Month: October 2023

Yesterday when I saw the foothills white with the first snow of the season, I knew we were in for a chilly night. And before going to bed last night, I was pretty sure I’d wake up to a frosty morning when it was already down to 35ºF (2ºC).

This morning it was just under freezing. The first frost of the season dusted the roof of a dog house.

The frost dusted fallen maple leaves and edged blades of grass in white. And our little Buddha meditated on the wonder of this season’s first frost.

The St. John’s Wort is still blooming. I read that the plant gets that name because often blooms on the birthday of the biblical John the Baptist, June 24. Though, really, once it blooms, when is it not in bloom? How many people have birthday’s from June into November? Half the people in the world do. It should be called Half Everyone’s Wort.

Wort is an interesting word. It comes from the Old English wyrt, which refers to plants and herbs. Wyrt comes from the Proto-Germanic word wurtiz and even earlier to the Proto-Indo-European root *wṛ́tis, which means root or plant.

Fall is here and on a rainy day our dogs lie in the window and dream of summer gone. They are fair weather dogs. On rainy days when we open the door to let them out, they will run onto the landing of the steps and come running back in. If dogs could hibernate until spring arrives with its sunny days, these two would.

The dogs we had before, BB and Echo, were as comfortable lying out in the rain as in a warm, cozy house. Not Takuma and Ena. On a rainy day they’d rather dream of summer gone than go out and play in autumn rains.

The maple tree by the house is on fire. On sunny days its brilliant leaves burn bright red.

There are still a few things to bring in from the garden. These are about the last of the tomatoes. The basil is almost gone. The squash will be around for a while.

A hint for those with lawns and chickens, they love it if you don’t mow. The taller and thicker the grass, the more fun they have, scratching around in it, pecking through it, finding good things to eat.

And October is the season here for ripe Asian pears. This year’s crop are large, though not as sweet as last year’s. Maybe another week or two of ripening will make them sweeter.

And on to fall and winter we go. Summer was long and much warmer than usual. Not only here but around the world. The eery warmth continues into October. Just two days ago it was 60ºF (15ºC) in the morning. In a normal October day most days aren’t even that warm. After such a warm summer world wide, there is a sense of foreboding of what this winter will be.