Sidetracked Charley

  Fall is not a graceful time. It seems so indeterminate. One day summer, the next day winter. You never know how to dress. Layers discarded all over the house then frantically searched for later as the sun wanes and the evening chill moves in. And not a time to be lazy. There are things to still harvest and process, container gardens to clean out or move inside or plant in a bed. There are hoses to untangle from the uncut grass and coil up and store. I hang them from fence posts above the snow though one winter the snow came over the fence.  Firewood to stack inside the woodshed or under the cover of the front porch. I learned the hard way on this when early snows buried three cords of wood and froze them to the ground beneath the snow. No warm fires that winter. That was, I believe, the same winter I found out it was not wise to depend upon frequent trips to the grocery store just five miles away. Be like the ant and not the grasshopper and stock the larder and the freezer. ...

Some decades ago I applied for a job working on an island. A small island.  One with only a couple miles of road. No car needed.  The company provided golf carts. And evidently boats for diving trips just off shore. I had just gotten my open water diving certification and it seemed ideal. Then someone raised the specter of island fever. I had been snowed in most of a winter in a Colorado ski resort and certainly understood cabin fever but don't we all want to be stranded on an island? Besides I would have thirty days twice a year to go back to the mainland USA. And in a moment of stark awareness I realized I would probably spend every single minute of those 60 days driving. Driving has been my way of escape since I was 16. No destination necessary. Just hop in the car and drive. I may have even fallen in love with photography because a camera in the passenger seat gave me an excuse to just drive.  But it doesn't take an island or a snow storm to close you into fe...

Red Sunflower There is a point in August when the wind comes from a new direction and carries with it a hint of cool weather coming. This year I was down on the Bosque north of Albuquerque when fall arrived. Thus proving it didn't have anything to do with my higher altitude in Black Lake. And it isn't just a coolness to the breeze but the smell of fullness or ripeness. Fall smells different than spring or summer.  Changes in color on the bosque I returned to my Black Lake home to find the wild asters in bloom, late cowslip. The rust colored sumac in seed is missed. We missed the wildflowers of the spring because of the winter drought which continued into early summer.  Mare and foal in the fall  I have felt off step through the summer with my edible garden efforts. Root crops did not produce and I lost my Spanish garlic crop for some reason. Greens and chard fed me well but Broccoli and Brussels Spouts were disappointing. But the flowers in my beds mad...

Fall approaches. I am not one to go by dates on a calendar. I think it is time for a major readjustment of the Georgian. Living on the land I find I pay attention more to the winds or lack there of or their direction or something as subtle as how they smell. Generally there is a day in mid August when a subtle shift comes and whispers of a change of season. I really have not felt it yet. Others are talking about winter around the corner. Frankly, the far corner. But we are a ski resort historically and everyone starts predicting the winter to end all winters months ahead of time. They want their condos and vacation homes booked for the increasingly shorter ski season. When I began skiing in the late 1960's the ski areas generally opened the weekend before Thanksgiving, and ski instructors and patrol had been on the slopes practicing the week before that. And ski slopes did it without making any snow. And when they closed after Easter it was with snow left on the slopes. And...

I wrote a poem this morning on Creative Journey about fall creeping into the valley. It seems early but I only have to look at my photo files and garden journal to know it is about time. The grass is not as gold as in the photo above but that may be because of the extended monsoon season. But there and there is a branch on an aspen which is already gold or a Virginia Creeper vine turning red. There are just so many images you can put in a poem unless it is the Iliad. But as one is writing it so many images spring to mind. And I found myself thinking long about the signs of fall. The hummingbird feeders are down to two which I fill only every other day. That is down from three filled three times a day. There are now more seed pods than bulbs on the holly hocks. I shall miss them. Under house heat does not go on until the end of October but I plugged in the heated door mat on the deck outside the studio. It was gift. I would never have bought myself one. But when it fails...

Aspens turning on distant mountains Google has given up fonts with serifs. I remember those days with the calligraphy pen practicing the strokes which so naturally gave you serifs. I think I first did that in the seventh grade. I was so proud when I got it right. Now it seems kids do not even learn cursive in school.  And to be honest I love Arial with no serifs the most of all fonts. And my cursive daily looks more like printing. I must acknowledge Penelope, my roommate in college, who taught me prep school script which was actually printing. I practiced it in my first ever journal. I have a shelf on a book case which contains all the journals I have managed to keep before Y!360 and my first every on line journal. I still love journals and buy them. I have four currently with a page or more written in them. There is the garden journal which I am religious about only in the spring. Time to update it. And then there is my ceremony journal in which I keep records of ...

The late season humming birds are in full flight. According to most bird books the vast majority of humming birds I feed on a regular basis are only flying through on a long migration. And some bird books maintain that New Mexico is not their major flyway but Arizona. I think that has been wrong for a decade but never more wrong than this year when the Arizona fires pushed them west. Now, whether it is two species or twenty, is when they head south. I will be filling up my quart feeder at least once a day until almost as suddenly as they came they are gone. The cliff swallows are gone. Again as suddenly as they came. They hatched out a brood and got them all flying and for about a week hung around on insect catching lessons or some such. I got to watch them with their just above the ground aerial antics and then silence. I remember my dad and his love for Purple Martins. They always arrived to set up house keeping in the elaborate Martin houses he built on my mother's birthday...