Reflections Upon September

Reflections on the Rio Grande

September is my favorite month. Always has been. Even in those dreaded days of my youth when it meant going back to school and all the teasing and not fitting in. September meant, more than any other month, new beginnings. In school it was new subjects, possibly new friends, definitely new books, and new clothes.

I really love September. It smells wonderful. So fresh. And every day there will be oh, so subtle changes as vegetables ripen and foliage begins to turn, and flower petals fall and reveal seed cases of fascinating shapes.

Fresh flowers I have left outside all summer long. Dried grasses and seed pods and dried flowers I will cut and bring inside to fill all manner of containers. And I will collect the seeds; the promise of a new spring. Fall reaches its culmination in October with the harvest but September is the beginning of the fall.



Spring is the promise and September is the glory of that promise. And yet there is always this bitter sweetness about September. Soon the glorious leaves will fall. The last flower will bloom. But if we are lucky those things will not happen until October. Snow will not fall until November.



I have made it a rule to never ruin September with a marriage or a divorce. I avoid relationships in September because it is my month. Thirty years ago the 9th of September I gave up drugs and alcohol. And I began to habit of reflection in September. Sometimes I do a soak in Pagosa for a few days. I had plans to camp this year. But, Mardi Gras, my fur companion of a decade and a half, will be 15 this September 6th. That is hugely old for a standard poodle. So this September I will be sticking close to home. I may just let the answering machine take all the messages for hours or days while I sit on the stoop, or paint in the studio. Or me, my camera, and my fur kids in the truck in the mountains if just for a few hours.

Meteorologically autumn begins today but the autumnal equinox is September 22nd this year. Mabon, the White Goddess, marks the middle of harvest. The Harvest Moon will be September 8th. Time for all things to come to fruition. Traditionally the time to look back and reflect on your past life and plan ahead to the future. Or just celebrate having made it to this point in time.

White rabbit, white rabbit.

Comments

  1. Ien in the KootenaysSeptember 1, 2014 at 8:08 AM

    Love this. Just quietly Being in the wheel of the seasons is my greatest joy in life.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I write for me but I care what my readers think. Please be polite and no scamming.

Popular posts from this blog

Swimming

Image
For much of my college career my fitness workout was swimming on the B squad of the swim team. I remember it as the days before heated pools and women coaches. I also remember being so exhausted and cold I could only lean against the shower wall and throw up. Not exactly warm fuzzy images but I was in awesome shape. Needless to say it did not leave me with a overpowering desire to swim laps. Point of fact for years my swimming became really informal: Swimming to shore after the canoe tipped over, challenging my sister once a summer to across the lake and back, seeing how long I could back float without moving a muscle, and a scuba course. I also played around with other ways of staying fit: aerobics, bicycling, jogging, skiing and dance classes. All of which seem to be bad for the knees, back or feet. After my ski accident my physical therapist steered me back to the pool. Damn if I was going to swim laps! However, aqua fit was just getting rather seriously taken so I took it. It r
Read more

The Pruning the Crown of Thorns

Image
Crown of Thorns Before I am a lover of Euphorbias . They are from the deserts of Southern Africa and Madagascar. They have evolved physical characteristics and forms similar to cacti of North and South America and are often incorrectly referred to as cacti. My big Crown of Thorns was one of my first of a growing collection of these succulents from the spurge family of Euphorbiaceae. I picked it up as a 6 inch plant in a New Iberia nursery when my sister and I were touring the northern gulf coast. I believe that was 15 years ago. I made an attempt at limiting its height a few years back to allow it to devote more energy to the new branches and make it a denser plant. That failed. And the height of the plant continued to challenge the window space and soon the long branches were leaning over and leaning against the window. I googled and found the proper way to prune this treasured plant. Still it was very difficult to cut off the four longer branches. Even with a plan. The f
Read more

Polyethylene Packaging - a Dark Times Journal entry

Image
I was in the fourth grade when our family moved from El Paso, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We moved because I could not breathe the air there. I want to say they cracked petroleum there. But what did I know beyond the sky was sometimes yellow and I could not breathe. Mom was pregnant with Debbie, and Gary and I rode in the backseat separated by a round tank full of Dad's tropical fish. Dad had a job with Sealright, Inc which made paper milk cartons. Sealright was a polyethylene packing subsidiary of Phillips 66. The petroleum company. I was rather proud of myself for learning to say that, and to not laugh when adults would stare at me not knowing what to ask about that. Albuquerque smelled better. Then. Before all the freeways were built and the shape of the valley trapped the exhaust down near the ground in the winter months. We lived in the foothills. I could breathe. I learned that if I could see the air I could not. Still it was better than El Paso though I missed our trip
Read more