Here We Come A WAAAsailing!

Happy Holidays!

The deep, dark beauty of November

This is one of my all time favorite poems. It is by Paul Smithers of Cottontown, TN. I found it in Yankee magazine when I was a teenager.

GOING DUST

This is mine, this calm and modest twilight

When night begins early to filter

between

The flaps of gray sky and the

evergreen

Mocks the maple. The kaleidoscope

plight

Of leaves, the cold end of summer

roses, blight

On the garden that comes in the

unseen

Hours of frost to others, these things may mean

Sorrow; to me they are joy and joy

outright.

I hope to die in such young November

As this and be laid to rest under just

Such a sky, to finally peacefully lie

In the scent of apples that will

remember

How I gazed on them once, when

going dust

Was a dream that living could not

mortify.

Dolly sighting in Porter, Maine

It appears that Ms. Parton has finally found the fountain of youth or a good plastic surgeon.

A girl and a horse

This could get VERY expensive!

Stella Natura

I am experimenting with biodynamic planting for the food garden. My first foray has been planting garlic (New York White). I used the recommendations in the Stella Natura for planting root identified plants, so the time was right on Tuesday night. I had to do it under the recently full moon (that seems like a good thing as well). We will see what happens.

Closer

It is said that we in the world of the living are closer to the world of the dead on this night- the veil is thinnest on all hallow's eve. There sure are a lot people I miss and would like to visit with (if it didn't mean scaring me to death). I've been thinking a lot tonight about a Halloween when I was very young, maybe 3 or 4 years old. There was a party in the basement of my grandmother's house across from the Atomic in Mayfield, NY. I remember there was all the fun sensory stuff...jello brains, eyeball eggs, pasta guts... then someone came upstairs and saw that the barn behind the store across the street was on fire. My cousins and uncle raced over, but they still lost a number of animals. This is the way I recall it, unfortunately the list of folks I can ask details about this event is REALLY slim. I also remember riding in an old red Willy's jeep with my uncle and parents, sometimes, and my cousins others times. Always on dirt roads requiring 4x4 power...man it was great! That must be where my love affair with the older SUV developed- that and Mac McClarey's mustard yellow 70's era Ford Bronco. And I remember rootbeer floats and one vivid dream-like memory of a witch on a broom stick flying over the full moon out the back window above the station before it was remodeled.

Perhaps it is true about the veil being thinner tonight...memory road seems to be on my GPS.

Lucky

While listening to Jay Unger and Molly Mason, drinking a tall glass of VO and ginger ale, tending the wood fire, and settling in from an end of October night that is beating at the door with wind whipped wet leaves, I found myself envious of Jenna at Cold Antler Farm and some of her minions. She writes about her enjoyment of the simple joy of homesteading in Vermont,as well as some of the very things I just listed and I don't begrudge her that, this cusp time to winter needs all the supporters she can get, but I begrudge the innocence of it all... I realized I will never again, if I am lucky, not know the worry that comes with being a parent in this world.