Life is made up of moments, isn't it? Good moments, not-so-good moments. This morning, we had cause for celebration. Ted slept for 9 hours! As he was joyfully chatting away, something that doesn't often happen when you get two hours' sleep, I looked out the window. Frost! I trusted that the frost would wait until he was finished spewing out his joyfulness. And, it did.
Looking backwards, the many Covid-19 lockdowns now seem like a gift to me. I don't want to lose what I learned during those times. We were forced to find our own fun at home and find the beauties there. This year, I have been looking forward to fall and winter. A shift in gears. The busy days of gardening, preserving and camping are becoming a memory.
Isn't it interesting how frost affects different plants in different ways? Perennial geraniums can always be counted on for a good frosty show.
And, if you are hovering above the ground, you get rimmed and speckled with frost. None of that intensity that the ground-huggers get.
Leaves with fine hairs seem to attract moisture and that moisture freezes.
The image below has been saved to my Art Pictures folder. Look at the segmented areas of the orange leaf. Wouldn't that be a wonderful painting challenge? The background colour is morphing from yellow to orange to red, but the borders remain the same yellow throughout.
Not one part of the plant was missed by the frost. Even the anther and stamens got their bling this morning. There are some interesting crystals on these leaves.
Most of the leaves have fallen now. Ted wheeled 9 barrows packed full of maple leaves to our compost bins in the back this week. The little 6' maple that we found at the back of our farm and planted here twenty+ years ago is now giving back by the wheelbarrow-full. Life goes on. Repeats.
Looks like I've been given another gift of beauty. Perfectly placed.
We'll zoom in ......
.... and see it closer. And, aren't those threaded open areas with the deep black shadows interesting? Slowly letting go. Starting to curl up.
The seasons have a way of wrapping up. Gently.
Winter, for me, brings time for teaching, painting, maybe some hiking and visiting and being influenced by minds that are wiser than mine. This poem got dizzy on "repeat" this week. I may have shared it before.
Oh well.
“Gloria Mundi”
Michael Kleber-Diggs
“Come to my funeral dressed as you would for an autumn walk in the woods.
Arrive on your schedule;
I give you permission to be late,
even without good cause.
If my day arrives when you had other plans,
please proceed with them instead.
Celebrate me there
—keep dancing.
Tend your gardens.
Live well.
Don’t stop.
Think of me forever assigned to a period,
a place,
a people.
Remember me in stories
—not the first time we met,
not the last,
a time in between.
Our moment here is small. I am too
—a worldly thing among worldly things
—one part per seven billion.
Make me smaller still. Repurpose my body.
Mix me with soil and seed,
compost for a sapling.
Make my remains useful, wondrous.
Let me bloom and recede,
grow and decay,
let me be lovely yet temporal,
like memories,
like mahogany.”
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