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?