On a calm, sunny October day, we light a pile of brush accumulated over the summer. Sweet smoke billows up like incense. If I close my eyes, it seems like I am at a temple in Kyoto, savoring the soothing fragrance of a thousand sticks of incense. If I listen, the crackling of the brush sounds like monks gossiping.

It’s time to plant fall vegetables. These are cabbage seeds. Seeds are wondrous packages of information and energy. All the wonderful things humans have created don’t compare to what nature has devised in the way of seeds. We owe our existence to these tiny bits. Maybe by the time the iPhone M arrives, centuries from now, it will self replicate. After a year of use, it will produce a seed which you plant, and six months later, you’ll have a handful of shiny new iPhones you don’t need to purchase, and the old iPhone you’ll compost with the fall leaves.

High above, ducks and geese are making their way south. The joy of working outdoors this time of year is hearing migrating fowl coming from afar. Sometimes they pass just out of sight. Other times they fly directly overhead. It won’t be long, maybe three weeks, four or so, before the first of the swans arrive to spend the winter among us.

We stepped outside this morning to the sight of a bright red moon, only to realize later that it was the sun. The smoke from the forest fires in the Cascades poured into the valley during the night and is thick today. The smell of burnt wood fills my lungs. The mountains are obscured and the sky is Martian orange. This must be what it is like to look up at the sky on Mars.

The forecast is for marine air to move in tomorrow and our blue skies to return.

It didn’t get as dark as we thought it would. With the moon covering 89% of the sun, we thought it would be quite dark, instead the sky turned a deep cobalt blue, and all the colors intensified. The most memorable oddity were the many reflections of the eclipse landing on the truck and pavement under a cherry tree. The spaces between the leaves became many pinhole cameras, reflecting the eclipse on the ground. The temperature also lowered during the eclipse. The chickens and dogs didn’t seem to notice anything was unusual. The cat, well, the cat slept through it all.

Clear evidence of the fading sunlight was the light meter in one of the hoop houses. The intensity of the light dropped from 18,000 lux to under 2,000 lux at the peak of the eclipse. And in the house, it became very dark. And yet, even blocking 11% of the sun was not enough to make it dark outside. It shows just how brilliant the sun is.