the changing season. If the wind chances to leave the little colony alone for a day or three, then perhaps the blooms will have their day after all. One hopes that it will be so.

I am not holding my breath however - yesterday the wind was icy, and temperatures were only a few degrees above freezing at nightfall. Conversations at the gate are of an early and killing frost.

Selves Upon the Shore at Dawn

Thursday Poem - The Seven of Pentacles

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting, after the long season of tending and growth,
the harvest comes.

Marge Piercy (The Seven of Pentacles)

Farewell

"The most exciting part of my life is now — I believe the older you get, the more radical you become."
Anita Roddick

Anita Roddick passed suddenly beyond the earthly veil on Monday evening after suffering a devastating brain hemorrhage. Her husband Gordon and her daughters Justine and Samantha were with her when she departed.

Dame Anita's passing came as a shock when I read it, and it seems to me that we are all much poorer for her sudden departure from this earthly plane. I only met her once and that was in the early eighties, but I have used Body Shop products almost exclusively since they were available in my part of the world, and I have always applauded Anita's idealism and her outspoken commitment to the earth, the environment and living a good ethical life.

The first Body Shop opened its doors in Brighton in 1976, and from day one, the organization pledged itself to producing healthy products and using natural ingredients wherever possible, eschewing animal testing entirely and championing fair trade practices vigorously. As an old hippie, I loved the idea that purchasing a simple tube of moisturizer or a pot of lip gloss could also be a radical and "earth shaking" act and one which could make a difference, however small the difference was at the time.

Anita was always right on the front lines when it came to issues like fair trade, global warming, literacy, sustainability, rain forest preservation and indigenous cultures. She was a fierce idealist, and she was passionate about elemental justice and the earth. She could be irreverent and abrasive at times, but she was determined, energetic and absolutely fearless in speaking out in the defence of what she held to be sacred.

There is a eulogy here, and it gives a much better idea of what a remarkable woman Anita was, what a warrior and crusader.

(photo courtesy of the Body Shop)

Rainy Morning

Prickly in September

Bull Thistle (Cirsium vulgare)

The plants are truly impressive. The blooms are a perfect shade of purple, and specimens of this ebullient creature are statuesque, often reaching several feet in height. They're resilient, springing up everywhere and almost impossible to dislodge once they have chosen a new home for themselves. They have prickly bracts and wicked spines in abundance, and one is wise to treat them with caution and a healthy dollop of respect when meeting them along the old rail fence or in the woods.

They are also absolutely magnificent, especially at this time of the year when they are coming apart and blowing all over the western field. In a week or so, I shall be besotted with autumn leaves in rainbow hues. A few weeks after that, I shall be huddled in the depths of a warm anorak and gazing rapturously at milkweed pods and whiskery trees, but at the moment, it is the thistles which tug at my sensibilities, and their architecture is exquisite.

Yesterday, I stood out in our windy western field and marveled at the great thistles in perpetual motion - they made me feel like singing, and I wished I had the words to describe them as they should be described. Being a tad prickly myself at times, I adore their spines and prickles.

Scarecrow Thoughts

A collection of larks is an exultation of larks, a group of ravens is an unkindness of ravens, a whole bunch of eagles is a convocation of eagles, and many crows together is a murder of crows or a rowdy of crows.

What does one call an assembly of merry scarecrows convening near the doorway of a local market on a hot sunny September afternoon? Are they a gaggle, a rowdy, a bucket, a bale, a passel or a shrewdness?

These (methinks) are simply a bin, and encountering such colorful autumnal motifs prominently displayed in the village always makes my heart glad.

Mama Says Om - Lullaby

It's September, and there are slow turnings all around us, shorter days and longer nights, a gentle harvesting and cooler evening temperatures, great trees slowly withdrawing nutrients from their leaves, looking inward and downward to their roots and sliding into a deep restful slumber.

Who sings a lullaby to the woodland in autumn? Is it the stately herons, geese and loons on their flight south? Is it the little green frogs who dwell in the Clyde river and the coyotes on the hill at sunset? Is it the iridescent barn swallows all lined up in choirs on rural telephone wires and eager to migrate? Who sings a lullaby to the flocks of departing birds and the "soon to hibernate" residents of hedgerow, field and marsh?

I hadn't thought about lullabies in some time, but looking back at the multitudinous bedtimes of small brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, children and (now) grandchildren, it seems to me that George Gershwin's beautiful lullaby from Porgy and Bess has always been the preferred lullaby in our family, and Cleo Laine's rendition is the best, one sung (unlike my own rendering for little ones at bedtime) in a voice that warm, resonant and spun of pure velvet.

Summertime, and the living is easy.
Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high.
Your daddy's rich, and your mama's good looking,
so hush little baby, don't you cry.

One of these mornings, you're going to rise up singing.
Then you'll spread your wings, and you'll take to the sky,
but till that morning there's nothing can harm you
with your daddy and mama standing by.

Summertime, and the living is easy
Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich, and your mama's good looking
So hush little baby, don't you cry

Written for the lovely mamas at Mama Says Om.

Humanity Decoded

Think that humans share nothing, and have nothing in common? I wasn't planning to craft a second blog entry this morning, but this just had to be noted.

Scientists in the Genetics and Genome Biology Center at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children have recently decoded the genetic structure of a single human entity, a mammoth undertaking on their part and one which took years to complete.

The study results were full of surprises, and they revealed in some small measure what marvelous complex creatures we really are, how much genetic matter we really do share. This great work will be invaluable in performing future studies and devising treatments for genetically based diseases, and this morning, I find myself envisioning a future world in which there is little or no suffering among earth's sentient creatures.

Humanity Decoded

The scientific data may be found in a recent article at the Public Library of Science:

The Diploid Genome Sequence of an Individual Human

Goldenrod and Hopper

Amid all the bluster, blow and hollow windy music of a classic autumn day in the highlands, a single towering specimen of goldenrod stood stalwart against the rail fence yesterday, still swaying back and forth, but moving more gently in the steady gusts than its neighbors were.

I thought I was just capturing a lovely golden flowering stalk in the sunshine by the old gate, and when I uploaded the photo, there was a grasshopper in my photo - perched on a strand of Queen Anne's Lace and looking cheerful, positively beaming in fact and happy with the day.

Sometimes, just sometimes, one receives a little surprise reminder when she needs one.

Turning

Sunset - September 1

The first sunset of September was magnificent, a real whopper, and wrapped up in my favorite old shawl, watching from the edge of the western hill, I remembered why I have always loved autumn so much.

There was a small measure of comfort and happiness in knowing that I stood at this place in the field last year at this time and watched an equally perfect sunset paint the Lanark horizon.

It was an astonishing evening and one replete with splendor. Everything from the good dark earth under my feet to the fiery setting sun and the indigo clouds overhead was chock full of dazzling color and shot with gold. Wow....

September's First Asters