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'.