November 6-November 11 Hard Frost

2010- According to a Chinese almanac, it is officially winter. “…winter was not the season of death, as we might first suppose, but rather the season of dormancy and concealment.  So winter’s creatures are shell-covered…The dark turtle of the north is winter’s emblematic beast.”  I could claim that that is the prevailing ether driving me inside myself but honesty demands I admit that that personal psychic predilection came much before the season.  However it is good to feel, albeit briefly, in sync with the external world.  I also consider that the shortening of the day, the waning of the light is also the waning of the yang energy, the flowing in of yin.  This suits me to a T. 
Some wind and hard rain have made the bareness of the trees sudden.  This suits me as well.
2011-A spell of warm 60-70 degree days feels like a gift. Extra time to mow once again and collect cuttings for mulch, time to un-net the blueberries and prune them to make them easier to net next summer. The time change is affecting me differently this year. The morning feels correct now, getting light before seven, but the afternoons seem suddenly amputated. Though they had been feeling strangely long to me before. Hard to please! I am not feeling the hibernation urge yet either.
2012- After just a few nights of frost, color has drained out of any remaining leaves. Any bit of hue past grey or beige passes for bright and so it will be for many months to come. Days shrink to an even ten hours. Last night a fragment of waning moon shone through a light fog and a screen of bare branches like a night wanderer with only a feeble lantern.
Once again I find myself the Death Dealer. Many flies with the swatter yesterday- (Where are they coming from? What do they want? I tried to let them be but, finally, could not.) And a mouse in the trap this morning, beautiful really, neck crushed. I hate it but cannot bear the droppings everywhere, the smell when they get into the stove insulation, the pathetic infants crawling out of hidden nests when their mother fails to appear. (Those were not my fault, I had no traps set then. That one’s on you Mother Nature, but still...)