October 1 - October 15 Houseplants Come Inside/First Frost

2010-I took down the hummingbird feeders and put out the seed feeders and oh my! suddenly flocks of birds descended!  There were chickadees, gold and house-finches, English sparrows, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, titmice and a shy cardinal finally finding the nerve to belly up to the bar.  Overhead, not related to the feeder activity, I noticed a line of geese and something chasing crows out of its territory and the ever present high circling buzzards that I used to think were hawks. 
(If I happen to look up at the sky while I’m doing yoga, I seem to see everything with a new clarity.  Even a slowly drifting shred of cloud seems wondrous and as if accompanied by music.  This vision only seems to last while I’m actually practicing, though.)
2011-The fund drive is a good opportunity to practice turning off the radio and I find that when I am full of something(i.e. plant spirit) it is much easier than when I am empty.
The house plants have been inside  for a week though the frost was very light-even the basil still survives. The colors are beginning to deepen and although they will not I think be so brilliant this year there is instead a more somber condensed intensity as if the essence of life was being boiled down. (Until it evaporates? What residue is left?

Thick old apple, skin
Shriveled and russeted, yet
Heavy in the hand.

Juice-pressed to bursting open
Just so my hidden heart is.

2012-Now that I have kept this journal almost three years, I can see that my sense of whether seasonal changes are late or early is completely subjective. I was convinced that fall was late this year, the colors behind the ’usual’, the weather milder, but other entries show me wrong. Perhaps there is no ‘usual’ outside of the world we construct.  I heard on the radio just now that the most intense fall colors occur where the winters are more severe. So as the climate warms, our stunning autumns might be fading. Since color memory is subjective, will we even know? Will our sense that ‘fall isn’t what it used to be’ be attributed to aging’s tendency to glorify the past?
2013- This entry marks one year since I started publishing this blog. My overall sense is that it chronicles my search for something, though it's hard to say what. A glimpse of something deeper underlying normal experience perhaps? And, when very lucky, a sense of connection to that 'something'.

October 6 - October 10 Supernatural/Purple

2010-When I return from a weekend away the last of the hummingbirds and the small flocks of monarchs we had this year are gone.  There’s one last florescence on the butterfly bush in case a stray one comes through late.  The crows and the jays are raucously making the gathering silence even more so.  Many trees have yellowed though they will be nowhere near peak this weekend, Columbus Day. There’s very little red as yet though the forsythia have branches in a lovely shade of maroon that looks very dramatic against the bright yellow of the re-blooms.  I did see a flock of geese flying south in New Jersey though around here they seem to stay put.
Wait-I was wrong!  As soon as the sun and some warmth returned, I saw the monarchs again flitting about the purple asters and the golden rod in the meadow.  I cannot tell if they are new ones passing through on the journey to Mexico or locals lingering on. It is fascinating to learn that the males can be distinguished by “tiny scent sacs that bulge on the veins of the lower wings.” I can’t wait for a chance to get close enough to see.
2011-Already two nights of frost and the houseplants are brought inside though the forecast for the weekend is bright, sunny, and much warmer days and nights.
I took a workshop in plant spirit medicine with a man well known in those circles. I was hungry to spend time with people who take such things seriously. I liked him very much, especially when he pointed out that all plants are fully conscious. (Though I was disturbed a night later to hear a man on the radio who impressed me the same way with his thoughtful, quiet and honest manner. That man specialized in casting out demons.) I thought I’d gone with specific questions about my attempts to connect with the fern and apple tree but realized that I already do what he does and am on the right path. The obstacle is my resistance to giving up my current world view that does not allow for such things. Here I have removed myself from so much and created so much free time and energy yet have trouble crossing that last barrier.
Then while I was meditating the other morning I was shocked out of it by the dull thud of a bird hitting the window. I came outside to find a catbird on the deck lying wing all askew and looking broken but still alive. All I could think of to do for it was be with it, so squatting down I closed my eyes and tried to get back into a meditative place and just be with it while it died. A few minutes later I opened my eyes and was surprised to see that it had folded its wing nicely into place and was sitting up.  I left it alone thinking my presence was more disturbing than helpful at that point and checked on it every few minutes for the next half hour or so as it sat there quietly.  Then it was gone.  The interesting part of this comes in the feelings I had when I let myself think that my presence had helped heal it. I have seen birds before stunned in this way but just needing a little time to recover before flying off so I argued with myself that that was the case here.  But this bird’s wing had looked broken. So back and forth and the crux of this is the same shift I am having trouble making into opening to plant spirit. It is so easy to dismiss this and then the next day while I was sitting there knitting I noticed a praying mantis had landed on the chair alongside me. I stopped to watch it and it proceeded to walk up my leg, onto my arm and up to my face where it sat inches away exchanging deep looks with me. Eventually it wandered off.  I so want to believe that these things are trying to reach me.
(The next day I picked up Pam Montgomery’s Plant Spirit Healing that I had ordered through the library and was startled to realize that the altered image of Lady’s Mantle on the cover looked exactly like the praying mantis!)
Last night I dreamed of snakes. I saw a tiny one and as I went to pick it up I saw that what I thought was a small snake was really just the head of a huge one. Then I saw that there were three-small, medium and large. While still basically asleep I interpreted this to mean that while I thought that these plant spirit efforts were small, they would lead to something very big/important. Reading the book this morning there was a whole chapter on the importance of three’s.
2012- Down to forty at night but it looks like we will escape frost for at least ten more days. I brought the plants in to be safe and give them time to settle. Cut open a raw milk cheddar and was very happy with it, though initially I thought I sensed an off, almost moldy, taste. It dissipated at room temperature. It’s very trying to invest time-six months- and then risk having it come to nothing. Failure of any of my projects makes me feel like ‘a failure’. It doesn’t take much for me to sink to that place. Need to remind myself that it is all a learning process.
Getting ready for what I hope will be the last mowing of the season. Yay!
2013-This year the purples are claiming my eyes. Is it because their direct complementary-all kinds of gold and yellow-are so intense right now?

October 1 - October 5 Big Waters Pass Through

2010-The remnants of a hurricane and a tropical storm barrel up the coast in the typical weather pattern here and give us a two day deluge ending what seems to have been (but I did not hear called) a drought.  In one day it rained enough to take the September total from a deficit to a surplus (not for the year though).  Nature in recollection is stable or gentle but in actual experience seems one extreme after another. Out of control.  Happily out of our control.  And reality, when we let it in, is so much better than we plan.
2011-The days continue socked in with clouds and alternately dribbling and spurting rain. The temperature may just make 60 but the wetness makes it feel chillier. I would like to just take the edge off with a burst of heat but the oil burner won’t turn on and the repairman is days away from showing up. There’s something in this passive helpless suffering that is iconic for me. I must force myself to do anything beyond sitting in my warm bed and knitting.  At the same time, my dreams have been emotionally intense, full of painful loss, jealousy and frustration.  The leaves seem to want to turn but have only managed a sad yellow brown before they just give up and let go.

The pale yellow leaves,
Disappointed in themselves,
Drop disconsolate.

2012-Warm foggy days with fits and starts of rain; the grey mist seems to make the colors more intense. In contrast to ’expert’ opinion, it is looking like the fall colors will be magnificent this year. Much in the garden continues to grow though the tomatoes have given up as the cucumbers did months ago. I’m suspecting blight and thinking I have not been careful to dispose of suspect plants away from the compost nor made an effort to look for resistant varieties. I had a theory that blight must be always present but healthy plants are immune unless long periods of wet cool weather undermine their defenses. There was a short period of that this year, but also hot and dry ones; condemningly, other people’s tomatoes look fine.
The oil burner is being serviced for the winter today-I’ve had it on the past four or five mornings to take the chill off, but today is warm again.
I finished dyeing the wool I had. Probably that’s it for the season unless something interesting comes out of the Sheep and Wool Festival in two weeks.
2013-The smells have been heavenly.  The whole front yard smells like maple walnut candy and the damp breeze, warm from the south, is rich in the odor of marigold, petunia and heliotrope.

Autumn trees smolder
Till,  with one ray of sunlight,
The whole world ignites.

September 26 - September 30 Meditating in the Sun

2010-The days are growing dramatically shorter, three and four minutes a day.  A week ago the sun hit the deck early enough in the morning for me to do my yoga out there.  Now it stays shady until later.  I noticed the sun setting halfway to its winter position where I guess is just where it should be at the equinox.  With this strong sense of the sun fading away, in strength as well as duration, it was marvelous to have the chance to meditate in my old chair in the middle of the lawn.  As the sun grew stronger, I let it soak right into me as much as I could as if trying to hold it there inside through the winter, until it comes back. In the same way I have been visualizing the breath as waves and experiencing meditation as a period of just sitting by the ocean.  Today it came to me to try to watch the thoughts with the same sense of expectation that I used to feel at the movies.  Why not enjoy them going by?  In fact why not enjoy meditation physically as well, the relaxation and happiness of letting go?  I think I have been trying too hard.
2011- The applesauce proved tasteless, though it made good tea bread. Yesterday the day exactly equaled the night, today is four minutes less.  And so? I’m not sure I’m not looking forward to winter.  How strange.
The best part of the day has been the early morning and the time just after sunset.  The colors are intensified-the dying plants and the skies- the light is refracted through mist, and a heavy silence presses everything down.  I recognize feeling though some kind of crust separates me from it. Is it just a need to cry?

Old colors condense;
Concentrating autumn reds,
Fill my glass again.

2012- A heavy rain followed by a forecast of clouds for the next few days which means having to turn the lights on in the kitchen while processing chestnuts and dyeing wool. The flock of blue jays return from time to time adding a festive blue that really sets off the autumn palette. The trees are turning but seem somewhat behind if they’re to reach peak by Columbus weekend. The maple in front is just going yellow and the most dramatic touch is the crimson Virginia creeper vines snaking up the trees like red exclamation points. I am going to make tinctures of chicory flowers, purple loosestrife and common wormwood(Artemisia vulgaris) to combine in a third eye opening elixir ala Susan Weed. Apparently it should only be used once. Then what are you supposed do after having ‘seen’? I would like to lay myself out in the grass and just invite the fairies to carry me away.
The hummingbirds are definitely gone though I did see a monarch the day before yesterday.
2013-It occurs to me to write that the trees are coloring up intensely this year and seem early. Yet at this same time last year I felt they were late. Is the difference really only inside me?

September 21 - September 25 Harvest Moon

2010-In the course of the day yesterday I must have seen a dozen different kinds of spiders. There’s the ones who seem to be inhabiting every corner of the ceilings, busy producing even more. Then there’s the black one inside the kitchen window that hides inside the track of the storm window whenever it sees me and there’s a brown one, one of these tunnel-web making ones that I’m seeing for the first time this year, just on the other side of the glass. (Do they see each other ?) In the crook of the house outside there’s some kind of spider building webs like shelves, one over the other right up the wall.  I picked a dahlia and found a beautiful white spider sleepily crawling out from its bed in the petals. And then, while scraping paint, I disturb myriads of daddy long legs and several others.  What abundance. I want to think of them as fellow lodgers, little friends to share the day with.  Then when I see them closer up I find many have incredibly beautiful and intricate oriental rug like patterns on their backs. Each one a magnificent creature, all but invisible in our world.
The harvest moon is tomorrow night, coinciding with the Fall Equinox.  I would like to celebrate Japanese style by drinking sake and writing haiku while moon gazing.  Even last night it was bright enough to walk home by and I thought how I always wanted to live where there were no street lights.  How seldom I take the time or make the effort to appreciate that wish come true.   Last night I couldn’t help myself.

Rising harvest moon,
Baseball on the radio,
So high and outside.

I went outside yesterday to see how the storm was progressing and found myself at a loss for words to describe what was happening.  There were definite patches of blue sky at the same time soft light rain was falling out of low dark clouds. I fell in between the words rain and sun; I felt a new word was needed but more than that it seemed that my effort to fit reality into inadequate words was keeping me from seeing/experiencing what was actually there.  How can the incredible complexity of weather fit into a word or even words?  That was the first time I really saw how they could get in the way.
2011-Officially Fall. The trees are yellowish brown, the Virginia Creeper climbing the trunks is brownish red.  It is hot and wet and overcast and expected to stay this way all week--the rain totals are fourteen inches above normal. The tomatoes all blighted and died but Val brought over a bumper crop of chestnuts. The pink sunrise sky lit up misty fields of goldenrod and maroon violet grasses with accents of purple asters.  I saw it before the clouds quickly erased the scene, but my heart wasn’t in it.  There are plenty of apples though they are spotted and small.  Perhaps I’ll make apple sauce today.
2012-The days and nights are an equal twelve hours. Although it’s early, it seems the hummingbirds have been gone for a week already but I’ll keep the feeders up a bit longer, just in case. Cold nights in the forties, but no frost. I put the furnace on this morning to bring the inside temperature up from 56 to 61. I told myself it was to test the burner before they service it next week, but really it was just too cold. How many other self-serving untruths do I feed myself? A very murky unpleasant feeling that I don’t really want to look into. A suspicion that I am a sniveling, self pitying, fear ridden, judgmental pathetic specimen. Just in time for Halloween. What would my costume be? The Gollum?
2013-The leaf colors are changing quickly now and it looks to be a beautiful show this year. Now that we have an apple press we have been making cider and thinking about experimenting with other fruit-friends have pears and grapes in abundance. A series of beautiful mornings and the perfect temperature for yoga on the deck. I think I saw the last hummingbird the other morning.
 

September 15 - September 20 Flocks of Birds Gather Grain

                                          dyed using local plants along with madder and indigo

2010-Just last night I heard a flock gathered on the field just next door  though I couldn’t see them.  Perhaps they were swallows.  The harvest dominates the days now, tomatoes, apples, greens and the last squashes needing to be preserved now.  The last mowings and the garage paint scraping must be fitted in around that.  The weather has been marvelously cooperative though and the only limit to what gets done is my energy.  I noticed as I was tossing the fallen apples out of the way when I mowed under the tree that there were none of the yellow and black sugar loving bees that can be such pests at this time of year, especially when I’m cutting up apples outside,  None.  Is that a natural fluctuation or another sign of environmental harm?
2012-Something I’ve never seen-a flock of two dozen or so blue jays, raucous and marauding, clustered on the trees and houseplants, pecking something out of the dirt. I’ve wondered in the past why I never felt more awe at such a sky blue bird, but in a group like this they were amazing and tropically unusual as a flock of brightly colored parrots.
I’m feeling the need to get involved with plants more, leading me back to experimenting with dyeing wool with them. So far I’ve tried dock root, elderberries, knotweed and achiote (from the supermarket). Poke berries, amaranth and goldenrod in the works.
 Pounds of string beans this year though the cucumbers and tomatoes have died back with what I fear is blight of some kind. Making pesto today and minestrone with green beans, limas, tomatoes, chard, kale, leeks, garlic, peppers and little spears of broccoli, all from the garden. The squash was a disaster this year, weakened by drought because I tried them in the front bed which is too clayey to be kept watered. They had slugs, squash bugs and vine borers. I guess its amazing I got the few I did. The cardoons were attracting tons of those striped bees for some reason, I even stepped on one, though there are no apples (or pears or nectarines) this year so I don’t have to worry about being bothered by them while cutting fruit outside.
2013-The same blight killed the cucumbers again, although they were flourishing earlier in the season. The squash may be affected as well. I’ve been somewhat negligent about it in the past thinking healthy plants would fight off diseases given good growing conditions but I’m convinced now that the soil is contaminated and I will have to take some measures next year.  The grafted plant experiment was not a success, both the eggplant and the tomato dying completely back early on. The black cherry tomatoes are ripening, slowly, but the heirloom ‘Stripeys” are still green. The sprouting broccoli turned out to be an interesting plant in that it yields a constant supply of small florets for cutting every day rather than the few but large heads of normal broccoli.

September 10 - September 14 First Apple Cider

                                                hops ripening on the vine

2010-It is the perfect time to be at the Jersey shore.  Saturday we went down to the water to watch the sun rise-the only time I did all summer. All the ocean sunrises I have seen over the years and I never remember a pink mist over the lilac and purple breaking waves. All these years and still something new to be seen.  The day continued perfectly  sunny but with a late summer twist- the water was warmer than the air. Then sunset on the bay side in the middle of a dreamlike bike ride; so much of time down there seems dreamlike. Sunday the sun peeked briefly through the dark clouds just at sunrise but rain followed right after. It rained about an hour but lightly and we walked on the beach anyway.  After the rain stopped it remained cloudy but warm and we stayed reading on the beach all day. Another kind of perfect.  Monday was sunny and promised to be warm but we needed to leave.  One last long walk on the high tide soft shore before tearing oneself away from summer…
2011-Rather than changing to fall colors, many trees-the maple in particular-seem to be turning straight to brown and then dropping their leaves. Two beautiful days begged me to reconsider my verdict on this season but I cannot. Except for one so far the nights have been warm enough to leave the windows open.  Last night was the full moon, the one for harvest time viewing in the Far East.  I walked down the driveway about seven thirty to find the rising moon through the trees. It was huge and orange and made the surrounding sky look royal blue.

Not much harvest but
The autumn moon still rises.
Glad when this year goes.

2013-A handful of nights flirting with frost, but no damage. We tried out the garage sale cider press with great success- a five gallon bucket of apples produced about a gallon of cider. At night I’ve been drinking last year’s apple wine-very dry and not apple-y at all-not sure which I prefer.